For the rest of this year and next, all its work – from white papers to podcasts, videos and infographics – will consider the way consumers are changing, how and what they buy and their relationships with brands.

Its work is starting with a white paper on The Third Age of Consumption which will lead to future research and reports.

J. Walker Smith, executive chairman of Kantar Futures, said: “The First Age of Consumption was an age of exploration and luxury for the few. The Second was about machinery and the democratisation of the marketplace. The Third Age will be post-industrial, high tech, decentralised, disintermediated – and mindful. It will be defined by the manifold challenges of capacity – consumers’ capacity to process myriad marketing messages, companies’ economic capacity and the planet’s capacity to provide resources, to name just a few.”

Kantar Futures was previously known as The Futures Company.