Sixty percent of the global population lives in China, India, the United States, Russia, Canada, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. The Boston Consulting Group analyzed consumer data from these 18 nations to explore consumer mind-set, consumer needs and demand. The results provide insights regarding similarities and differences between these countries, with surprising results. This special report will be helpful to companies pursuing international expansion.
Consumer mind-set varies from nation to nation, but not always in the expected ways.
One can roughly describe the consumer mind-set as “the attitudes that are part of a consumer’s personality.” According to Boston Consulting Group research, consumers everywhere seem to agree on a few things: They’re health-conscious, place importance on individual expression, generally see technology as “a force for good” and express enthusiasm for sports. Consumer mind-sets tend to vary a great deal on other subjects, however, and not always along the expected lines.
In emerging markets, respondents expressed a deep interest in entrepreneurship – for example, in Nigeria, 80% of survey respondents expressed an interest in creating their own business, but in Japan, only 16% saw starting their own business as a desirable path. In Australia, 63% of respondents valued “going with the flow,” while only 14% of Brazilians held...
Aparna Bharadwaj, Patrick Witschi, Rohan Sajdeh, Jean-Manuel Izaret and Nikolaus Lang are professionals with the Boston Consulting Group.
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