Understanding Australia's Business and Consumer Environment: A Guide for Successful Business Down Under

Understanding Australia's Business and Consumer Environment

How will Australia's economy, business environment and consumer trends impact the success of your business? This e-book examines the fundamentals businesses must understand to successfully expand or operate in Australia.

Download Now >>

Heralded as the success story among advanced economies for weathering the global economic downturn of 2008-2009, Australia’s high income levels and steady growth offer good opportunities for consumer goods and services in a wide range of sectors.

Key Findings:

• At the height of the global slowdown, advanced economies as a whole contracted by 3.5% - contrasting with Australia’s 1.4% growth.
• Whereas incomes and consumer expenditure have stagnated across many advanced economies, Australia’s per capita disposable income and expenditure have expanded by 9.8% and 3.5% respectively in real terms since 2008.
• In 2012, Australia was ranked 15 out of 183 economies on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, meaning it is the fifteenth easiest place in the world to start and operate a local firm.
• Australia has an educated population: 99.9% of adults (those aged 15+) were literate in 2011, but suffers from skills shortages.
• In 2011, the population aged 45-49 in Australia had the highest average gross income: A$77,810 (US$80,259).

Topics include:

• Ease of doing business rating
• Corruption index
• Literacy rate
• Future challenges
• Natural resources
• Media consumption
• Consumer trends
• More

Download Now >>

UK Government Abandons Plain Packaging for Tobacco

It is expected that in the Queen's Speech 2013, the plain packaging law for tobacco that was proposed in the UK will not be introduced. Shane MacGuill, Tobacco Industry Analyst, confirms the news in this podcast and discusses the significance of the decision for the tobacco industry. Abandoning the law may influence other governments looking to pass similar laws to abandon their efforts. This news comes as a relief for Imperial Tobacco, who is now relying on packaging innovation to grow volume sales.

Download as an MP3

Tobacco Control in Chile – An Unremarkable Market Becomes an Unlikely Bellwether

Analyst Insight by Shane MacGuill, Analyst - Tobacco, Euromonitor International

Follow @ShaneMacGuill

When it comes to the legislative agenda facing the global tobacco industry, debate and activity understandably currently revolves around the potential spread of plain packaging in Western markets, the imposition of sweeping tobacco control measures in major developing markets such as Russia and Indonesia and the EU’s ongoing revision of the Tobacco Products Directive (replete with the distinctly sub-Watergate sideshow of burgled offices and alleged official cover-ups). However, in January 2013 the Chilean Senate quietly passed tobacco control measures which, while ostensibly lacking the scope and intrigue of these other regulatory conundrums, say just as much about the challenges confronting the industry. The new laws on public smoking, additives and tobacco marketing are emblematic of a diminished outlook for the industry, and indeed even herald the end of Latin America as a reliable growth region for tobacco players.

Cigarettes in 5 Ex-Yugoslavian Countries

The relationships between illicitly traded cigarettes and cigarette sales in the Ex-Yugoslavian countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia cannot be understated. Milan Cakic, Research Analyst at Euromonitor, takes a look at the rise and falls of cigarette sales in these five countries and proposes that cigarette sales will decline in all five over the next five years.

Watch this video on Youtube

Luxury Goods Landscape: China

Benefitting from a fast-growing middle class and a fast-developing distribution network, sales of luxury goods in China have consistently outperformed the global market. Sales of luxury goods in China tripled in value in the 5 years to 2012 and by 2017 the country’s luxury market is set to double in value again. By 2017 it is set to overtake France, the UK, Italy and Japan, making China the second biggest luxury market in the world after the US.

Congreso chileno modifica la Ley de Tabaco

El Congreso chileno recientemente modificó la legislación de tabaco en el país, agregando la prohibición de fumar en todos los espacios públicos cerrados así como la venta de cigarrillos mentolados.  Se espera que la prohibición de fumar en espacios cerrados reduzca las “señales sociales”, que son las situaciones sociales donde aumenta la posibilidad de fumar.  De acuerdo con la Organización Mundial de la Salud, el 41% de los chilenos fuma, por lo que el gobierno espera que estas medidas ayuden a bajar en número de ciudadanos fumadores y por lo tanto a disminuir los costos asociados a la salud.

Descargar en formato MP3

Chilean Congress Modifies Tobacco Laws

The congress in Chile recently modified tobacco legislation in the country, prohibiting smoking in all enclosed public places and banning all menthol cigarettes. The government anticipates that banning smoking in enclosed areas will cut down on 'social cues' - that is, social situations where smoking is more likely. According to the World Health Organization, 41% of all Chileans smoke, and it is the governments hope that these new measures will help cut down on the number of smoking citizens, and therefore cut down on health costs.

Download as an MP3

Signs of Stalling Momentum for Tobacco Plain Packaging as Political Realities Intrude

Analyst Insight by Shane MacGuill, Tobacco Analyst at Euromonitor International

As the first dispatches from Australia indicate that plain packaging has had no initial impact since its introduction there, momentum towards its introduction in further markets appears to have stalled - even in countries such as New Zealand and the UK which up until recently had seemed near certainties to follow the Australian government down a standardised path. While the lack of significant market changes in Australia is no more than was predicted by Euromonitor and for other governments there was always going to be an element of wait and see, the tobacco industry appears to have regrouped in its rearguard action against plain packaging and shifting political realities are also contributing to the lengthening of odds and timescales.

'From the Makers of Marlboro' - Remember the Phrase as PMI Spins Off Bright Leaf

Analyst Insight by Shane MacGuill, Analyst - Tobacco, at Euromonitor International

Having created hundreds of variants of the iconic Marlboro cigarette brand in a range of markets over the last three years, Philip Morris has announced a relaunch of its UK sub-brand, Marlboro Bright Leaf which unprecedently removes the M-word prefix and introduces a distinctly un-Marlboro-like orange into the livery. In reality though, this is not so much a reconfiguration of the brand as the spinning off of a fully fledged, standalone product. From January 2013, it will be branded as ‘Bright Leaf - from the makers of Marlboro’, a formula of external association which clearly seeks to continue to confer a halo of credibility and approval but if not quite severs, undoubtedly weakens, the direct link to the overarching brand umbrella. Indeed, in time it is likely that the associative phrase will disappear altogether, leaving Bright Leaf to operate completely independently.

It is an intriguing, hugely significant move, the first of its kind for Marlboro, indeed for any major international brand of Marlboro's stature and the question is why? Is this the first indication of PMI accepting that its Marlboro brand building activity may have limits, thresholds of tension beyond which the foundations of its equity are undermined? Or is it simply a logical next step for a sub-brand which has gained an autonomous identity of its own?

German Industries with High Exposure to Southern Europe

Analyst Insight by Diana Jarmalaite, Senior Analyst - Industrial at Euromonitor International

The EU has approved an additional bailout for Greece, whereas the economic performance of Spain and Italy is heading towards troubled waters. In 2011, Germany’s exports to Southern Europe accounted for 8% of total exports, while the sugar and tobacco industries ship as much as 48% and 36%, respectively, of their total exports to Southern Europe.