Students at the ABC Cooking School in Marunouchi.

As we previously reported, the fact that men are behaving more like women makes them an increasingly attractive target for product developers and marketers, and some multinational corporations are responding accordingly. This shift is happening around the world, but especially in Japan, as well as South Korea and Greater China.

Here are some more examples of the shift in action in Japan, offering inspiration for other markets:

ABC Cooking Schools, with locations around Japan, is training an army of amateur chefs. Until two years ago, they only accepted female students. As the Baby Boomer generation began retiring, the competition began offering men-only classes for retirees. ABC took the step of starting co-ed classes at locations with a high density of corporate workers, such as Ginza and Marunouchi. The number of male students has quickly risen to around 600 at the schools.

Another service associated with women that has begun to patronized by men can be found at the 48 nail salons throughout Japan operated by Nail Quick. The number of male customers has risen to the level that the salons now offer a “men’s course” costing 2,940 JPY, and including disinfecting the hands, removing cuticles, and applying clear or colored polish.

One of more surprising hit products comes from underwear maker Wishroom, which has unveiled a men’s bra, which quickly became a top seller on the online shopping site Rakuten. The Wishroom store on the site claims the bra can give men a “calm, relaxed feeling”.

Click here for more insights on shifts in male behavior or ask for a sample report.

Your message here? (AP Photo via The Daily Beast)

Without wanting to minimize the seriousness of the health issues at hand, the reality is that people around the world are considering how to protect themselves. The prospect of having to wear a face mask if Swine Flu continues to spread may be no big deal in Japan and Asian countries that experienced SARS in 2003. However, for consumers elsewhere unused to such things, the face mask poses a serious fashion dilemma.

The result is the mask becoming a canvas for personal expression. Individuals in affected areas who want to be victims of neither health nor fashion have begun to get creative and decorate their masks, as this photo gallery from The Daily Beast shows.

Mint Designs' cheeky chimp face mask

Some manufacturers like Kimberly Clark already put out limited numbers of colorful masks decorated with Disney cartoon characters for children. Japanese brand Mint Designs has fashioned a cheeky monkey-style mask, and artist Yoriko Yoshida was recently inspired to create a set of beautiful, witty and sometimes faintly morbid face mask illustrations.

Mt. Fuji face mask by Yoriko Yoshida

What’s next? The face mask covers the most important area of the body for communication, and the natural target of the eyes of others. So if face masks do become de rigueur in some places for a while (and it’s far too early to say that they will), the blank white space will become a unique marketing opportunity for the right brand with the right design and the right message.

Contact us to find out more.

Time to reward yourself with that new 24-inch iMac?

Recession fatigue is starting to show in the United States, where consumers are rewarding themselves by “trading up” items that play an important role in their daily lives, according to Boston Consulting Group (reported by WWD). In fact, marketers interested in this trend need only look to Japan to see how an extended downturn can actually boost sales of high-quality daily necessities.

The top ten list of “trade-up” items for the U.S. is dominated by what most people would consider 21st Century home necessities. No. 1 is the personal computer, and household electronics like home entertainment (5), kitchen appliances (8) and washers and dryers (9) also feature. At No. 2 is fresh fruits and vegetables, reflecting wellness trends as well as the basic importance of food, with other entries being meat (4), sit-down restaurants (7) and fish and seafood (10). The other entries are bedding (3) and automobiles (6). With the exception of restaurants, the list clearly shows the items consumers will start spending on first will be things that improve their daily lives and personal space.

A prolongued period of low growth in Japan bred innovation in small-ticket items, as consumers recalibrated their spending patterns

The changes in spending by Japanese a decade ago reflected their different priorities, with more emphasis on fashion (which doesn’t make Boston’s U.S. Top 10) and personal computers (mobile phones were always more useful here). However, the shifts in demand were similarly focused on improving consumers’ daily lives and, in the process, contributed to world-leading innovation in everything from functional home electronics and B2C mobile commerce to beverage flavors and cigarette packaging.

Contact us for details of ethnographic research and innovation programs to help your business anticipate consumers’ changing priorities.

Cosmetics maker Shiseido interviewed 10,000 women across Asia to determine the ideal Asian face.

