As Consumer Demands Evolve, So Do Procurement Challenges
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes, 45 seconds
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Published September 29, 2025
Engineers are getting better at designing exactly what consumers want, but doing so puts more pressure on procurement teams. While design engineers define a product’s technical specs, the procurement team is responsible for turning those specs into reality. And most of the time, they must do so under tight timelines, against budget constraints, and in unpredictable markets.
In many designs, engineers are trying to respond to consumer trends like sustainability, smart connectivity, and artificial intelligence (AI) integration, causing procurement teams to adapt their strategies, too. This means finding suppliers that can meet new technical demands, ensuring compliance with evolving standards, and staying flexible as priorities shift.
This blog looks at the engineering shifts driven by modern consumer expectations and their specific impacts on procurement professionals.
Consumer Trend 1: Efficiency Isn’t Optional
Consumers expect their devices to have longer battery life, produce less heat, and be energy efficient.[1] To meet these demands, engineers are focusing on ultra-low-power components like efficient microcontrollers and low-leakage metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs).[2]
Because of potential tight power constraints, sourcing teams must find highly specific components that are typically available from a limited number of vendors, leading to limited availability and extended lead times.[3] To address this challenge, procurement teams are focusing on second-source options, life cycle stability, and balancing trade-offs in cost and performance when dealing with premium components.[4]
Consumer Trend 2: Sustainability Sells
Consumers are not just interested in a product’s features; they want to know how it’s made. Sustainability isn’t just “nice to have” but a deciding factor, especially among younger generations that expect companies to reduce environmental impact throughout a product’s life cycle.[5] In response to this trend, design engineers are reconsidering materials selection, reducing part counts, and designing for recyclability. Companies are building products with energy efficiency in mind and making them easier to disassemble or refurbish. But these sustainability goals require an even more targeted sourcing strategy.
For procurement teams, this means working with suppliers who can demonstrate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) compliance and adherence to environmental certifications like RoHS, REACH, and WEEE. It also means looking more closely at supply chain documentation; i.e., verifying declarations of conflict-free sourcing, assessing carbon impact, and sometimes, adjusting the approved vendor list (AVL) to prioritize ethical sourcing over convenience or cost.[6]
In response, procurement professionals are fostering relationships with suppliers that are environmentally conscious and using traceability tools, as well as examining bills of materials (BOMs) to focus more on sustainability. The goal is to find green components while building a resilient, ethical supply chain that can support them long-term.
Consumer Trend 3: Everything’s Connected
Consumers now count on everything from thermostats and room lighting to fitness trackers and voice assistants to talk to each other wirelessly. More than ever, connectivity is a standard requirement across most electronic categories.
Engineers are meeting the demand by embedding more wireless protocols into their designs, such as Bluetooth® Low Energy for wearables, Wi-Fi 6 for smart homes, and the Matter protocol to secure interoperability across brands.[7] These features make products more complex, which means being more selective about the components used (all while meeting varying wireless standards).
This complexity can be expensive for procurement professionals. Buying wireless modules and protocol-compliant chips involves managing stock-keeping units (SKUs) for different markets and regions, changing certifications, and frequent firmware updates. Procurement professionals must also factor in antenna compatibility and regulatory approval timelines in the BOM-planning stage.
To stay ahead, sourcing teams are deepening relationships with reliable suppliers who can offer certified solutions and real-time support. They are also investing in cross-training with engineering teams to understand certification blockages and reduce time-to-market.[8] When everything’s connected, the sourcing strategy needs to be, too.
Consumer Trend 4: Smarter Devices, Everywhere
Consumers today expect intelligence embedded directly into their devices. Examples include smartphones that automatically adjust camera settings and thermostats that learn routines. People want smart features running locally and quickly without draining battery life.
Engineers are rising to the challenge by embedding machine learning (ML) models directly into devices using AI-ready microcontrollers and edge processors. These designs require specific component selection around thermal management, memory capacity, and on-device compute power.[9]
To keep up with this trend, procurement teams are sourcing a new class of components, such as neural network accelerators, intelligent sensors, and microcontrollers that perform real-time inference. Since many of these parts are just now reaching the market, there may be limited vendor options and even inconsistent lead times. Teams must work closely with suppliers to gain early access to roadmaps and ensure long-term support is available.
Staying ahead in this space requires component knowledge and the ability to anticipate design needs as AI capabilities evolve. Being strategic with vendors, samples, and collaboration is now a necessary aspect of the procurement workflow.
Consumer Trend 5: Privacy by Default
As consumers become more connected, they have growing concerns about data privacy. They want to know who can access their information and expect security to be built into the product they use.
To respond to this trend, engineers are integrating hardware-based security features like trusted platform modules (TPMs), secure elements, and encrypted storage. This helps ensure user data are protected even if the device is compromised.[10]
For procurement, sourcing components with strict security specifications and guaranteeing full traceability through the supply chain is becoming a necessity. These parts may come with export restrictions and must comply with regional regulatory standards, which adds new layers to the purchasing process. To be compliant and competitive, teams must coordinate with legal departments while maintaining relationships with certified suppliers.
Consumer Trend 6: Premium on a Budget
Consumers today are asking for a lot: They want pleasing aesthetics, high-end features, and dependable performance, but without a premium price tag.[11] For engineers, this trend means finding creative ways to deliver more with less. They might do this by using compact, integrated components to reduce the size of a board, simply decreasing the total number of parts, or selecting parts that perform more than one function.[12]
Procurement teams are challenged with finding cost-effective components that meet design requirements without compromising quality. This often means prudent negotiations with suppliers, pinpointing alternate parts, and paying attention to pricing volatility.
To do all of this, procurement professionals are using cost breakdown analyses, revisiting BOMs for optimization opportunities, and developing competitive bid processes.
Conclusion
Consumer behavior is dictating the electronics industry by influencing product features. Design engineers are trying to accommodate diverse trends, but procurement teams need to adjust as well. As engineers create efficient, smarter, and longer-lasting products, procurement professionals must respond quickly to secure the necessary parts.
Success is more than just buying parts at a good price. It requires teams to strategically foster innovation, maintain compliance, and keep the supply chain resilient as the market changes so quickly.
[1]https://patentpc.com/blog/battery-demand-in-consumer-electronics-growth-stats-for-smartphones-laptops-and-wearables
[2]https://www.powerelectronicsnews.com/low-power-design/
[3]https://simcona.com/blog/electronic-component-shortages-adapt-supply-chain
[4]https://procurementpro.com/what-is-second-sourcing
[5]https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/03/generation-z-sustainability-lifestyle-buying-decisions/
[6]https://www.integritynext.com/product-compliance
[7]https://www.ti.com/video/6341197247112
[8]https://us.caddi.com/resources/insights/collaboration-between-engineering-and-procurement#cross-training-and-job-rotation-2
[9]https://milvus.io/ai-quick-reference/what-are-the-power-requirements-for-edge-ai-devices, https://www.qats.com/cms/2025/02/20/thermal-management-for-ai-chips
[10]https://www.mouser.com/new/infineon/infineon-optiga-tpm-security/, https://www.mouser.com/new/nxp-semiconductors/nxp-edgelock-se050/
[11]https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/personal-consumer-electronics-market
[12]https://www.myemssolutions.com/how-to-reduce-pcb-size, https://www.wevolver.com/article/system-in-package