Nigeria will be world’s fastest growing emerging market

Amid shifting consumer preferences, rapid advances in technology and ongoing disruption to business models, the new strategic imperative for emerging markets companies is to turn customers into fans – by innovating to create the most compelling, engaging, and intuitive user experiences.

The most rapid growth rates in emerging markets revenues over the coming five years will be in less-developed markets and economies, where entertainment and media spending on a per capita basis is generally quite low.

This is according to PwC’s Global entertainment and media outlook 2017 -2021. The report provides PwC’s most recent and up-to-date forecast of consumer and advertising spend data as well as related commentary for 17 entertainment and media segments, across 54 countries including Nigeria. It is a powerful online tool that provides deep knowledge and actionable insights about the trends that are shaping the EM industry.

According to the latest report, Nigeria with a 12.1% CAGR (albeit strongly influenced by surging spending on mobile Internet access), will be the world’s fastest-growing emerging market over the coming five years while the slowest-growing will be Japan, growing at a 1.7% CAGR.

While consumers in mature markets such as North America and Europe, and wealthier Asia-Pacific markets, spend a lot — more than US$500 per capita annually — on entertainment and media, growth rates are relatively slow in these areas. In contrast, less developed economies feature much lower per capita spending and faster growth albeit from a very low base – less than US$50 a year in many cases.

The report noted that dramatic shifts are underway in how entertainment and media companies compete and generate value, as the quality of the experience they deliver to consumers becomes their primary basis for strategic differentiation and revenue growth.

To thrive in a marketplace that is increasingly competitive, crowded, and slower-growth, therefore, companies are developing strategies and building capabilities to engage and monetize their most loyal and passionate users — their fans.

This means they must combine compelling content with breadth and depth of distribution, and then connect it all to a great user experience, where content is discoverable easily on an array of screens and at an attractive price.