O’Neill, who rose to be Chairman of the banking group’s Asset Management wing before retiring last year, apparently intended the phrase for the long-term, and a Goldman Sachs follow-up report in 2003 was entitled ‘Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050’ - but critics argue that the group of four was either arbitrary from the off, or has become less and less relevant in the thirteen years since it was first used. Here we’ll look at some of the reasons O’Neill and others grouped them together, how trends in the global economy have affected the thesis, and the views of some researchers from each of the four countries, taken from among the readership of our Daily Research News.

The BRIC thesis suggests that Brazil, Russia, India and China are among the largest and fastest growing of the world’s emerging markets, with the potential to dominate the global economy in the next half century. All four, it says, have embraced global capitalism and have put or are putting infrastructure and education in place to make rapid advances. A modification or clarification in 2003 pointed to a division of the four between China and India on the one hand as key suppliers of manufactured goods and services; and Russia and Brazil as the biggest suppliers of natural resources and raw materials - this meant the four were not so much similar as linked - two sides of the same global growth phenomenon.

Some researchers in the BRIC countries find the grouping a useful one, and choose to be broadly supportive of the term - although these are a minority and seem to be found in India and Russia more than in China or Brazil. One Indian agency MD for example suggests: ‘BRIC countries are all large markets that have reached a certain level of economic development that makes them a consideration for most global brands when they are expanding beyond the fully ‘developed’ countries’. As a result they are ‘often included in the list of markets to be covered in global projects for large brands’ - however this doesn’t stretch to their being grouped for analysis. Others see huge differences in cultures and consumer attitudes, but also broad areas of similarity. Alvin Huen, MD China and Hong Kong for The Insight Focus Company, lists some of the latter as:

• large population, high influx of population from lower tier cities (or rural areas) to the key cities
• labor intense industry in the lower tier cities
• growing disparity of income between the rich and the poor
• huge market volume with emerging middle class, anddiversified industry structure with a focus on transforming from secondary to tertiary industries (service, finance and IT).