Leonardo da Vinci theorized that the ancient Grecian mathematical formula of the Golden Mean could be responsible for beauty in the human form. Today, Japan-based cosmetics maker Shiseido claims to have found the Golden Mean of Asian beauty in a marketing campaign for its Maquillage line.

Shiseido conducted research by interviewing 10,000 women in Japan and throughout Asia to find the common factors in women’s conception of the ideal face. They came to these results: women think that an ideal face is clear, small and shaped like an inverted triangle, with sharpe, big eyes and full lips. Eyes, lips and the rest of the face should all form well-defined features, with contrast among them.

Shiseido found that the ideal proportions could be recreated using five layers of shade and highlight. Shiseido has now established a special website to teach women “M (Maquillage) Rules” for using their products aspire to the ideal face.

Maquillage has creates a series of tutorials on its website for recreating the ideal face.

Luxury hotels such as this one in Seoul are facing tough times.

We have entered a new economic era. A period when the adage ‘more is good’ no longer resonates and in which conspicuous consumption is starting to be viewed as repulsive amid the world’s harsh new realities.

As companies scale back on international expansion plans and consumers tighten purse strings in anticipation of a grim 2009, this new era of ‘Controlled Luxury’ will see people in Asia and throughout the developed world become increasingly thoughtful when making daily consumption choices and measured with the purchase of larger ticket items.

It is a time when the logos and egos of luxury brands will start to look old-fashioned as people decide that luxury is no longer defined by the purchase of a designer product but is representative of something that is far more personal.

Luxury purveyors of goods and services that were oh so special and difficult to obtain but then became more ubiquitous than a convenience store bought snack will be hardest hit by this sea change.

This new paradigm will mean that luxury, a noun overused in today’s world, will no longer be used to sell everything from soap to socks but instead within the context of a specific environment, become an adjective for how we feel at the time of purchase or usage.

Going forward, we can safely assume Asians will pare back on services and brands that misuse the word luxury, especially at hotels that charge high room rates yet still expect us to feel a warm, fuzzy feeling about the hotel brand upon check-out, only to discover we have been charged for Internet access and breakfast, no longer extras in this day and age, but necessities.

How will our responses rate on customer service surveys at hotels that try to convince us with their brand messages they act as a home away from home then charge for extortionately priced breakfast – for I am racking my brains remembering the last time I paid $25 for a bowl of cereal in my kitchen. And as for hotels charging ridiculously high Internet access fees that do not reflect actual cost, this starts to feels more like an insult along the same lines as charging us to turn on the television or hairdryer.

Let’s not dwell on the outmoded and outrageous table charges for the privilege of sitting at a bar for a cocktail twice the market price at the city’s trendiest spots. If there is a positive to this crisis, it is the reawakening that it is no longer smart to overpay for products and services merely because they are fashionable or been labeled with the luxury tag. Instead, consumers will patronize outlets that offer value for money and also offer a memorable experience.

And to the car brands that once represented an area of individuality among personal expenditure, after all, our car choice was considered the mobile representation of our homes and generally speaking, the second largest purchase after the roof over our head. Who truly feels special driving a car that our neighbors, co-workers and friends also own.

Will we be sorry to see fewer designer handbags slung over the shoulders’ of young women who instead of saving for their future were instead building debt with credit card companies. The same designer accessories that were once crafted with care in the ateliers of Europe and held strong brand values dear to the buyer’s heart, but are now systematically churned out in Asian factories in gargantuan quantities that can be purchased from any trendy shopping thoroughfare in our city.

Yet despite all the doom and gloom, this new era of thoughtful spending brings opportunity. While people throughout the developed world have been shaken to their senses by the realization that the zeros that were being rapidly added to their property and equity portfolios, and consequently they borrowed on, were as fake as the bags found at street stalls in this city, there is still room in this ‘huddle down’ era for brands to shine.

In fact, now more than ever, it is critical to stand out from the pack. Not just as an individual searching for a job or even as a person trying to keep an existing position, but from a brand point of view too. During this current adversity retailers, manufacturers and brands that develop tactics to combat consumption fatigue have a real advantage in carving out a niche to dominate the marketplace of the future, both here and overseas.

