Consumers around the world are becoming more optimistic that economic recovery has begun, according to the latest Nielsen Global Consumer Confidence Survey. Chinese consumers in particular are feeling good about their prospects. 

Chinese consumer confidence has increased six points from the previous Nielsen survey, in March, and China has jumped from tenth to sixth place in the global rankings behind Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Brazil and Australia.

Mitch Barns – Greater China president, The Nielsen Company – said: “Chinese consumer confidence appears to have been boosted successfully through the government’s economic stimulus initiatives. Additionally, many consumers in smaller cities appear to have been less affected by the downturn in the first place, so recovery is less of an issue for them.”

Nielsen polled 14,029 online consumers in 28 countries late in June, finding that 71 per cent of respondents thought their country was in recession – a positive reduction of six points from a high of 77 per cent when the survey ran in March 2009.

Banks added: “The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and Asian markets have recorded the greatest jumps in Consumer Confidence Indices in the past three months. Consumer confidence in India jumped 13 Index points and climbed nine points in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Indonesia. Consumer confidence rose eight Index points in Taiwan and Brazil and seven points in Singapore, Turkey, Russia, Philippines and the UK. The only exceptions to this upswing were in the USA and New Zealand, which held flat in the second quarter, with Germany the only country to register a decline of one Index point.”

But even in Germany, there are signs a recovery is imminent, according to Nielsen: nearly one in three Germans (29%) said the recession would be over in the next 12 months, compared to only 22 per cent three months ago.

Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Nielsen’s service for measuring online conversations, reports that the number of online discussions, or ‘buzz’, in the UK mentioning the word ‘recession’ dropped around 60 per cent between late March and late June this year.

Banks said: “People’s obsession with the recession has switched to how to live and spend more moderately in a new economic era.”

Italian consumers have also become more optimistic, showing a strong gain of seven Index points - their highest Nielsen Consumer Confidence Index since the second half of 2007. “Our survey supports recent Italian government figures which indicate that consumer confidence is returning to the Italian economy. In the last three months, Italian consumers’ concern for job security and the economy fell by four percentage points respectively, while average supermarket prices fell 0.2 per cent in June 2009, indicating that consumers are less concerned about rising food bills than they were two years ago,” said Banks.

He added that the global consensus shows a strong indication among consumers that the worst is over: “Finally, there is light at the end of this long tunnel. And consumers in emerging and Asian markets are clearly of the view that they are driving in the recovery lane now,” he said.