Home and personal care

In developed countries, the home and personal care sector tends to be relatively mature, and growth in demand generally tracks the overall economy and population. From a research standpoint, more interesting trends in the developed world are not related to overall demand growth, but rather, to changing consumer tastes. Moreover, innovation in packaging and marketing of home and personal care products remains almost exclusively the domain of developed countries.

In contrast, per capita home and personal product demand is fairly weak in the developing world, and consequently growth tends to outpace both GDP and population growth during most years. Increasing urbanization and a large-scale adoption of western lifestyles is resulting in booming sales of home and personal care products in most developing countries. It is therefore not surprising that western multinational home and personal care product manufacturing companies are constantly expanding in the developing world.