Lonely By Design.

Coercion Is Quietly Driving the Next Consumer Wave

It's a crazy time in retail and the world around us. We live in a world where we are more connected than ever before and yet, we are lonelier than we’ve ever been.

It’s one of the great paradoxes of modern life with the ability to message anyone, anywhere, at any time and yet genuine, soul-filling connection feels further away than ever before and many are very much feeling it. The decline in local community participation, the rise in single-person households, the growing sense of dislocation in sprawling cities or behind glowing screens and all of it contributes to a creeping emotional vacuum.

And as always where there is emotional absence, the market moves in.

At IGU, we’ve argued for a long time that retail has never been about products alone. We believe it's all about emotional architecture and the invisible scaffolding of need, tension both good and bad, and belonging. It's these things that shape how people spend, what they trust, and where they find meaning. When we apply our R.I.C.E. framework to today’s emotional climate, one theme becomes unmistakably clear: Loneliness is not just a feeling. It’s a commercial force. And it is fuelling a new era of Coercion.

The Rise of Solitary Spending

If you walk through any supermarket or shopping centre, the signs are everywhere. Meals for one in the freezer aisle or the comfort snacks stacked near the checkout. Window displays screaming “Self-care isn’t selfish.” Pop-ups offering $15 chair massages or build-your-own-scent bars. Entire shelves dedicated to calming teas, sleep sprays, and adult colouring books. Even the way some shopping centres are being laid out with wellness zones, pet cafés, massage chairs in centre walkways, it all tells a story if you stop, look and listen.

Instant gratification, neatly packaged for the emotionally fatigued.

Scroll your feed and you’ll see the same thing but from a digital perspective. Luxury “treat yourself” drops or reels of self-care routines shot in soft lighting through to pet birthday cakes delivered the very next-day, or solo travel influencers sipping on their negronis in curated stillness. Its the rise of AI-generated love letters, virtual therapy apps and hugging pillows designed to simulate human arms.

These aren’t just trends. They’re real signals of a deeper emotional undercurrent and we see the  shift from functional purchasing to emotional substitution by using products and experiences to temporarily soothe what connection used to satisfy.

It’s no longer “I need this.” It’s “This makes me feel less alone.”

This emotional undercurrent that's driving a much bigger part of today’s consumer behaviour isn’t just anecdotal either, if anything it’s statistically undeniable. A 2023 Gallup study revealed that 24% of people globally report feeling "very or fairly lonely", with younger generations such as Gen Z and Millennials feeling lonelier than retirees. In Australia, the health cost of loneliness is already estimated at $2.7 billion annually, linked to increased risks of heart disease, dementia, and mental health decline, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Across the Western world, single-person households are surging, up 28.5% in the EU between 2009 and 2021, while in the U.S., they now make up more than 28% of all households, the highest in recorded history. Meanwhile, solo travel is booming, especially among Gen Z, with a 2024 Expedia report finding that 60% of Gen Z travellers prefer travelling alone, often citing personal freedom but also a need to “get out of their own heads.” This emotional shift is reflected digitally too like on TikTok where the hashtag #selfcare has exceeded 55 billion views, blending therapeutic rituals, consumerism, and curated identity into a single, highly marketable aesthetic.

Understanding Coercion: It's Not Just Manipulation

In IGU’s R.I.C.E. model, Coercion isn’t limited to hard-sell tactics or fear-based marketing. It’s way more subtle and potentially harmful than that. It’s what happens when a gap between emotional need and emotional reality quietly pressures people into action. Put simply, it’s when consumers buy not out of need or desire, but to quiet a negative feeling they don’t know how else to resolve.

This gap we speak about is widening. Fewer close friendships, less face-to-face connection, greater mobility and fewer things to anchor to. All these social norms are what push independence over intimacy and as loneliness becomes a default and not a deviation many consumers are left very vulnerable to subtle forms of emotional coercion:

• If you don’t belong, buy something that says you do.

  
  

• If you’re not touched, buy something that hugs you back.

  
  

• If you feel unseen, buy luxury and at least it will signal worth.

  
  

• If you’re not invited, book the experience anyway and post about it.

  
  

This isn’t conscious by the way and no one walks into a store thinking, “I’m buying to soothe my loneliness.” But beneath the transaction, that’s often exactly what’s playing out and today it happens more than ever before.

When Coercion Becomes Self-Driven

So here's the crazy thing, we brands have always played on this and pulled on these pulleys to persuade consumers to but what makes this moment even more complex is that the market doesn’t have to manipulate you anymore, your own unmet emotional needs already do the majority if not all the heavy lifting.

Lonely people aren’t just easy to sell to because they’re isolated, they’re easy to sell to because our brains are wired to solve emotional discomforts with action. Always have been but in the modern world, that action often looks like buying.

What we’re witnessing is a rise in what we call self-coercion, which is people persuading themselves and either consciously or not, that purchasing is the fastest route to emotional repair. And in the short term I would be confident to say it often works, that dopamine hit or the validation, basically it gives you the temporary feeling and sense of control again. But just like any coping mechanism, it rarely delivers the depth of connection people actually crave and more importantly need.

The Brand Dilemma: Capitalise or Contribute?

So here is the ethical fork in the road and brands have a choice.

You can continue to quietly capitalise on loneliness and continue to design scarcity-based marketing, identity-driven pricing, and isolation-framed campaigns (“be your own soulmate”; “treat yourself because no one else will”).

Or, you can contribute something deeper.

I think the brands of the future won’t be the ones with the loudest ads. They’ll be the ones that create meaningful and emotional architecture. They’ll acknowledge loneliness without exploiting it and they’ll offer connection, inclusion, and identity in ways that don’t rely on constant purchasing to soothe during those challenging lonely moments to get that dopamine hit. They’ll know that being customer-obsessed doesn’t mean selling or persuading harder, it just means seeing more clearly.

How to Build For the Lonely Majority

Ok so here is where I have built out what it can look like in practice. 

1. Design With Emotional Precision

We have to stop chasing trends. Instead just ask yourself: What emotional need does our product or experience serve? Is it Reward (joy, pride)? Ideology (belief, belonging)? Or Coercion (pain-avoidance, insecurity)? And then design accordingly, and with care.

2. Create Community Beyond Transaction

Your brand shouldn’t just be a storefront, it should be and needs to be a space. Whether that’s a WhatsApp group, a local meetup, or a ritual inside your packaging, something to offer people a way to connect that doesn’t require a cart checkout. Lonely people aren’t looking for things, they’re looking for others.

3. Shift From “Me” to “We”

Instead of being tempted to frame everything around personal gratification and reward, take some time to explore narratives of shared purpose, communal joy, or co-created identity. Brands like LSKD, Glossier, and Patagonia have mastered this and their customers don’t just buy the product; they buy into each other.

4. Train For Emotional Fluency

Your frontline teams are your emotional interface and the invisible PR of any brand. Are they trained to read emotional cues? To offer empathy, not just upsell? Emotional intelligence is no longer a soft skill. It’s a strategic and competitive advantage for any brand or business.

A Final Thought: The New Brand Loyalty Is Emotional Trust

At IGU, we don’t believe in guilt-driven branding, there could not be a lower form of brand or marketing. But we do believe in emotional responsibility. If your customer is the lonely and data suggests many are, the most powerful thing you can do isn’t sell them something to plug the hole or fill the void for a little while. It’s to show them that they are not alone in how they feel.

Because when a brand sees you at your most human and doesn’t take advantage of it, that’s where real allegiance truly begins.

And that? That lasts way longer and goes way further than any product.

By Nick Gray, Founder of IGU Global