About the report

The objective of this report by Gandi, and undertaken by The Future Laboratory, is to explore how the Internet will change as a result of it being liberalised, and the effect this will have on businesses and consumers socially, economically and geographically.

Key to this is investigating the impact of liberalisation on how consumers and businesses view, value and protect their online identity and presence, and whether the internet will fragment, localise, become too complex or actually more familiar for people to use. This involves understanding what needs to be put in place to regulate this new guise so that it doesn’t become an unyielding mass. Another key focus is whether the liberalisation of the domain name market will provide consumers and businesses with an expansive choice of high quality domain names or will the loose regulation of the existing market allow the new space to become increasingly dominated by ‘profiteers’, ‘domainers’, squatters and touts.

Our project involved a four-step research process: consolidating and analysing desk research; conducting a quantitative survey of 1,000 average Britons across all ages to quantify what, why, where and how their internet attitudes and behaviours will change as a result of the liberalised web; conducting a quantitative survey of 50 e-commerce managers from large high street businesses and 50 e-commerce managers from SMEs online to quantify how their commercial, financial, legal and technological business imperatives will change with the liberalisation of the web; and selecting and interviewing a number of business, political and Internet experts to further understand the affect of a liberalised web.

The result is a report that describes the case for and trend towards a liberalised Internet. It also includes the direct and indirect impact of liberalisation on how consumers and businesses view, value and protect their online identity and presence, and the next episode of the web due to its liberalised guise, and how different segments of people will come to use and interact with the Internet.

Download the report in full

About The Future Lab

The Future Laboratory is recognised internationally for its innovative approach to trend forecasting, consumer insight and brand strategy. Via their global network and in-house team of trend analysts and ethnographic researchers, they offer clients qualitative and quantitative insights into future consumers and how to target them.
http://www.thefuturelaboratory.com/