It’s the ‘Who’ that Counts
Consumer demand is now no longer about undesirable habits of rich folk but about driving GDP growth. Being morally purified, it now attracts a great deal of discussion and analysis, especially as we run up to another budget, a key theme of which is about stimulating consumption. Yet most of the discussion and analyses are totally supply sided and product-centric and obsessed with WHAT is being spent on, rather than on WHO is spending and how they decide to. Consumer demand is about how much people choose to spend, on what their consumption ability, aspiration and priorities are, in turn determined by their world view and life stage and socio cultural group. It is therefore simplistic to think about stimulating consumption in terms of spread sheet projections of past sales trends, suggesting how much excise duty to cut on what product categories or about cutting income tax (given that most […]