1968, 1978, 1988 ... 2018: the photos have aged, but the French still go on holiday in the same way.
The same way?
2018. Alex and Marie book a BlaBlaCar at the last minute to go to the coast, a small location in the hinterland discovered on Airbnb; they exchange via WhatsApp with their friends from Lyon whom they have to meet on the spot. Waze tells them where they are along the way.
Once there, they geolocate a bike hire company for long rides along the coast; Alex uses his smartphone to order a new swimming costume to be delivered by drone; and for this evening, they decide between a small crêperie spotted on La Fourchette or a set of sushis delivered by Foodora.
Marie doesn't really like the beach, so she surfs her Insta, posts selfies and orders lots of samples of her favourite influencer's creams to be delivered to the village grocery shop at the end of the day.
Tomorrow, they'll be going to the virtual shopping mall in the neighbouring village to do a bit of local shopping: not one of those big developments from the end of the 20th century.th century on the outskirts of cities! just a vast mall lined with touch-screen display cabinets, animated by clips from the latest collection, and featuring your favourite models thanks to the tracking of your latest data ... but with no shop behind!
We stop in front of a window, choose a dress and have a virtual fitting - your "double pass it in the window - and if you like it, you say "Ok" on the app ... and you'll be delivered by drone, of course.
While drone deliveries are not yet arriving on beaches in 2018, and virtual shopping malls remain - very provisionally - in the realm of fiction, the rest is the stuff of everyday life that no one could have imagined ... in 1978 or even at the beginning of the 21st century!
Many innovations have become part of our lives, and we can't do without them... even if we did without them ten years ago! We are in a state of constant upheaval, and we can't even imagine that it could be any different: it's not just a question of time speeding up, but rather a succession of continual ruptures, creating a form of continuous chaos.
And yet, the long transhumance of the French to the beaches shows no signs of coming to an end ...
So, understanding where the world - and consumers - are heading means not only anticipating a multitude of disruptions and knowing how to describe what has changed; it also means being able to discern what the stable foundation is, and how these disruptions are going to take root over the long term. In this respect, going back to the fundamentals of sociological analysis, but grafting societal monitoring and trend research onto it, enables us to paint a picture and decipher new behaviours based on age-old trends.
Have a great holiday!
