B'lore leads in consumer optimism: MasterCard

Bangalore has scored the highest in India in terms of consumer optimism levels, according to the latest MasterCard Index of Consumer Confidence which surveyed consumers in 16 Asia Pacific countries. 

Bangalore had the highest score with 95.8 followed by Chennai with a score of 92.7 and New Delhi with 90.8. Mumbai scored the lowest with 51.8. India, which ranked second only to Myanmar on the optimism front, scored well on all five indicators measured in the Index even as the score for the Economy indicator showed a dip (-4.8) from the previous edition.

All the other four indicators showed improvement viz., Employment (+1.5), Regular Income (+1.9), Stock Market (+7.1) and Quality of Life (+0.8).  Consumers in India, which scored 83.3 in the survey, are “very optimistic” compared to their stable outlook in the second half of 2013, even as the Asia Pacific region averaged a score of only 61.5 with an “optimistic” outlook, the MasterCard Index said. 

Interestingly, among the respondents, men and women scored the same with an average of 83.3. It is also important to note that those in the younger age group of below 30 years are more optimistic with an overall score of 88.8, while those above 30 years averaged a lower score of 80.6.    

The MasterCard Worldwide Index of Consumer Confidence is based on a survey conducted on 7,532 respondents aged 18-64 in 16 countries.

Respondents were asked five questions pertaining to their 6-month outlook on the economy, employment prospects, the local stock market, regular income prospects and their quality of life.

The results of their responses were converted in five component indexes which were subsequently averaged to form the MasterCard Worldwide Index of Consumer Confidence (MWICC) score. The MWICC Index score and the five component index scores range from 0-100 where 0 represents maximum pessimism, 100 represents maximum optimism and 50 represents neutrality.