The Economist (August 18th – 24th issue) has an interesting article, “Adiós to poverty, hola to consumption”, about the rise of a new middle class in Latin America. There are several factors that are contributing to this, as per the article: “faster growth, low inflation, expanding credit and liberal trade.”
What caught my eye was that the sales of new cars, computers and consumer electronics are at record levels in Brazil and Mexico. The new discretionary income and spending habits are surely going to spurt the internet and broadband growth in the region. More and more people will spend time online. Currently there are a total of about 100 million people surfing the web in Central and South America according to Internet World Stats. And as more people are online, marketing money will begin to shift as well (see prior post) – not to mention the conversation in itself. Are you ready to listen?
On a side note, it was recently announced that the country with the most MSN Messenger users is…BRAZIL with 30.5 million IMers, which is about 77% of the Brazil’s online population…OMG!
