By Ben Carsley, Managing Editor (@BC_PYMNTS)
How will offers and promotions impact regions where impulse and brand name spending is on the rise?
According to a recent Nielsen report, discounts can play more of a role in markets with increasing spending power than you might think.
That finding comes from an examination of The Nielsen Global Survey of Consumer Shopping Behavior, which polled more than 29,000 online consumers from 85 countries around the world.
The study aims to learn what consumers around the world value most when making purchasing decisions, covering everything from the Internet to new areas of wealth to tried-and-true practices like in-store promotions impact how the global consumer spends.
How do discounts and promotions impact global consumers who admit to spending more on a whim or for a brand name? We take a look in this PYMNTS.com Data Point.
New Markets Increase Impulse Spend
The Nielsen study notes that online respondents in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East/Africa regions exceeded the global average both in terms of impulse spending and early product adoption. The top five countries that somewhat or strongly indicated that they often buy things impulsively included: Thailand (52 percent), India (48 percent), China (44 percent), Egypt (42 percent) and Saudi Arabia (42 percent).
A whopping 74 percent of respondents from China indicated that they were willing to pay more for designer products than for those with the same function, which bested the next-highest country, India, by 15 percentage points. Brazil came in third at 58 percent, while Vietnam registered at 56 percent and South Korea came in at 52 percent. Just under 75 percent of consumers in India, Romania and Vietnam indicated that they like buying from famous brands, with 62 percent of those in China and Pakistan expressing similar sentiments.
Nielsen noted that countries such as China, India and Indonesia represent “growth markets” where “discretionary income is rising and consumption is expanding beyond basic needs.”
Cost Still King On Global Stage
Despite the findings above, according to Nielsen, 65 percent of global respondents still indicated that price is their top concern when it comes to making purchases. With that knowledge in mind, promotions become an important factor in many global markets. Fifty-nine percent of global respondents said they were aware of promotions and discounting, and 58 percent indicated that free gifts are good incentives.
Latin America is one such market where promotions clearly matter, with 68 percent of online respondents indicating that they’re interested in in-store promotions. Interestingly, the Asian-Pacific (57 percent) and Middle Eastern/African (51 percent) markets indicated a preference here as well, despite the free-spending ways chronicled above.
Only 43 percent of Europeans indicated that in-store promotions were important in their purchasing decisions, while North America finished last in the survey at just 31 percent.
The findings create an interesting juxtaposition between markets more willing to spend on brand names and engage in impulse buying, yet still interested in using deals and promotions to make purchasing decisions.
Nielsen also notes that consumers with Internet access tend to be more affluent and younger than the general populace, but reaffirms that this group also contains the most spending income and upward mobility across various markets.
These findings, along with the global emphasis placed on price, suggest that even in markets where spending is on the rise, promotions and offers are still prominent tools when it comes to making purchasing decisions.
Download the full Nielsen report here.
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