By utilizing consumer insights, and there are many from this spending binge and its subsequent post consumerism hangover, we distill what people want from a retail and service experience. After all, we still need clothes, food and indulgences, just fewer of them.

What we may learn is there is no gratification in buying one in each color, or stocking up unnecessarily just to keep cupboards full or buying a second home you never get the chance to use. What we see is that the symptom of uncontrolled spending is guilt that later manifests itself in unhappiness because it appears the more we have the less we appreciate.

So, here’s the reality. We have all overeaten and now we are collectively purging on over consumption. As we look in our closets, we ask ourselves, will we return to the stores that we bought sweaters from that pile up unused at the back of our cupboards? More than likely not. Nor will we use the services of companies that were never that good to begin with but we continued to use out of convenience. In this ‘Controlled Luxury’ era, we will walk a mile to save on unnecessary costs.

With this re-examination of who we are and what we now stand for, luxury will remerge as a moment in time and a memory to be cherished, personal to its owner, not an overpriced item that can be bought on credit.

Just last week someone was telling me they found their personal reaction to the global crisis far more understated than they thought possible. He said, “What I find most puzzling is my lack of anger at losing so much money. I can only surmise that everyone around me is in exactly the same boat, so losing out doesn’t quite feel as bad.”

It’s exactly these powerful, collective emotions that will push forward-thinking businesses front of stage. The brands that understand the consumer desire to create a safer future (taking up a BRIC-country language course for example) will lead.

Consumer expenditure in the luxury sector will obviously still occur, but for the foreseeable future it will be carried out in a more reserved manner and only after a period of self-imposed abstinence. Bottles of champagne will be still be ordered, but instead of routinely and on cheaper brands, Asian consumers will splash out on a more expensive bottle as a behavioral reward to switching to filtered tap water, after forgoing environmentally polluting bottled varieties.

Moving online, targeted digital services will prevail. As consumers switch from hitting stores out in the streets to shopping out of their armchair’s in the home environment because the outside world is seen as increasingly threatening, the online malls that offer the social functions of social networking site’s (SNS) will increase in popularity.

Trust has weakened in the concept of globalization and people are naturally looking at home and to the immediate region for solutions. As we move away from the shaky foundations of what constituted the old model of globalization, South Korea is geographically well located to become a key player in the new era of regionalization. Local businesses that innovate fresh products and services that focus on originality and quality will become market leaders, both home and abroad.

Globally, countries wealthy enough to support substantial luxury purchasing are really suffering economically, and South Korea and Japan are no exceptions. But within adversity there is always opportunity. Rather than retreat in to shells, now more than ever is the time for local businesses to invest in research to become more competitive using current insights to comprehend how people feel.

I am not referring to R & D but in fact, qualitative and ethnographic consumer research to identify what people want and why. Local businesses need to invest in the kind of research that gets to the heart of what will motivate purchasing decisions in this new era, a time when the old models no longer apply. Unless local companies track these trends, this period to step front of stage in what is considered Asia’s Century, will pass countries such as Japan and South Korea by.

Local companies need to invest in international research trips to understand what consumers and leading edge companies are doing regionally, especially in economies that have experienced boom and bust cycles in the past. Consequently, this will inspire and promote a culture of innovation internally. It is only through the discovery of new knowledge and by looking at global trends will local companies move from following consumer trends to anticipating them.

The real issue here is that research is considered a value added service by many businesses and not an area of expenditure. The attitude appears to be, why pay for research when ideas can be ripped off from overseas, even if the downside is they may not resonate locally with consumers.

There is just a handful of independent companies in Seoul that work in the area of market analysis and trend forecasting. In New York and London there are hundreds of consultancies looking at change, converting new ways of thinking into innovation.

Businesses that copy rather than innovate will soon be overtaken by hungrier counterparts in India and China that are investing in culture’s of innovation.

As people scale back on purchases and reconsider the meaning of luxury, local companies that fail to bring something new to the table will find consumers choosing to eat elsewhere, most likely from an original and more imaginative source.

Nicole Fall

This article originally appeared as a front page “Think Piece” in The Korean Times.