Consumer Trends Keynote Speaker
Original Research. Real Consumers. What's Actually Next.
Matt Carmichael is a consumer trends keynote speaker and market research futurist at Ipsos. He doesn't cite other people's research — he creates it. His talks give marketing, retail, CPG, and association audiences a clear-eyed view of where consumer values, spending, and loyalty are heading next.
// The Talk
Consumer behavior has changed — but not in the ways most pundits predicted. The story isn't "consumers are broke" or "consumers are thriving." It's more interesting and more complicated than either headline.
Using the Ipsos U.S. Consumer Tracker (surveyed fortnightly), Global Trends data (50 markets, 50,000 interviews), and proprietary segmentation, Matt maps the actual landscape: where people are spending, where they're pulling back, what they're willing to pay a premium for, and what they've permanently deprioritized.
The Human Economy isn't about inflation or recession. It's about values — and which brands understand what people actually prioritize when the going gets complicated.
The talk also goes deep on one of the most important strategic fault lines in consumer markets today: how the affluent play by a completely different set of rules — and what that bifurcation means for every brand trying to reach the middle.
// Audience Takeaways
01
Where U.S. consumers are right now — spending behaviors, sentiment, confidence — drawn from the most recent Ipsos tracking data, not a six-month-old report
02
How mass-market assumptions fail when the affluent and the middle class are operating by fundamentally different economic realities — and what that means for your brand
03
What consumers actually prioritize — health, convenience, experience, authenticity — and where those priorities are shifting across age groups and income levels
04
In which categories trust is the dominant purchase driver — and how brands earn, lose, and rebuild it in a skeptical consumer environment
05
How U.S. consumer sentiment compares to key global markets — and what domestic trends look like when seen through an international lens
06
Specific leading indicators — drawn from current data — that will shape your category over the next 3–5 years, and the strategic choices they imply
// Best Fit
Brand managers, category leaders, and retail executives tracking what shoppers will want — and pay for — in the next 12–36 months
CMOs, brand strategists, and insights teams who need to understand the real consumer landscape, not the simplified version
Annual meetings in food, beverage, home improvement, financial services, healthcare, or any consumer-facing industry
Senior leadership teams who want a credible, data-grounded view of the consumer landscape to inform strategic planning
// Why Matt
Most consumer trends speakers cite reports from McKinsey, Deloitte, or Nielsen. Matt Carmichael writes them. As SVP at Ipsos — one of the world's top research firms — he has access to the Ipsos U.S. Consumer Tracker (surveyed fortnightly), the Ipsos Global Trends study, and the What the Future archive covering 50+ consumer topics in depth.
The result is a keynote built from data that's current, proprietary, and unavailable to any other speaker on the circuit.
50
Markets Studied
50K
Annual Interviews
2×/mo
U.S. Consumer Tracker
50+
WTF Topic Issues
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