This weeks’s business magazine Exame dedicates its front cover and significant coverage inside to a major report on the new Brazilian consumer.

The article (here in portuguese) paints the protrait of a country in transformation. Growing at a rate of 4% anually it is predicted that by 2012 Brazil will be third only to the US and China in driving global growth in consumption.

The underlying socio-economic factors behind the trends, the likely impact to be seen in the behaviour of consumers is discussed and a range of data is outlined in the article which we will report on in more detail in forthcoming days.

According to the article there are 5 key trends in a changing consumer profile. Many of them mirror well observed and much discussed trends in other advanced economies.  However given the size and potential of the Brazilian economy, the implications to different markets are interesting and the article attempts to summarise these for each of the following socio-demographic phenomenon:

1. the growing importance of women in the economy
2. more young couples without children
3. more singles
4. more middle aged consumers with higher incomes
5. improved standards of life into older age

As we said, more to come shortly…