What does it mean to be a consumer?
A consumer is one who spends, not earns
The definition everything else follows from
Spending captures the people that income misses.
Income data counts payslips. Most of the world does not have one, and plenty of people spend without earning at all. Spending is the signal that reaches everybody.
Everyone spends, but not everyone is a consumer.
The consumer class is everyone spending more than $13 a day, PPP-adjusted. Above that line, people buy beyond necessity, and categories start to compete for the wallet.
The class keeps growing.
Net additions to the consumer class have run above 100 million people a year for most of the last decade, interrupted only once. Where those people appear, and what they buy first, is the question every growth plan is based on.
When people can spend more, they buy differently.
As spending power rises, the shape of the wallet changes: food gives way to housing, transport, health and services. We model that shift across every spending tier, in every market we cover.
What it means for you.
An average hides consumers
A beauty brand assumed its buyers needed an income-implied $20/day threshold. Measured on spending, the real threshold was $12, and the addressable market was far larger than the average implied.
Demand before it arrives
Because the model runs forward, you can see the year a city crosses your price point rather than reading it off last year's sales. Planning stops being a rear-view exercise and becomes a schedule.
"World Data Lab provides a single source of truth for the global middle class."
Start with the consumer, not the average.
Bring your price point and your markets. We will show you who clears the line, and when.