Jen Brace, Trends and Futuring Manager at Ford Motor (NYSE: F) yesterday noted several trends in global research that show post-pandemic shifts in consumer sentiment and how people are reacting to technology by rewriting the rules of living, working, buying, and traveling. The self-professed “data nerd” shared the latest Ford consumer research with the Society of Automotive Analysts via Zoom.

“Think of this as the 10,000 foot view of what we see happening around the world. We purposely keep it at a very high level because we’re trying to understand consumer sentiment around the world. So we’re really trying to understand what’s happening in some critical categories that we refer to as the steep categories that stands for social, technological, economic. environmental and political,” said Brace. Brace is clearly STEEPed (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political) in consumer attitudes.

“What we are trying to do here is understand how consumers are feeling about the world around them. How they are reacting to change and how we might be able to anticipate shifts that we see going forward. So we’re really trying to understand at a very high level what do we see happening in terms of consumer sentiment, so that we can better understand where our customers might be at and how that might be changing as we move forward,” Brace said.

About the Ford Trends Survey
• It’s sent to 16 different countries.
• Ford receives ~1000 respondents in each country.
• This is a general population survey. It’s sent to a wide array of different demographics and generational cohorts.
• It is not focused on automotive owners. It is not focused on Ford owners. It is not focused on Ford employees. It has none of that captured within it.
• The respondents were all adults over the age of 18.