Condos being built In North American cities today average about 600 square feet.  In some places, the average new-build unit is closer 500 square feet.  Few industry analysts expect this trend to reverse in the foreseeable future.

What’s going on (and how does it affect marketers)?

Young couples are crowding into cities. The young are mobile, and suburban housing tracts have become unattractive dead zones.  Competition for urban digs has raised the price of a square foot of condo.  But it’s more than price.  They simply don’t need the space.

Bookshelves? Magazine racks?  Replaced by an e-book reader.

CD/DVD storage?  Digital files live in a laptop, pad, smart phone, or “the cloud”.

Television?  That flat screen is just a moving picture on the wall. With network tv circling the drain of irrelevance and cable tv looking as tired as wired phone service ten years ago, the tv set as a dedicated appliance will probably disappear altogether.

Clothes?  With the demise of specialized office attire, closets can be smaller.

Foodstuffs? Cooking from scratch has been zapped by microwaves and take-home meals, so food storage and kitchen appliance needs shrink.

Downstairs from that 600 square foot condo you’ll find a garage with one parking space for every two or three or four units.  This dramatic reversal of the traditional one-space-per unit standard marks the confluence of zoning strategies to diminish urban traffic congestion; reduced utility of personal vehicles in cities where businesses don’t provide parking; and a perception among young people that a owning a car is ecologically immoral and fiscally irrational.   Public transport and internet-mediated car-share services will do just fine, thank you.

It’s obvious why residential downsizing matters.  With less room for “stuff”, it’ll be harder to sell stuff.

Clearly a boon to the planet, but maybe not so good for annual bonuses.

Close to 20 million Americans practice yoga.

They comprise an interesting audience for packaged goods marketers…75% are women, 70% are college graduates, 45% have household incomes over $75,000.

Unless you work for Lululemon – a yoga-focused apparel maker/retailer with $600 million in 2010 sales and a capital value of more than $5 billion – why should you care about a quasi-spiritual exercise regimen?  The reason is danshari.

Danshari is a basic tenet of Mahayana Buddhism, from whence most yoga practiced in America springs.  (Zen Buddhists call the same idea wabi.)

Danshari is a simple idea – life is better with fewer material possessions.  Owning more than you need is not only irresponsible in a world strapped for resources, it causes unwholesome complexity in everyday life.

Danshari has emerged from yoga studios as a lifestyle trend.  Beyond yoga magazines, you’ll see it voiced in various ways in consumer magazines from Real Simple to Vegetarian Times.

In our contrarian opinion, danshari is a new products opportunity.

The phrase “danshari products” may seem oxymoronic at first glance, but a little contemplative thought (our office yogista recommends the padmasana position) may reveal a pathway to revenue-generating enlightenment.

We all learned in kindergarten that “it’s good to share”.

Converging ecological, economic and social motives underlie “collaborative consumption” – a term Rachel Botsman coined in What’s Mine Is Yours for a new trend with seismic implications for marketers of many goods and some services.

Consumers of all ages are using the internet to share cars (whipcar.com); sports gear and power tools (snapgoods.com); dressy clothes (swishing.com); parking spaces (parkatmyhouse.com) and even a place to crash for a few days (couchsurfing.com).

In the 1/31/11 issue of The New Yorker Patricia Marx’s The Borrowers describes a mixture of bricks-and-mortar and internet businesses offering short-term use and/or passing-on of everything from designer handbags to children’s toys.

Because in most cases the sharer is paid a fee by the user, business gurus write all of this off as a way to turn your inventory possessions into pocket money. As Bill Clinton put it, “it’s the economy, stupid!”

But to us it looks like more than that.

Consumer sharing has the flavor of a rejection of the reckless consumption of the past 3 decades.  Not only do sharers feel smart for renting a weekend’s camping gear for $20 rather than buying same for $200 – or earning $20 tax-free bucks out of that tent, pack and sleeping bag in the garage – they feel good about conserving the planet’s resources their transactions.

Consumer sharing also has the scent of an emerging social media category.  Making a friend online is easier when you have something in common.  Being willing to share, posting offers online, and the experiences you have in sharing are fodder for online socialization.

Craigslist.com is the father of reuse and sharing (maybe ebay.com is the grandfather); its booming progeny may well change the dynamics of manufacturing and marketing.

Retailing had a good long run.  It was fun while it lasted.  But it’s over.

A world where few purchases are made at physical stores?

Think about it…

-Consumers learn about products in great detail from manufacturer or etailer sites, with ratings, cautions, and opinions at increasingly wiki-like mass-input product info sites.

-The declining world economy (a long-term situation economists now call “the new normal”) is diminishing the scale of retailing.  For cost efficiency, there are fewer SKUs – soon we’ll have to make do with 30 styles of red stilettos rather than 300.

-Conspicuous consumption has become uncivil, our new lifestyle is “blending in” rather than “keeping up with the Joneses”.  To quote a line from a previous LabNotes: In this new pattern of social behavior,   profligacy has become…thinking hard here…what’s a word that combines “dumb” and “impolite”?

-Delivery systems like USPS, UPS, and FedEx have become more efficient as they’ve scaled up to meet home-delivery demand.

-Daily food no longer requires bought and stockpiled ingredients…these days it’s take-out, delivery, or eat at chain feed troughs.

-Complex, fast-evolving electronic products are far better suited to internet sales than retailing.  (Other than the Apple Store, part of a uniquely closed products and services ecosystem, mall electronics stores are fading away.)

-Mobile phones that transact with vending machines will cause those machines to proliferate.  Because every consumer will have a mobile phone, they’ll buy picture hooks, pantyhose and pajamas from a nearby machine.

-As retail margins and sales volumes have waned, corporate managers have been cutting costs: dimmer lighting, fewer window cleanings and tightening the wage and benefit screws on store employees.  So the register clerk you’ve waited longer to come face to face with is more likely to be the type of passively hostile, minimum-wage “sales associate” you’ll buy your next shoes at Zappos.com to avoid.

Now for the good part (for us brand pros anyway).  On the internet, your brand is the universal icon of what you are and what you sell.  Without the distraction of adjacent shelves of similar stuff, that icon is pure and potent on its web page.

Never has branding – especially the “good behavior” that underpins online brand value – been more important.