Background

Ross Honeywill & Verity Byth – both former directors of KPMG Consulting (Asia Pacific) – founded the Centre for Customer Strategy in 2001 to continue their research linking discretionary spending and psychological profiles so that practical knowledge about consumer value would be available.  

Now completed, their research explains the links between high-value consumption and the personal values and attitudes that drive it. And this landmark research has, for the first time, identified a New Economic Order (NEO); a growing class of high-value consumers that is powering the economy. It defines who spends the most – most frequently – and provides rich insights into their behaviours, lifestyles and attitudes. Critically, it also identifies what differentiates high-value NEOs from all other consumers.   

Their newest book, NEO POWER – how the new economic order is changing the way we live, work, and play, describes the New Economic Order in Australia and New Zealand.  Published by Scribe, NEO POWER was launched to critical acclaim in Australia in October 2006 and went immediately to the top ten best-seller list.  Additional versions are planned to detail the New Economic Order in the USA and the UK. 

They formed The NEO Group in 2002 to develop practical tools, data and services to apply their research findings in corporate environments. Resources are now available to help organisations profit from NEOs.

Through a joint venture partnership with Roy Morgan International, NEOs are mapped across all consumption variables on the Roy Morgan Single Source database (120,000 respondents per year) in Australia, the USA, New Zealand and the UK.