Me in Mind
Me in Mind
Me in Mind
Me
in Mind
The new drivers of decision-making
in an overwhelmed world
PROLOGUE
Familiar themes, in an unfamiliar context
The imperative behind this piece
We are all living through an era defined by constant transition and compounding shocks. Societal anxieties are amplified by hyperconnectivity and digital over-saturation, fundamentally changing commercial behavior.
Major shifts over the past decade have made motivations behind decision-making more obscure, even as the decisions themselves are more observed than ever. The world doesn’t just look different. It feels different.
For C-suite leaders, the challenge has moved beyond tracking transactional data to decoding how human adaptation under persistent uncertainty is rewriting the rules of engagement. Relying on legacy consumer models may be a compass that no longer points north. Read on to discover how these subtle behavioral shifts are transforming a business’s bottom line and why understanding this new human context is the ultimate strategic imperative.
A landscape that feels at once familiar, and unfamiliar
Several of the themes you’ll encounter here are far from new.
Trust
Echo chambers
Uncertainty
Behavior changes
Decision-making
Anxiety
Technology attachment
Information abundance
Complexity
Media and choice
proliferation
They’re familiar because they tend to surface first in social, political, health, or family contexts. People ask what they mean for their communities, well-being, children, and institutions. That’s often where the conversation begins, but far from where it ends.
Our Approach
Ignition
What do you want
to explore next?
Chapter 1
Living through change
Chapter 1
Living through change
Observations and interpretations
The evolving human
A predicted future, changing
in unexpected ways.
For the last several decades, businesses have focused on technology transformation, while missing the vital, yet quiet, parallel transformation of the human being.
Technology is no longer just a functional tool to be picked up and put down. It is now an adaptive, reciprocal force that is actively reshaping how customers and employees think, trust, and belong.
As C-suite leaders invest billions into digital infrastructure, the human dimension remains the hidden variable, either becoming the bottleneck or the primary source of value for these investments.
The next wave of growth will be captured by those who shift their focus from what technology can do, to how technology is changing what it means to be human.
We are living in a highly-predicted future of technology, and a highly-unpredictable future of human behavior.
This tension is transforming what it means to be a consumer. What it means to be a human. And what it means to understand, interact with, and serve both.
Jennifer Linardos Riccardo, SENIOR DIRECTOR, CLIENT RELATIONS & STRATEGY LEAD, OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN, KPMG US
The world
we live in
To see more about the demographic and economic forces impacting consumers and employees, check out the full dashboard in Me in Mind.
The silver economy
Demographic gravity is flipping, and aging populations will be a defining characteristic of future demand, consumption, and economic trajectory.
Click to see the stats
Dense future
The world has become majority-urban in just two generations, concentrating opportunity, pressure, and innovation into dense clusters.
Click to see the stats
Wealth paradox
Global prosperity has expanded in absolute terms, even as relative wealth concentration has continued to intensify.
Click to see the stats
From information scarcity, to surplus, to saturation
How abundance overwhelmed
Customers aren’t walking away from purchases because they don’t like the products—they are walking away because choosing has become too “cognitively expensive.”
In a world built for attention rather than action, the transition from information scarcity to total saturation has induced an epidemic of decision fatigue. When faced with infinite options and algorithmic noise, the human brain rebels, shifting its primary objective from “What do I want?” to “What can I eliminate?”
This new analysis reveals why traditional preference-driven models are failing.
Discover how savvy companies are leveraging psychological safety nets, like seamless returns and AI-driven curation, not as mere perks, but as essential tools to lower the cognitive barrier and rescue their conversion rates.
52%
alf of all consumers say they feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of product information they encounter.
KPMG Global Survey on Human Decision-Making, 2026
79%
Say their decision to buy a product can change based on new information, revealing how easily minds shift.
DASHBOARD
Abundance
fatigue
Information overload is often discussed as a conceptual issue, but its effects are a tangible part of daily life.
Read the article to see the full dashboard of the metrics
driving abundance fatigue and learn how to design
experiences for minds that are already overwhelmed.
