Current Aspects of Consumer Behaviour in Central European Countries

Abstract

The paper deals with the issue of changes in consumer behaviour in connection with the ongoing changes in the lifestyles of members of society, focusing on the markets of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. Due to the multidisciplinarity of consumer behaviour, attention is paid to three areas of deeper research interest. The first area deals with the income level required in order for households to meet their needs. The EU SILC survey is the main data set. The differences in the income deciles of households revealed income inequalities, households living at the poverty line and those whose incomes do not reach the expenditure component of households. Welch’s ANOVA is used to verify the differences in income. The second area of interest was from the results of an extensive questionnaire survey to identify the perception of their life situation by households themselves, and to understand their expectations for the future, by means of an analysis based on the model of multinomial logistic regression. The third area concerns the knowledge of consumer behaviour in terms of meeting the basic needs on the food market with a focus on the impact of food waste, based on a sample of Czech consumers. The investigation examined how consumer behaviour in marketing tools changes in relation to the amount of consumption. By using cluster analysis, three segments of consumers with similar behaviour and approaches to food waste were formed. Given the importance of the problem related to the amount of waste, including food, these segments as target groups offer the possibility of a suitable way of communicating and influencing their change in behaviour, resulting in reduced waste products.