Trends in Consumption Patterns The business world is very sensitive to the subtleties of consumer choices. The ability to anticipate trends in consumer consumption patterns is vital for any company that wishes to be a leader or important factor in its industry. Millions of dollars are spent each year on research and analysis to determine or create trends not only in who the company's customers might be, now and in the near future, but also in what those customers will want to buy and why. To truly understand trends in consumption patterns, you must first understand the basic principles of economics. Economics is the science concerned with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services (economics, n.d.). The branch of economics that deals with particular aspects of an economy, such as the price-cost ratio of an organization, is called microeconomics. This aspect of economics focuses on the laws of supply and demand. According to Colander (2004), the law of supply states that the quantity supplied increases as the price increases, when all other factors remain constant and the law of demand states that the quantity of a good demanded is inversely proportional to the price of the good.