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Consumer attitudes about the goods and services they purchase were shifting long before recession gripped the global economy. G Robert James, vice-president of strategy and insights for The Great Atlantic & Pacifi c Tea Company Inc (A&P), the US-based supermarket chain, coined a term for this new group of consumers: “the iPodian Society”. “We saw a dynamic shift in consumer expectations in around 2000 to, ‘everything a retailer does has to be confi gurable so that it suits my lifestyle,’” he says. The challenge for retailers attempting to win over the iPodians, he admits, is that “many of us are still in an 8-track world.”
