Virtual reality as trend contextualising an emerging consumer technology into trend analysis

The trend towards virtual reality for mass market has existed already in the past decades, but has fallen into oblivion. Nevertheless, 2016 marks the year a number of Virtual Reality consumer headsets are being launched, as past technological limitations seem to be resolved. The author places these developments into the context of trend diagnosis methods in order to sketch out a comprehensive, research-based trend description of VR that outlines the various contexts impacting it. The result has broader applications regarding similar trends, and gives trend analysts a template with which to map trends and their multiple contexts and forces influencing them.