Emerging markets to offer better consumer growth for 'decades more'

Emerging markets still offer much better potential from consumer growth than developed markets, says Credit Suisse, suggesting a range of countries and stocks for investors to back.

The Swiss bank said this year's giant annual survey, polling around 14,000 consumers across the eight 'most important' emerging economies, reinforces its positive view on the growth characteristics of the emerging market consumer theme.

The key drivers remain strong demographics of these countries and growing urbanisation that is driving strong income growth. Populations in emerging markets are young and still expected to grow for at least another few decades in stark contrast to stagnant demographics observed across developed markets.

The urbanisation theme is expected to drive superior EM per capita income growth compared to DM "for at least a few more decades", helped by role of the younger consumer.

Countries that score best on the Credit Suisse consumer confidence scorecard are led by India, followed by China and Indonesia in third.

"While the top three countries in our scorecard have not changed we would note there have been significant improvements in Brazil, Mexico, Russia and Turkey where consumers are growing increasingly optimistic about their income prospects."

Of western companies exposed to the EM consumer, the Credit Suisse 'playbook' includes Adidas, AB InBev, Estee Lauder, London-listed Global Payments, Nexon, Nike, Straumann, Swatch, UBS and Visa.