Choice overload
SIGNAL
110 hours per year spent by US streaming subscribers just scrolling menus trying to decide what to watch, with 1 in 2 people feeling bombarded by recommendations.1
REFRAME
That’s almost 14 eight-hour working days a year spent just scrolling the menus on popular streaming platforms.
TAKEAWAY
Choice-rich systems often unintentionally create cognitive load and decision fatigue.
Suggestion congestion
SIGNAL
20% of content in popular social media platform feeds now comes from accounts users do not follow, with plans to push this higher.2
REFRAME
Imagine going to watch a film in a movie theater, only for 29 minutes of the average 2 hour, 23 minutes runtime to be replaced with a story and characters you weren’t there to watch.
TAKEAWAY
When personal information streams are increasingly pre-curated, another layer of cognitive load is placed on the user to monitor, filter, and opt-in or out.
Fragmented focus
SIGNAL
Every two minutes the average knowledge worker is interrupted by an email, a message, or a meeting.3
REFRAME
Imagine beginning a typical eight hour working day knowing you have around 240 interruptions and distractions ahead of you before you finish.
TAKEAWAY
The tools and technologies designed to enable knowledge workers are at risk of impeding thought and creativity.
Credential overload
SIGNAL
The average user manages 168 digital passwords.4
REFRAME
Managing our digital life is like operating a small company, with vendors that need contracts, credentials, renewals, permissions, alerts, and resets.
TAKEAWAY
Users no longer manage just their digital selves; they manage a sizable digital footprint, and the tools designed to help often introduce another layer of complexity.
Trust,
recalculated
When trust becomes the consumer’s responsibility.
The era of top-down institutional authority has passed. Today, trust has thinned and migrated sideways—away from legacy brands and corporate credentials, towards peers, micro-communities, and individual voices that feel relatable and authentic.
In this highly skeptical environment, trust has ceased to be a passive reputation metric to be managed. It is a critical design constraint that dictates how aggressively a business can move.
Leaders who thrive in this landscape will reject polished, opaque corporate statements in favor of “glass-box leadership,” exposing the decisionmaking process behind the corporate promise.
Read this deep dive to understand how trust has been recalculated as a survival mechanism and how to engineer transparency into customer and employee interactions to build an unshakeable competitive advantage.
70%
think reviews are over-trusted
Consumers believe too many people place trust in online reviews for products and services.
69%
buy what friends and family own
Many agree a product is worth buying if friends and family have purchased the same one.
67%
question AI-written reviews
Two-thirds of consumers globally are questioning whether online reviews are written by AI.
67%
know others notice their purchases
Consciousness of friends and family taking note of their purchases is on the rise.
66%
believe bad info drives buying
Consumers believe too many people make decisions based on incorrect information about products and services.
61%
base purchases on others
Respondents admit they base purchase decisions on what they learn from others.
KPMG Global Survey on Human
Decision-Making, 2026
In
______
we trust
When trust becomes the consumer’s responsibility.
Misinformation has evolved from an occasional nuisance and a topic of newsrooms into an ambient, high-stress challenge that has made discerning reality itself a metabolically expensive task and a threat to organization’s bottom lines. Check out the article to see the full dashboard.
Misinformation is ambient
58%
Globally, 58% of people say they are concerned about their ability to discern fact from fiction when it comes to news online.1
Trust is shifting sideways to 'People like me'
74%
globally place equal levels of trust in scientists and peers for the truth about innovations.2
There's a personal cost
62%
of Americans say the spread of fake news causes significant stress in their lives.3
Broken on-ramps
Coming of age with fractured expectations
For decades, the implicit social contract was simple: study hard, build experience, and the system will reward that with compounding progress. Today, that contract is breaking.
As AI automates entry-level white-collar roles, historically the vital training grounds for future leaders, organizations face systemic crises in the form of rapidly shrinking talent and customer pipelines.
By eliminating the “bench” of junior talent to capture short-term productivity gains, businesses are exposing themselves to long-term capability gaps and leadership deficits. This provocative analysis details the three historical ruptures in work expectations, culminating in the current AI shock.
Read this piece to discover how leading companies are rebuilding on-ramps and redesigning work to secure the innovators, thinkers, and executives of tomorrow.
The hardest part of this moment isn't learning new technology. It's the uncertainty of not knowing what you're supposed to become.
