| The MasterCard
Worldwide Index of Consumer Confidence 2008
- Asia Findings -  Consumer Confidence in Country's Ecomony: Vietnam continues to top the region’s markets as the most buoyant in consumer sentiment for the six month period ahead, followed by Hong Kong, China and Singapore, reported Mastercard. Consumer confidence in Korea is seeing a turnaround, with the market seeing a large jump in optimism - the largest increase in Index score among all the Asia/Pacific markets. Although pessimistic, Indonesia and Thailand (please note that this survey was conducted in September 2008) have marginally improved their consumer confidence scores compared to six months ago. Japan is much more pessimistic than it was six months ago.  Consumer Confidence in Country's Employment: Consumers in China are showing record-high levels of optimism about employment. For consumer sentiments in Indonesia, while this had improved from six months ago, Indonesians are still less optimistic compared to a year ago. Though consumers are less optimistic towards employment and the economy compared to six months ago, they are expecting improvements in regular income, the stock market and quality of life. In Korea, consumers are still cautious in their outlook towards employment which seems to suggest that some lingering doubts still remain, reported Mastercard.  Consumer Confidence in Country's Regular
Income: China Consumers are highly positive on all fronts, with
Index scores for employment, regular income, stock market and quality
of life improving from the previous six months. For Malaysia and
the Philippines, consumers are positive on all five economic factors as
well, particularly
consumers are most optimistic about their regular income.
In Japan, outlook on all five economic factors are less optimistic than both six months and a year ago, with a more than 20-point loss of confidence in the regular income, economy and quality of life indicators. For Thailand's sentiments towards regular income have dropped 17.1 points.  Consumer Confidence in Country's Stock
Market:
Consumers in China also
continue to be bullish about the stock market, while consumers in Hong
Kong and Singapore, are still positive, they are
reflecting a slight dip in sentiment. Philippines shows
large improvements in sentiments towards
the stock market. For Singapore: even though the outlook for all of the
five economic indicators remains highly positive, there has
been a slight dip in sentiments towards regular income, the stock
market and quality of life, due to
financial market volatility and rising costs of living.
 Vietnamese consumers continue to enjoy high levels of consumer confidence. However, the poll also showed that Vietnamese consumers are less optimistic for the six-month period ahead (January to June 2009) when compared to the previous six months, commented a recent edition of the Vietnam News on the result data. More of Asian Countries Comparison on our website: - Costs of doing Business: Comparing 5 countries in Asia - Infrastructure - Asia Table of Peace Index Ranking - GDP Growth Rate - Inflation Rate - Export Growth & Direction - Import Growth - Foreign Direct Investment - Rules and Regulations - Safety and Security - Health and Hygiene - Environmental Awareness - FTAs with East and SEAsia - Exchange Rate |
