The results of the sixth annual survey reveal a consumer industry at the point of radical change and that CEOs need to make changes on a similar scale to stay competitive. “Today’s consumer and retail market is beyond disruption – we are disrupted – and CEOs need to listen to the market, look outward and focus on changing their business,” said Willy Kruh, KPMG Global Chair, Consumer & Retail. “It’s an increasingly difficult tightrope to walk between dealing with both internal and external continuous disruption, but both are key to creating customer centric organisations. Those companies that cannot authentically connect to customers will get left behind.”

In Asia Pacific, the top three Consumer & Retail challenges are shifting demographics and expectations (34 per cent), competitors with disruptive models (31 per cent) and retailers creating own products (26 per cent).

According to Anson Bailey, Head of Consumer & Retail, Asia Pacific, KPMG in China, 58 per cent of the world’s millennials live in Asia Pacific and, on current trends that proportion is only going to increase.