New Concepts on Market Research

November 25, 2008

GFK conducted its monthly “consumer climate MAXX survey” where 2000 consumers are interviewed. GFK is assigned by the EU commission to do so. GFK states in its report that the financial crisis will not affect consumer sentiment in the near future. Evidence is the consumer climate index which is still slowly growing.

Both the rise in income expectations and the improved propensity to buy support this.
Falling prices for heating oil and gasoline have somewhat eased the pessimism when it comes to income expectations. Falling energy prices support purchasing power. Oil price has halved, gasoline and heating oil are down their record values…consumers save money they can dispense again. Due to wage agreements concluded in the metal and electrical industry, the income expectations of employees of other sectors are optimistic.

GFK noticed a clear rise of 11.5 points this month concerning the propensity to buy. Consumption will withstand the general recession. Consumers believe that they will not be particularly affected by the economical weakness. In the moment they see no need for restrict themselves. “ The easing of inflationary pressure” can be another contributory factor for the stabilization of the propensity to buy.

To conclude, Consumer climate for November 2008 made for the fourth time in a row gains and now stands at -6.9 points.

In a contrary to this, the expectation concerning the overall economic situation, economical expectations indicator continue its downward trend, reaching in November 2008 -30.1 points.

Comment

I think that this is very contradictorily. German consumers are aware of the economic situation. There know that there is a recession (if there watching tv or reading newspapers). But still they are consuming, and even tell they will not directly be affected, and do not see a need to be more careful in spending their money. This is the psychological factor: people repress a negative incident from their conciousness.

To have a more detailed insight of the study, please go this webpage, where you can find the whole article or visit the GFK site.