Global Customer Data Management

Customer Insights

Consumers’ attitudes, needs, and behaviors are strongly influenced by local realities—and they’re constantly changing. Ignoring these facts can result in growth strategies that miss the mark. BCG’s rich stores of customer data in global markets help companies gain the insights needed to craft strategies for winning in the global consumer market.

What really drives consumers’ choices around the world? Local differences influence those all-important moments of demand—what consumers need when they purchase and use products and services. Companies that excel at creating products for consumers in global markets understand three vital insights:

One world, many mindsets. Despite decades of globalization, consumers’ mindsets remain highly localized.
Global category playbooks are usually a myth. A common global strategy would not be wholly effective in any category.
Context completes the picture. Although important, attitudes and demographics don’t satisfactorily explain choice unless the analysis also factors in the context in which products are used.

How BCG Helps Clients Leverage Customer Data in Global Markets

How can companies gain insight into the local realities shaping responses to their offerings—and devise effective strategies for succeeding in the global consumer market? That’s where BCG’s global customer data consulting expertise comes in.

Our Specialized Research

BCG’s Center for Customer Insights conducts ongoing proprietary research, building specialized databases that help companies tailor their growth strategies to local conditions.

Consumer Sentiment Research. The research provides our clients and businesses around the world with periodic readings of consumer sentiment, as well as actual and anticipated consumer behavior and spending, to inform our clients’ planning and decision making. This in-depth survey of consumers across multiple countries is conducted in partnership with coding and sampling provider Dynata, the world’s largest first-party data and insights platform.

Our Consumer Sentiment Research has been used in more than 4,100 cases across 50-plus countries, covering more than 40% of Fortune Global 100 companies in industries as diverse as consumer packaged goods, industrial goods, financial services, health care, technology, and media, as well as in the public sector.

Global Drivers of Consumer Choice research. We’ve built a state-of-the-art database showing how 64 local contextual factors, 56 attitudes, and 11 demographic characteristics are shaping consumers’ needs and thus their purchase and consumption behavior—across 13 product and service categories. Currently encompassing more than 50,000 consumer interactions in 18 countries, the research will give companies an even more powerful set of global customer insights to use in creating products for consumers in global markets.

Our Proprietary Tools

In addition to our research, we deploy sophisticated AI-based tools to bring together huge volumes of data that help decision makers understand how consumer behavior in global markets is changing.

Our Lighthouse for Demand Capture is a case in point. This potent combination of customer data and a unique AI platform helps clients understand how new realities, such as COVID-19, are influencing customer demand and the competitive landscape in diverse local settings.

Armed with insights from this tool, our clients can make the right decisions for better serving the global consumer market. This service offering acts as a control tower for rapid decision making. It unlocks the power of high-frequency data, proprietary forecast models, dynamic visualizations, and operational decision modules to enable companies to swiftly sense demand shifts at a local level and respond with the right operational moves.

Lighthouse includes:

Demand Sensing, our proprietary AI platform, which helps clients develop scenarios and track leading indicators of demand in real time.
Demand Accelerator, which uses primary consumer research to illuminate medium-term demand, map shifting pools of demand (including those catalyzed by the pandemic), and uncover longer-term growth opportunities.

Meet Our Global Customer Data Consultants

BCG’s team of global customer data consultants operate around the world, in every industry and sector. With each client engagement, our consultants bring deep industry experience and comprehensive knowledge of topics, including global customer data management, consumer needs, consumer behavior in global markets, and global customer data platforms.

Learn More About Customer Data in Global Markets

The Consumer Sentiment Series

The late summer rise of the Delta variant in the US has reduced optimism, but participation in various activities has actually increased since May.

Navigating a Diverse World of Consumer Mindsets and Choice

Global clusters of like-minded consumers are surprisingly rare. And even among countries with similar consumer attitudes, needs can differ sharply by product category.

Explore our latest thinking on customer insights