But that discomfort is actually a signal. It means we’re finally being asked to bring more of ourselves to work, not less. That means we have a chance to reshape jobs around our uniquely human capabilities like curiosity, creativity, and compassion.”
ANEESH RAMAN, CHIEF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY OFFICER, LINKEDIN1
The era of
visibility
The instinct is ancient, but
the environment is new.
Forget keeping up with the Joneses, today’s consumer is keeping up with the feed.
In an era where every keystroke, purchase, and online reaction is recorded and scored, consumption has transformed into a highly curated, public performance.
Consumers report judging others for behavior while believing themselves to be purely rational actors, a sign they recognize the social fishbowl even if they report otherwise about themselves.
This means traditional assumptions about price, quality, and independent choice from straightforward survey data are fundamentally flawed.
This article explores the central paradox of modern consumption of how consumer autonomy operates inside highly orchestrated, visible systems.
Discover how to design for “dual choreography” and how to align digital environments with the performative needs of the modern, visible consumer.
We still talk about consumer choice as if it's private, spontaneous, and freely made. It isn't.
Most decisions now occur inside designed systems instrumented, visible, and responsive in real time. Choice has shifted from solving a need to signaling identity, values, and belonging in environments where behavior is observed, scored, and remembered.
That creates a new tension at the core of consumption: autonomy operating inside orchestration. Leaders who fail to see how systems script the stage while consumers perform on it risk confusing visibility with intent and performance with true preference.”
BRIAN MISKE, NATIONAL IGNITION LEADER, AMERICAS SPACE LEAD, KPMG US
64%
Of consumers globally believe a person’s character can be judged by their purchases.
KPMG Global Survey on Human Decision-Making, 2026
Risk or relief?
When coping behaviors
start driving demands
The notion that customers are primarily motivated by self-optimization and productivity may be misreading the market. Underneath the surface of modern life lies a profound, chronic exhaustion, driving a massive behavioral shift away from optimization and toward a desperate search for relief.
Consumers are realizing that often times “good enough” is actually perfect for their underlying need to get out of the decision fatigue. They are increasingly willing to accept deferred risks in exchange for immediate cognitive offloading. Just consider the explosive, multi-billiondollar rise of Buy Now Pay Later, cryptocurrency, sports gambling, and GLP-1 weight-loss drugs.
Explore the new calculus of risk that reveals a path to competitive advantage: designing products and business models that don’t ask consumers to do more but instead offer them a trusted escape hatch from the complexity of daily life.
Who do you trust?
25%
Of UK adults used BNPL at least once in 2024, almost doubling from 2023.1
+70%
Year-on-year growth in on-chain crypto activity in Asia-Pacific.2
$150 billion
Approximate value of bets placed with US legal sportsbooks in 2024, a 22% year-on-year increase.3
30 million
Forecast US users of GLP‑1 by 2030 — or around 9% of the total population.4
1 in 5 teens
In the US teens say they’re on popular video platforms ‘almost constantly’5
30 million
Forecast US users of GLP‑1 by 2030 — or around 9% of the total population.4
Me, myself,
and AI
The rise of the digital hypocrite
Welcome to the era of the digital hypocrite, where many champion data privacy while blindly accepting terms and conditions and eagerly outsource their own cognitive labor to AI while fiercely judging others who do the same. This human inconsistency is a fundamental survival mechanism driven by cognitive dissonance and social desirability.
As generative AI integrates into daily life, it has birthed a stark double standard where we demand friction-free efficiency for ourselves but reject it as lazy and inauthentic when used by our colleagues, doctors, or brands.
This critical analysis exposes why consumer declarations can sometimes mislead and provides a roadmap for navigating the delicate, constant negotiation of authenticity in an AI-driven market.
What people do
Use AI to draft emails, messages, or RSVPs.
What is judged in others
Expect personal messages from others to be genuinely their own.
Let AI clean up their photos.
Criticize influencers who “overedit” their photos as being inauthentic.
Ask AI for relationship advice.
Expect intimacy to remain strictly human.
From digital assistant, to concierge, to... companion?
