Information on how people spend their money

December 10, 2007 12:35 PM

Global consumer spending/expenditure data, beyond government stats

I'm trying to find out about what people spend their money on in different countries around the world.

Many countries have government data collections (e.g. the ONS in the UK, Eurostat in the EU, or the data collected by the US Department of Labour/Bureau of Statistics), but these tend to provide data at very topline levels, e.g. 'personal care products and services' or 'entertainment'. I'm looking for more 'granular' data e.g. soap, bath products, certain food types, movies, DVDs, ready meals, holiday flights etc.

It doesn't have to be in the public domain, ie fine if one has to pay for the results. I've tried the websites of various market research companies, but whilst they offer to do these kinds of surveys, none of the ones I tried had a pre-existing survey you could see the results for.

I'm also interested in market research which has tried to understand how people classify different kinds of spending (e.g. do they see it as essential). Has anyone seen anything at all on those lines?

Any ideas, leads, even tangential ones, very gratefully received.

posted by Marzipan to Society & Culture (2 answers total)

Best answer: Marzipan - email me with the details of what you are looking for specifically (i.e any specific products and any specific countries) and I can pass it on to someone within my company that may be able to help. We sell reports about a variety of consumer goods (we also cover healthcare, energy, automotive, financial services and other verticals if you need something there too) some of what you'd expect and some esoteric.

Thus, if you are interested in the sales of cat food in Burma... (Yes, this was actually an 80 page report from earlier this year).
posted by langeNU at 2:24 PM on December 10, 2007

The website Measuring Worth has some fantastic datasets on spending and currency. Probably all of them are too general for your needs but possibly helpful for anyone who winds up here.
posted by mrflip at 10:40 PM on January 9, 2008