How can you use trend forecasting to create a successful food delivery service?

1 Step 1: Define your target market

Before you start forecasting trends, you need to know who your potential customers are and what they want. You can use market research tools, surveys, interviews, and social media analytics to segment your target market by demographics, psychographics, and geographics. This will help you understand their pain points, motivations, and expectations from a food delivery service.

2 Step 2: Scan the environment

The next step is to scan the external environment for factors that may influence your target market's preferences and behaviors. You can use the PESTEL framework to analyze the political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal trends that may affect your food delivery service. For example, you may consider how the pandemic, the rise of e-commerce, the sustainability movement, and the regulatory changes may impact your industry and your customers.

3 Step 3: Identify key drivers

After scanning the environment, you need to identify the key drivers that are shaping the future of your industry and your target market. These are the most influential and relevant trends that may create opportunities or threats for your food delivery service. You can use the STEEPV framework to categorize the key drivers by social, technological, economic, environmental, political, and values trends. For example, some key drivers for your food delivery service may be the growing demand for convenience, personalization, health, and ethical consumption.

4 Step 4: Generate scenarios

Once you have identified the key drivers, you can use them to generate scenarios that describe possible future outcomes for your industry and your target market. Scenarios are not predictions, but rather plausible and coherent stories that illustrate how the key drivers may interact and evolve over time. You can use the scenario matrix method to create four scenarios based on two key drivers and their high and low impacts. For example, you may create scenarios based on the impact of convenience and health trends on your food delivery service.

5 Step 5: Evaluate implications

After generating scenarios, you need to evaluate the implications of each scenario for your food delivery service. You can use the SWOT analysis tool to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of each scenario for your business. This will help you identify the best and worst case scenarios, the common and unique elements, and the gaps and risks in your current strategy.

6 Step 6: Adapt your strategy

The final step is to adapt your strategy based on the insights from the previous steps. You can use the SMART framework to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives for your food delivery service. You can also use the 4Ps of marketing to design your product, price, place, and promotion strategies according to the trends and scenarios you have forecasted. For example, you may decide to offer customized menus, flexible subscriptions, eco-friendly packaging, and online reviews to attract and retain your customers.