1. France and the main cities
As the largest country in Western Europe, France plays a significant role in the world economically, politically and culturally. It is a well-developed country with its GDP being the sixth largest and its economy being the fifth largest globally (World Bank, 2014). In addition, it is also one of the founding countries of European Union and has the second largest population in EU, amounted to 66,206,930 (World Bank, 2015). People have high standard of life quality, education, social security system, human rights and freedoms.
Its rich culture attracts more than 80 million of tourists every year into the country and makes it the most visited country in the world (World Bank, 2015).
Tourism becomes one of the most important industries in France and this contributes enormously to its economy growth as well. With a capitalist economical system, French government processes a certain level of control in the country. Therefore, it is a country with combination of capitalism and socialism. Its government offers a high level of social welfares to its citizens. Labors are very well-protected and enjoy high freedoms and rights within different realms.
The whole country is divided in 8 regions and 101 departments as shown in Figure 3-1 with its capital in Paris. Being a vast country and with many different neighboring countries, each region has its own unique culture and tradition. Important
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cities are Lyon, Marseille, Lille, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, Nice, and Nante, as shown in Figure 3-2.
Figure 0-11 Different regions in France Source: wikimedia.org
Figure 0-12 The main cities in France Source: CIA, The World Factbook, 2004
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2. Population
Population in France is amounted to around 66 million and is increasing gradually each year. Being the second most populated country in Europe, right after Germany, its market is significant and is one of the most potential market in west Europe considering its purchasing power and population.
(1) Total population by sex and age
Total population by sex and age in France is shown in Table 3-1. Total female population is approximately 2 million higher than total male population. If we look at the population by age, we can find that 50 % of the total population is aged between 20 to 64 years while 28 % is under 20 years and 22% is above 65 years. Besides, according to INSEE, with 2.01 children per woman, France has the second highest fertility in Europe, right behind Ireland. In EU, the average fertility rate is approximately 1.6 children per woman. This high fertility rate in France can be explained by its active family support policy, such as family allowance, tax allowance and long maternity leave.
Table 0-4 Total population by sex and age in France Male Female Total Total population 32 291 287 34 336 315 66 627 602
Under 20 years 8 391 583 8 003 875 16 395 458 20-64 years 18 550 750 19 161 177 37 711 927 65 years and over 5 348 954 7 171 263 12 520 217
Source: INSEE, population estimates (provisional data at the end of 2015)
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(2) Immigration
As to the immigration in France, there are 5.8 million immigrants live in France in 2013, which accounts for approximately 8.8 % of the total population according to INSEE. This number is forecasted to increase in the future. On the other hand, The amount of immigrants arrive in France each year reaches about 200,000 between 2004 and 2012, which accounts for 0.3 % of the total population. This high level of immigration in France is mainly driven by its strong economic and political position in Europe and by its history of colonization. This increasing amount of immigration leads to more labor forces into France.
A structure of nationalities of its immigration in 2012 is given in Table 3-2.
Among all the immigrants arrived in France, immigrants with European nationalities are the most, which account for 46 %, while 30 % for African immigrants, 14% for Asians and 10% for Americans. European Immigrants are mainly from Portugal, UK, Spain, Italy and Germany. As to African immigrants, they mainly come from Maghreb region, such as Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Asian immigrants are mostly from China and Turkey.
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Table 0-5 Structure of nationalities of immigration in France Nationality Number of immigrants in France in 2012 (%)
Total 100
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(3) Household structure
Regarding to the household structure in France, according to INED, there are approximately 2,740 families in the whole country. As shown in Table 3-3, couples household account for 54 % of the total households while one-person household is 34
%, single-parent family is 9 %. It is predicted that the number of single-parent families is increasing in the future at a rate of 9 %. Therefore, there is a trend for a smaller household structure in the future which would affect the form of consumer spending in France and companies would tend to produce and sell more products for small families, such as changing the size and packaging of products.
Table 0-6 Household structure in France
Household Number of households
One-person household 9,512,171
Couples 14,888,523
Single-parent family 2,434,402
Other non-family households 732,817
Overall 27,567,914
Source : INSEE, Population censuses 3. Consumer spending
(1) Personal disposable income and consumer spending trend
As indicated in Figure 3-3, personal disposable income in France is increasing year by year, it reaches 342,358 EUR million in the third quarter of 2015. A remarkable difference can be observed in 1950 with its record low of 2,580 Euro millions. Besides, a growing consumer spending trend is shown in Figure 3-4 with a peak in 2015 which amounts to 288,816 EUR million. This growing trend is mainly led by the growing of personal disposable income. In other words, people have more income to make consumption and this stimulates the economic activities.
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Figure 0-13 Personal disposable income in France 1950-2015 (Euro millions) Source: Trading Economics
Figure 0-14 Consumer spending trend in France 1950-2015 (Euro millions) Source: Trading Economics
(2) Inflation
Inflation is another factor to affect consumer spending since it decides the purchasing power of consumers following the increasing change of the price of goods.
When inflation occurs, consumers’ ability to pay for goods decreased and they would
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tighten more their spending budget. Inflation rate in France is shown in Figure 3-5, which includes both historical data from 2010 to 2015 and a future forecast until 2020.
As we can observe, the level of inflation has been decreasing from 2010 to 2015, which explained why consumer spending has been increasing during the past years.
Especially, an extremely low inflation rate of 0.15 % has been achieved in 2015.
Nevertheless, inflation in France is predicted to increase every year from 2016 and might reach 1.66 % in 2020.
Figure 0-15 Inflation rate from 2010 to 2020 (Historical data and forecast) Source: Statista
(3) Unemployment
Unemployment is also another key point to the change of total consumer spending in France considering that a high unemployment rate indicates less disposable income could be generated and to stimulate spending. Figure 3-6 shows the unemployment rate in France from 2003 to 2015. From 2006, unemployment started to decrease until it reached a relatively low of 7.2 % in 2008. Yet, after 2008, the rate began to go up and has remained higher than the period between 2003 and
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2006. In 2015, it is approximately 10.2 %. However, in spite of the increasing trend of its inflation rate, the percentage of female employment is increasing due to the active supportive family policy. Nowadays, 85 % of women enter the workplace and this phenomenon not only increase the gender equality of the society but also increase the household income.
Figure 0-16 Unemployment rate in France Source: INSEE