A shift in how and why we turn to technology
The relationship between humans and artificial intelligence has crossed a profound threshold, moving past functional utility and entering the era of the digital companion.
While C-suite leaders focus heavily on productivity and efficiency, users are leveraging conversational AI for emotional offloading, anxiety management, and coping with modern life. Offering zero judgment, constant availability, and predictable responses, AI is filling deep social and structural roles previously filled by traditional institutions.
This shift creates new expectations for both the workforce and customers, who will increasingly demand tools that reduce mental drag and offer psychological relief.
Read this essential piece to understand the rise of “synthetic relationships” and why emotional offloading is the next major fight for employee engagement and customer loyalty.
“The process of seeking advice is completely anonymous, so there is no need to worry about personal privacy leakage.”
Hong Kong (SAR)
Male
58
Technology sector
“I don’t have anyone else to talk to. It’s linked to search engines so it’s like having an actual conversation with the added bonus of the knowledge.”
UK
Female
38
Retail sector
Our Approach
Ignition
What do you want
to explore next?
Chapter 1
Living through change
Chapter 2
Inside the modern consumer mind
The patterns beneath the surface
Values, virtues, vibes… or just plain velocity?
A shift from trade-offs to tensions
Today’s consumer decisions are highly entangled, ambient, and constantly broadcast on digital stages. Forward thinking leaders will move beyond traditional needs-based segmentation and static personas to navigate three defining modern battlegrounds: value versus values, convenience versus conscience, and personalization versus privacy.
This chapter introduces the next evolution of consumer intelligence, demonstrating how price, quality, and convenience now collide within a hyper-visible social fishbowl.
Read this article to learn why understanding these tensions is the single most critical factor in capturing modern market share and preventing brand irrelevance.
Value
vs.
values
When the price is right, but the purchase feels wrong.
Consumers want affordability and alignment.
Cost-consciousness collides with conscience.
Savings matter—but so does what a choice communicates about a person.
Convenience
vs.
conscience
The frictionless option isn’t always the feel-good one.
Speed and simplicity pull one way, sustainability and responsibility pull another.
A “do it for me” culture meets “do the right thing” expectations.
The easiest choice isn’t always the one people want to be seen making.
Personalization
vs.
privacy
People want to be known, just not too well.
Tailored experiences rely on data people aren’t sure they want to give.
Relevance rises but trust wavers.
The line between helpful and intrusive moves by the day.
The new decision factors
The underlying forces shaping decision-making
Designing for static demographic segments and personas stays at the surface of understanding customers in a time of increasing complexity. Modern human behavior is far too fluid for rigid categories.
Our survey data indicates it is driven by five universal decision forces that exist within every consumer in ever-shifting combinations: Choice Intentionality, Social Validation, Tech Influence, Information Scrutiny, and Price Sensitivity.
While the architecture of these factors is global, their practical expression is highly localized and demographic dependent. This article details the internal mechanics of these five factors, giving the tools required to understand the core foundations of customer motivations.
Choice intentionality
The drive to make informed decisions that feel “right,” “smart,” and values-aligned.
People want to feel confident that they’ve done enough research to make the right decision, aligned with their identity or values, minimizing decision hangover or buyer’s remorse.
Social validation
A reliance on the opinions, behaviors, and endorsements of others as a confidence boosting shortcut in decision‑making.
People borrow confidence from the crowd, using the choices, opinions, and experiences of others as shortcuts to reduce risk and to feel they won’t be alone if they get it wrong.
Tech influence
An awareness that technology— ads, algorithms, recommendations, AI-generated content, interface design—shapes what people see and how they choose.
Technology is no longer just a tool, but an active force in daily choices, and people know it. They understand the cues, the nudges, and the incentives, even as they respond to them.
Information scarcity
How actively people check, verify, question, or filter information to protect themselves from misinformation and risk.
People are more vigilant, more cautious. Less willing to take claims at face value. Not because they assume poor judgment, but because they are trying to protect themselves against manipulation.
Price sensitivity
How strongly affordability and perceived value anchor decisions.
However aspirational the narrative, people still live within limits, reconciling what they can afford with what they can justify, to themselves and to others.
Choice intentionality
The drive to make informed decisions that feel “right,” “smart,” and values-aligned.
