Consumers Increasingly Confident And Appear More Willing To Spend
Consumer confidence continued its rise, albeit at a slower pace than December, with the HPS-CivicScience Economic Sentiment Index (ESI) increasing 0.4 points to 53.3. In particular, consumer confidence in making a major purchase increased sharply over the past two weeks on the heels of continued positive reports on the American economy. At 53.3, the ESI is now 9.6 points above its level from a year ago and 5.8 points above its level at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
Over the last two weeks the five components of the ESI did not see a lot of movement, with none of the indicators moving more than one point with the exception of confidence in making a major purchase. As stated above, consumer confidence in making a major purchase jumped from 51.2 to 54.4 over the last two weeks, and is now almost 10 points higher than it was at this time last year. Confidence in finding a new job dropped slightly after climbing almost 10 points in December. However, it’s noteworthy that four of the five indicators are now above 50, indicating consumers have turned more optimistic across a number of dimensions.
Lastly, the three day moving average saw some volatility, but ended the two-week period at 53.2, only a tenth of a point off from the two-week average.
The next release of the ESI will be January 27.
About the Index
The HPS-CivicScience Economic Sentiment Index (“ESI”) is a “living” index that measures U.S. adults’ expectations for the economy going forward, as well as their feelings about current conditions for major purchases. The primary goal of the Index is to accurately measure movements in overall national economic sentiment, and to provide a more sophisticated alternative to existing economic sentiment indices. Unlike other prominent indices that release consumer sentiment estimates infrequently, the HPS-CivicScience Index is updated in real time as responses are collected continuously every hour, every day. Large-scale cross-tabulation of survey responses and consumer attributes enable more granular analyses than are currently possible through prevailing measures.
For a more detailed overview of the Index and the underlying methodology, please request a white paper.
About Hamilton Place Strategies (HPS)
Hamilton Place Strategies is a policy, advocacy, and communications consulting firm with a focus and expertise at the intersection of government, business, and media.
For more information, visit Hamilton Place Strategies by clicking here and follow them on Twitter – @HPSInsight.
About CivicScience
CivicScience, Inc. provides the leading intelligent polling and real-time consumer insights platform, the InsightStore™. Its proprietary platform powers the world’s opinions and quickly gets that data to the decision makers who care. Every day, CivicScience polls ask millions of people questions related to thousands of topics, while its powerful data science and big data technology analyzes current consumer opinions, discovers trends as they start, and accurately predicts future behaviors and market outcomes. CivicScience polls run on hundreds of premier websites, in addition to its own public polling site at www.civicscience.com. CivicScience’s InsightStore™ is used by leading enterprises in marketing research, advertising, media, financial services, and political polling. For more information, visit CivicScience by clicking here and follow them on Twitter – @CivicScience.