Asia is the world’s consumption growth engine—miss Asia and you could miss half of the global picture, a $10 trillion consumption growth opportunity over the next decade.
But Asia’s consumer markets are changing dynamically with new growth angles that offer opportunities for financial services players and consumption curves that are shifting or mutating. Financial services players should consider how to redraw their Asian consumer maps.
New McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) research finds that three large shifts are playing out across the region.
3 Large consumer shifts in Asia:
- First, as incomes rise across Asia, more consumers will reach the highest tiers of the income pyramid, and movement within the consuming class is likely to be a larger driver of consumption growth than movement into it.
- Second, cities will continue to drive consumption growth, but promising sources of growth are increasingly diverse cohorts within cities, such as Insta-grannies in Seoul, Generation Z gamers in Surabaya, career moms in Manila, and lifestyle-indulging digital natives in Chengdu.
- Third, as the relationship between income and consumption breaks down in some instances, new consumption curves are emerging in specific categories (Exhibit 1).
