The world’s fourth most populous country is definitely one to watch, says David Crosbie

Two media reports in the past week have served to underline the increasing importance of Indonesia and its consumers to the global economy.

Firstly, an article in Bloomberg Businessweek highlighted the fact that many economists are calling for Indonesia to either be added to the BRIC group – Brazil, Russia, India and China: the four nations identified by Goldman Sachs in 2001 as likely to be the world’s biggest economies by 2050 – or to replace Russia altogether.

The rationale behind these calls is that in contrast to Russia, whose GDP figures have been lacklustre of late and whose population is ageing rapidly, Indonesia has a booming economy (with year-on-year GDP growth of nearly 6%, according to Bloomberg) and a young and vibrant population.

Secondly, the UK’s Guardian newspaper reported, under the headline Why Indonesians are all a-Twitter, that according to a study by ComScore, the country has the highest proportion of Twitter users on the planet, with 20.8% of online Indonesians aged over fifteen posting messages on the microblogging site. Brazil comes second, with an equivalent figure of 20.5%. This suggests not only that Indonesian consumers are increasingly tech-savvy, but also that their ability to spread the word about new products and services is on the up.

Indonesia has been one of the ‘Core 25’ countries in GfK Roper Consulting’s Roper Reports Worldwide research since the study’s inception in 1997, because even before the country’s economic advances during the 2000s it represented a formidable group of consumers. Today, Indonesia has the fourth biggest population globally, and is the largest Muslim democracy in the world.

Our ongoing insights into the attitudes and behaviours of Indonesian consumers point to an increasingly promising environment for marketers. Long trend analysis shows that the confidence of Indonesian consumers overtook that of the global average in 2009, and now stands ten percentage points clear. What’s more, according to GfK Roper Consulting’s Consumer Recession Index, which combines a wide range of indicators to determine the extent to which consumers are affected by prevailing economic conditions, Indonesians were the third-least affected of 25 markets in 2010.

It’s clear that Indonesia will offer increased opportunities in the years to come, but these can only be acted upon with a clear insight into the attitudes and behaviours of its consumers. To find out more about how GfK Roper Consulting can help you to achieve this, please contact us. All that’s left now is to settle on a name for this new group. BIIC has been suggested. Or would anybody like a BICI?

By Kathy Sheehan

In unveiling market research online, a critical component for businesses is to have an intimate knowledge of the consumer-both on- and offline. It is time to review, reassess and understand how consumers are going to re-ascend as we move forward in 2010 and the next decade. So what can we expect from consumers in the wake of the recession?

We start off by exploring the concept of “The New Normal”. Many marketers are using this term to describe the post-recession consumer mindset. However, we at GfK Roper Consulting don’t necessarily agree that we are operating in a “New Normal”, for a few reasons. Proponents of the New Normal speak to the idea of how everything has changed and consumers’ behaviors are forever altered. While, certainly, elements of this are true, it is an over-simplification of a much more complex and nuanced situation. Indeed, in some categories and with some consumer segments we see attitudinal or behavioral shifts that appear to be sustained, but in other areas, we see consumers reverting back to past habits. And, perhaps more importantly, the “new normal” is by no means a global construct. Yes, we have experienced a global economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, and it has been the first recession that has been truly global. Yet, when we drill down a bit deeper, we see that really the global economic crisis has been a series of local economic crises – each market being impacted and reacting in slightly different ways.