People want to feel confident that they’ve done enough research to make the right decision, aligned with their identity or values, minimizing decision hangover or buyer’s remorse.
How factors
form mindsets
The patterns of behavior
that drive us
The factors identified each combine to drive unique mindsets that exist in all humans. These mindsets are statistically validated behavioral archetypes that reveal how people actually navigate decisions, independent of their age, gender, or income.
This article introduces five dominant consumer mindsets: the trust-outsourcing Referral Seeker, the hyper-vigilant Digital Detective, the attention-conserving Convenience Chooser, the deal-driven Value Maximizer, and the noise-rejecting Defiant Independent.
By learning to identify and speak to these five distinct profiles, executive leaders can transition from surface-level observations to deeper motivational targeting.
Read the full text to discover which of these mindsets dominates your target market and how to tailor your value proposition to align with their core psychological drivers.
The referral seeker
Places a balance across most trends but distinctly outsources decisions to their social circle and influencers for guidance.
The referral seeker isn’t shirking responsibility — they’re outsourcing uncertainty. For them, trust in people is a shortcut: a way to share cognitive load and move forward with confidence.
The digital detective
A distrust of the marketplace keeps them deeply engaged. Technology becomes their tool for rigorous research.
The digital detective doesn’t reject trust — they withhold it until it feels earned. Their skepticism is a learned response to overload and spin.
The convenience chooser
Low-touch, low-involvement approach driven by habit and convenience. Unmoved by consumer trends, they make a choice purely to get the task done.
The convenience chooser isn’t careless — they’re conserving finite attention. When environments demand too much, disengaging or relying on an established habit is the default behavior
The value maximizer
Value seekers with a clear motivation for finding the best price. They are not swayed by the distractions of social trends or technological pressures.
For the value maximizer, price isn’t simply a matter of constraint — it reflects a sense of fairness. Paying more than necessary feels like poor judgment.
The defiant independent
Independent thinkers with a strong rejection of modern consumer trends encompassing social influence, technology, and value signaling.
The defiant independent isn’t hiding from the modern world — they’re self-assured in their habits. Their defiance is a deliberate rejection of modern trends they view as unnecessary noise.
Choice intentionality
The drive to make informed decisions that feel “right,” “smart,” and values-aligned.
People want to feel confident that they’ve done enough research to make the right decision, aligned with their identity or values, minimizing decision hangover or buyer’s remorse.
The kaleidoscopic
consumer
How common mindsets take
on different expressions
Each person has a certain mindset that is dominant, but that is only part of the story. To the untrained eye, the modern consumer looks wildly inconsistent—championing corporate ethics in one breath, then choosing the cheapest, least-sustainable option the next.
But they aren’t inconsistent, their context is. Think of a customer as a kaleidoscope where the core decision factors are stable, but a shift in their active role (from parent to employee, or patient to shopper) spins the lens, rearranging their behaviors entirely.
Traditional segmentation models cannot adequately capture this fluid reality. This article details why designing experiences for a single, static persona misses the mark, and why the future of competitive advantage belongs to organizations that learn to design for the specific, contextual moment.
Factors
The most basic
fundamental element.
Mindsets
A pattern that is formed
from those factors.
kaleidoscope
How our underlying factors and mindsets are expressed differently in new contexts.
Our Approach
Ignition
What do you want
to explore next?
Chapter 1
Living through change
Chapter 3
Navigating what comes next
Implications for leaders
Designing
for relief
Making the case
for subtraction
When faced with new possibilities and the ability to offer optionality, the standard response is to provide more: more information, longer feature lists, and complex comparison charts. This is a critical mistake.
In an era of cognitive saturation, more is merely noise. The ultimate moment of customer value is not when a transaction is completed, but when psychological pressure is lifted.
The most successful brands are abandoning the race for attention to focus on “designing for relief,” prioritizing simplicity, curation, and cognitive ease. The winners of tomorrow will be those who subtract the most to deliver the clearest, least stressful path to a decision.
Learn how to master the art of subtraction and convert cognitive relief into unbreakable customer loyalty.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY1
Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY1
Agents or adversaries?
