Consumer Demand Surveys Versus Consumer Confidence and Sentiment Surveys
Consumer demand surveys are interview based statistical surveys that measure the percentage of households that will buy a car, white goods, PCs, TVs, home furnishings, kitchenware or toys in, for example, the next three-month period. The surveys provide a percentage of those who will purchase more, less or the same amount of food and clothing in the next three months than in the corresponding period the year before. If you ask people about their purchasing behavior within the coming six or twelve months, there will be more of those who “hope to be able to buy”, than if consumers are asked about what they will purchase in the next three months. The shorter the time spans, the closer to actual behavior.
Consumer confidence and sentiment surveys measure how people are doing financially, how they look at the overall economy of the country or business conditions in the country, if they think that the government is doing a good or a poor job and if people think that it is a good or a bad time to buy a car or to buy or sell a house.
When the business cycle is fairly stable, consumer demand surveys and consumer confidence and sentiment indices will often correlate closely and indicate the same direction of the economy, but in times with a high degree of economic or political uncertainty or during a prolonged crisis, the two types of consumer surveys might differ significantly. In 2011 the confidence and sentiment surveys went up from March to April, while consumer demand surveys dropped significantly. In August 2011 the confidence and sentiment surveys dropped significantly and stayed low during September and October, while consumer demand surveys showed resilience, a development confirmed later by official statistics.
Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan and the Conference Board both publish a monthly consumer confidence and attitude survey. The Institute for Business Cycle Analysis publishes a monthly consumer demand survey known as US Consumer Demand Indices.
Read more about this topic: Consumer Confidence Index
Famous quotes containing the words consumer, demand, surveys, confidence and/or sentiment:
“Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)
“Most of the ladies and gentlemen who mourn the passing of the nation’s leaders wouldn’t know a leader if they saw one. If they had the bad luck to come across a leader, they would find out that he might demand something from them, and this impertinence would put an abrupt and indignant end to their wish for his return.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“If the child-caregiver relationship is nurturing, reliable and often even joyous, the child’s confidence in human relationships as a source of comfort and reciprocity will be strengthened and expanded in spite of the parent’s absence. The child will learn that not only are the parents to be trusted but that other people are trustworthy as well.”
—Alicia F. Lieberman (20th century)
“Punctually at Christmas the soft plush
Of sentiment snows down, embosoms all
The sharp and pointed shapes of venom,”
—William Robert Rodgers (1909–1969)