Accenture put out some interesting stats ahead of the CES show this week. The firm’s research shows consumers in emerging markets are twice as likely as those in developed markets to buy and use consumer technology in the next year and are more willing to pay a premium for “environmentally friendly” consumer electronics products.
According to a survey, consumers in emerging countries, compared with those in mature countries, are more than two and a half times as likely to buy a smartphone during the next year. They’re also more than twice as likely to have bought a smartphone in the past year.
The rapid expansion of the middle class, with its substantial disposable income, is one of the main drivers for growth in emerging countries, according to Jean-Laurent Poitou, managing director of Accenture’s Electronics & High Tech industry group. “Our research shows that the increased demand for smart connected wireless devices such as smartphones is being driven by social-networking applications,” Poitou states in a press release.
Consumers in emerging countries use mobile devices more than they do computers to access Internet-enabled applications and services, and consumers in mature countries are headed in the same direction, Poitou says.
The Accenture 2010 Consumer Electronics Products and Services Usage Report is based on a survey of 16,000 consumers in four “mature” countries (the United States, Germany, France and Japan) and four “emerging” countries (China, India, Malaysia and Singapore).
Accenture says the survey’s main purpose was to identify current and future spending and usage patterns for 19 different consumer technologies, including smartphones, high-definition TVs and computers.
Sixty-seven percent of all survey respondents said they would pay a premium for a product marketed as environmentally friendly. Eighty-four percent of emerging country respondents said they would pay a premium for such a product – 34 percentage points higher than mature country participants. The widest disparity in this regard was found between China and the United States. Virtually all – 98 percent – of Chinese consumers, compared with only 43 percent of consumers in the United States, reported such willingness.
Price is the most important factor in consumers’ purchase decisions, especially in the United States, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, according to the research. Price is followed closely by personal research as a top decision-making factor overall. Both factors outweigh other criteria such as recommendations of friends, consumer ratings or innovative technologies.