New Delhi: Consumer optimism in India has seen a sharp turnaround and the country has been ranked first among nine nations surveyed by Credit Suisse, thanks to a stable government and easing inflationary pressures.
According to the Credit Suisse Emerging Consumer Scorecard 2015, India topped the chart, moving up from fourth in last year's list. India was followed by Brazil and Indonesia.
“Consumer optimism has seen a sharp turnaround in 2014. The formation of a strong government at the center has triggered a major revival in consumer sentiment,” said the survey that covered Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey.
In India, more people believe this is a good time for making big ticket purchases as average household income increased by around 10 per cent in 2014 after being relatively steady the two previous years.
Moreover, there was a sharp increase in the proportion of respondents who expect both salary to increase and the state of their personal finances to improve in 2015 and fewer people are expecting inflation to increase.
As for other rankings, Saudi Arabia was at the fourth place, followed by China (5th), Turkey (6th), Mexico (7th), Russia (8th) and South Africa (9th).
According to the report, India, Turkey and China are less directly exposed to the current commodity and currency volatility versus Russia, Latin America and South Africa.
“The survey shows the contrasting impact of the oil price collapse on Emerging Markets. Consumer sentiment in Russia and key Latin American economies is under pressure, in contrast to India where the consumer looks robust, helped by reforms,” Credit Suisse's Global Head of Research for Private Banking and Wealth Management Giles Keating said.
The survey further noted that long-term structural growth potential of India remains intact as it has one of the lowest penetration rates across categories in the nine emerging markets surveyed.
With the exception of selected countries like Indonesia, most other emerging markets are well ahead of India in terms of market maturity. India is one of the countries with the lowest consumption of items such as beer, spirits, meat, cigarettes and the lowest ownership of cars as well as the lowest access to internet.
The outlook for e-commerce looks bullish across the nine countries and particularly in India.
The share of respondents in India that have used the internet for online shopping increased to 32 per cent from 20 per cent in 2013. Besides, those likely to use the internet for online shopping in the future is now higher than that of China, the report added.
