Editing Consumer confidence index (section)

== Consumer-demand surveys versus consumer-confidence and -sentiment surveys ==
Consumer-demand surveys are interview-based statistical surveys that measure the percentage of households that will buy a car, white goods, PCs, TVs, home furnishings, kitchenware, or toys in, for example, the next three-month period. The surveys provide a percentage of those who will purchase more, less, or the same amount of food and clothing in the next three months than in the corresponding period the year before. If you ask people about their purchasing behavior within the coming six or 12 months, there will be more of those who "hope to be able to buy", than if consumers are asked about what they will purchase in the next three months. The shorter the time spans, the closer to actual behavior.

Consumer confidence and sentiment surveys measure how people are doing financially, how they look at the overall economy of the country or business conditions in the country, if they think that the government is doing a good or a poor job and if people think that it is a good or a bad time to buy a car or to buy or sell a house.

When the business cycle is fairly stable, consumer demand surveys and consumer confidence and sentiment indices will often correlate closely and indicate the same direction of the economy, but in times with a high degree of economic or political uncertainty or during a prolonged crisis, the two types of consumer surveys might differ significantly. In 2011, confidence and sentiment surveys went up from March to April, while consumer demand surveys dropped significantly. In August 2011, the confidence and sentiment surveys dropped significantly and stayed low during September and October, while consumer demand surveys showed resilience, a development confirmed later by official statistics.

A 2022 study found that the consumer confidence index always plays a positive and statistically significant function in the development of consumption.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Chemistry |first=University of |last2=Prague |first2=Technology |title=Happy people spend less on consumption, study suggests |url=https://phys.org/news/2022-12-happy-people-consumption.html |access-date=2022-12-26 |website=phys.org |language=en}}</ref>