Welcome to artificial
intermediation
Prepare for a new target above and beyond the fluid consumer motivations discussed here: the rise of artificial intermediation. With the advent of agentic AI, the locus of consumer decision-making is rapidly migrating away from human beings and into the hands of autonomous artificial agents that filter options, negotiate deals, and execute transactions on behalf of users.
When the customer is an algorithm rather than a human, traditional marketing is turned on its head. Survival will mean learning to satisfy “agent logic” by making their data clear, structured, machinereadable, and programmable.
This provocative brief outlines the transition from taskers to autonomous orchestrators and details how an organization can adapt its strategy to win the algorithmic preference of the machines standing between them and their customers.
Agentic AI does not just give answers; it acts on a user’s behalf. It learns their goals, represents their preferences, narrows their choices, and makes decisions or purchases without needing step-by-step instructions.
Collaborators:
Act as partners in complex tasks, offering suggestions and taking initiative
Automators:
Handle multi-step, recurring processes with pre-set rules.
Orchestrators:
Manage complex, long-term goals with a high degree of autonomy, coordinating multiple services and making independent decisions.
In doing so, it shifts AI from advising users to acting for them, changing how consumers choose and how companies compete. It can be understood through a framework of increasing autonomy:
The simple definition1
Taskers:
Perform simple, single-step actions based on direct commands.
The real question is whether we build these agents, and our ability to interface with them, to elevate human potential or to erode it. That remains firmly within our control.”
ELISA HOLLAND, MANAGING DIRECTOR, KPMG IGNITION, KPMG US
My agent will
see you now
How everyday life may
subtly change
Imagine a world where your household bills are optimized overnight, emails are drafted in your exact voice, and calendar conflicts are resolved before you even wake up. Take a glimpse into the subtle trade-offs happening with this new wave of change and read the full piece to take a look at what’s around the corner.
The decision that
reached you anyway
You didn’t ask for the update.
You didn’t request the analysis.
You didn’t go looking for the problem.
But it found you.
Overnight, your agent scanned performance dashboards, market signals, and internal sentiment — and escalated a decision that “required human judgment.” Three options. Clear trade-offs. A recommended path. You were briefed in minutes.
What you could gain
Routine decisions disappear from view.
Fewer distractions from low-value decisions.
Judgment becomes the job.
What you might lose
Decisions arrive faster, but more often.
Context compresses.
Edge cases stack up.
You’re no longer deciding whether
to engage, only how quickly.
WORK VOLUME MAY FALL, BUT DECISION DENSITY RISES.
The choices you weren’t
confronted with
You didn’t compare prices.
You didn’t pour over reviews.
You didn’t hesitate.
The decision was already made.
Your agent reordered the groceries, adjusted quantities based on past waste, and swapped brands when prices shifted. Delivery arrived as expected.
What you could gain
Life feels easier.
Household logistics fade into the background.
Fewer decisions, less friction.
What you might lose
You lose touch with prices, seasons, and trade-offs.
Brands blur. Preference flattens.
You miss out on the joy of irrationality and impulse.
NOTHING FEELS WRONG, BUT THE DECISION NEVER SURFACED.
This paper is our framework
for understanding a profound
behavioral shift.
Our goal is to equip leaders to move beyond theory and prepare for what the future will actually feel like when lived. It provides a clear orientation for strategy and a new lens for seeing the forces that will shape the next era of growth.”
ELISA HOLLAND, MANAGING DIRECTOR, KPMG Ignition, KPMG US
An orientation
The human response to complexity
If you remember only three things from this comprehensive research, let them be these:
1
The modern consumer is kaleidoscopic, not inconsistent.
2
Technology has evolved from a simple tool to an essential mediator of daily life.
3
Most decisions are made under cognitive strain.
For boardroom leaders, the single greatest strategic risk is mistaking customer coping mechanisms, like high conversion rates or repeat purchases born of exhaustion, for true brand conviction or preference.
This final orientation synthesizes the key insights of the entire report, providing a clear, actionable framework to help you navigate structural tensions, protect your future talent pipelines, and design for cognitive relief.
Read this conclusion to transform these powerful behavioral insights into decisive, long-term market leadership.
Our Approach
Ignition
What do you want
to explore next?
