ECO - This report on an annual survey of consumers shows that economic and social factors

Read the following information and answer the questions below.
I am all right, Son
This report on an annual survey of consumers shows that economic and social factors can effect consumer’s tastes and the potential of advertisers to change them. Australians are still a confident lot, but we have become more inward-looking. Although 2001 was a year of disturbing events, here and overseas, Australians remain confident about life in general and jobs in particular.
The collapse of companies such as Ansett Australia, OneTel an HIH insurance has not created gloom in the workforce, and September 11 has bone little to disturb consumeroptimism. But recent event have made consumer more self- centred in their outlook; for example, the level of concern about the gap between rich and poor has decline. The increasing preoccupation of consumers with their own wellbeing and their lack of concern about September 11 corporate failures and other recent events, are some of the key findings of this year’s Eye On Australia research report, the 11 th annual study from
Sweeney research and the advertising agency Grey Worldwide examining consumer attitudes toward life and work, the economic outlook, big business, shopping, habits and advertising. Sweeney surveyed 540 people aged 18 and older during March. Since the previous Eye On Australia research was conducted in January 2001, consumers have become more focused on their immediate family and circumstances, rather than the world at large. Grey’s planning director, Jeremy Sankey, describes the mood of consumers in this year’s report as self-interested confidence… Overall, confidence about personal finances and the economy is higher than at any time since the first Eye On Australia
report was published in 1992. This year, what Sweeney calls the lack of confidence index reached its equal lowest level since 1992 (it fell to the same low point in 1999)…
Like all Eye On Australia report, this year’s edition looks at consumers’ attitudes to  shopping. There is mixed news for retailer: a trend away from shopping in large centres has reversed, but shopper’s trust in well-known brands has declined slightly, and fewer

Consumers are looking for Autralian – made brands. Consumers enjoy shopping more, but are more willing to haggle over price, are more demanding about service and are less interested in reward and loyalty programs.
Forty percent of respondents said they do not like shopping in big shopping centres, down from 44% in 2001. Last year, 57% said that buying a well- known brand was less of an assurance of quality than it used to be; this year, 64% agreed with that statement. Half of all respondents actively looked for Australian – made products in 2001, but that has now fallen to 42%, suggesting that some of the
steam has gone out of the‘Australian Made ‘ campaign run by a consortium of locally owned companies, and that enthusiasm for such ‘ Australian’ brands as Dick Smith Foods might have leveled off…
There has been a sharp jump in the proportion of people willing to haggle over prices: 54% this year, compared with 40% in 2001 and the highest level of 59% in 1993. Fifty – three per cent of respondents said they are more prepared to wait for a product or service to be discounted before they buy it, up from 51% last year. Concern about service and a readiness to pay more for good service has been a growing trend since the first Eye On Australia. In 1992, 66% of people said they would pay more to get good service. This year , 84% support that proposition, up from 81% in 2001…
In 1993 ( the first year the question was asked ), 66% of the Eye On Australia respondent said they checked ads before buying a product. This year, the figure is 48%. But, in good news for direct marketers, this year 59% of people said they often find catalogues helpful in choosing what products to buy, and where- up from 52% last year and 45% in 1997. This year, 45% of people said they are
irritated by direct mail, down from 51% last year.
Only 25% of the people surveyed said they used the internet to ‘check price and find bargains for big- ticket items’, and just 17% had bought products or services  online. For the first time, Sweeney asked people it they were worried about genetically modified products: 63% said they are worried, and 28% are not worried…..
Sweeney and Grey started including questions about consumer attitudes to advertising in the Eye On Australia survey in 1994. This year, 80% of consumer said they are taking less notice of ads, up from 76% last year and the highest figure recoded by the survey. On the plus side, the proportion of respondent who said that advertising in the general is boring and repetitious fell from 71% in 1999 ( the last year the question was asked) to 58% this year.

A high 88% of consumers believe some ads are so bad they act as a deterrent to buying the product or service they are promoting, up from 84% last year. Sankey says: ‘if we can in the business of creating communications that people notice, we have to be in the ‘top box’ in terms of cut – through and being noticeable. What gets you there is being entertaining, but not only that, advertising today has to be
exceptional. It must be that one-in-a hundred ad that people remember to stand any chance of being effective.
a. Does the trade-off between work and leisure have any effect on shopping behaviour? Explain?
b. How does confidence in financial futures affect a consumer’s tastes and potential spending pattern now and in the future?