Chapter 1
Living through change
Methodology
Methodology
The Me in Mind research is grounded in a quantitative survey conducted in November 2025 among 4,809 adults aged 18 and older across five global markets: the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong (SAR). This was complemented by qualitative research to provide contextual depth and support interpretation of the findings.
To identify underlying patterns in how individuals think, make decisions, and respond to change, the analysis applied multivariate statistical techniques, including cluster analysis, to attitudinal survey measures. This resulted in five distinct respondent segments with differentiated profiles, capturing meaningful variation across the population.
The segmentation is designed to support strategic interpretation of the findings rather than to predict individual behavior, and should be understood as directional groupings rather than discrete or mutually exclusive categories.
References
Article 03 | DASHBOARD The world we live in
1— United Nations, “World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results”, (2024)
population.un.org/wpp/assets/Files/WPP2024_Summary-of-Results.pdf
2 — United Nations, “World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results”, (2024)
population.un.org/wpp/assets/Files/WPP2024_Summary-of-Results.pdf
3 — United Nations, “World Urbanization Prospects 2025: Summary of Results”, (2025)
population.un.org/wup/assets/Publications/undesa_pd_2025_wup2025_summary_of_results_final.pdf
4 — World Bank Group, “Urban population (% of total population)”, (accessed December 2024)
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS
5 — World Bank Group, “Poverty”, (October 02, 2025)
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview
6 — World Inequality Lab, “World Inequality Report 2026”, Chancel, L., Gómez-Carrera, R., Moshrif, R., Piketty, T., et al., (December 2025)
https://wir2026.wid.world/insight/executive-summary/
7 — Oxfam America, “UNEQUAL: The rise of a new American oligarchy and the agenda we need”, Rebecca Riddell, (November 03, 2025)
https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issues/economic-justice/inequality-in-the-us/?inequality
Article 05 | DASHBOARD — Abundance fatigue
1 — UserTesting, “Stream fatigue goes global: survey reveals viewers spend days deciding what to watch”, (December 18, 2024)
https://www.usertesting.com/resources/reports/stream-fatigue-goes-global
2 — Meta Platforms, Inc. (META), “Q1 2023 Earnings, Earnings Call Transcript”, Mark Zuckerberg, (April 26, 2023)
https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-events/event-details/2023/Q1-2023-Earnings/default.aspx
3 — Microsoft, “Microsoft Work Trend Index Special Report, June 2025”, (June 17, 2025)
4 — NordPass, “Juggling security: How many passwords does the average person have in 2024?”, (April 24, 2024)
https://nordpass.com/blog/how-many-passwords-does-average-person-have/
Article 08 | Broken on-ramps
1 — Aneesh Raman, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn, email correspondence with KPMG (March 3, 2026
Article 10 | Risk or relief?
1 — UK Finance, “Buy Now Pay Later trends in the UK”, (November 24, 2025) https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/policy-andguidance/reports-and-publications/buy-now-pay-later-trends-in-uk
2 — International Monetary Fund (IMF), “CRYPTO ASSETS MONITOR HIGHLIGHTS: Q3 2025”, (October 09, 2025) https://www.imfconnect.org/content/dam/imf/News%20and%20 Generic%20Content/GMM/Special%20Features/GMM%20 Special%20Feature%20-%20Crypto%20Monitor%20October%20 2025.pdf
3 — ESPN, “U.S. sports betting industry posts record $13.7B revenue for ‘24”, Doug Greenberg, (February 19, 2025) https://www.espn.co.uk/espn/betting/story/_/id/43922129/ussports-betting-industry-posts-record-137b-revenue-24
4 — JPMorgan Chase & Co., “The increase in appetite for obesity drugs”, (November 29, 2023) https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/global-research/currentevents/obesity-drugs
5 — Pew Research Center, “Teens, Social Media, and AI Chatbots,” (December 9, 2025). https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/12/09/teens-socialmedia-and-ai-chatbots-2025/
Article 17 | Designing for relief
1 — Terre des Hommes, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Ch. 3, (1939) https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oro-ed5-00009075
Contributors
James Novack
Harper Robbins
Marshea Robinson
Eva Sall
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