Financiarul

One of the effects of the current economic downturn is the fact that 71.2 percent of the Romanians have cut the consumption or bought cheaper products, reads the market survey the Marketing Research Center MEDNET has conducted in November.

According to it, the crisis’s effects are ever more present in the Romanians’ life, 17.1 percent of them saying that the economic downturn affects them to a very large and 19.3 percent to a large extent. Only 12.3 percent answered that the crisis had not affected them at all, in 2009.
The percentage of those who said that the crisis affected them to a very large or a large extent grew from 28.6 in Feb to 36.4 in Nov 2009, while the percentage of those who the downturn has affected them to a small extent or at all, dropped from 38.7 to 26.6.

The women with ages between 55 and 65 with an education ‘under high school’ and earning an income lower than 1,500 lei said they were the most heavily affected by the crisis.
The respondents particularly emphasized as the crisis’s effects on them or their families, the unemployment (22.4 percent), lower salaries (43.9 percent), losing or earning smaller money other than the salary (20.7 percent), the rise in the bank installments due to the depreciation of the Romanian currency (22.8 percent).

Other effects the participants in the survey mentioned were the price rises, the lack of orders and agreements, the shut down of the company, a small pension compared to the costs, the wage freeze or the delays in the payments.
As for the consumer conduct, the survey shows that 28.8 percent of the respondents did not change their conduct, while 71.2 percent cut the consumption or bought cheaper products.

Those who changed their consumption behavior because of the economic downturn are the youth, without children, with incomes higher than 3,000 lei per family and higher education.
The poll was conducted on a representative sample for Bucharest and cities numbering over 100,000 inhabitants, on Nov 16-23, 2009. As many as 854 people with ages ranging between 18 and 65 were interviewed on phone. The error margin is plus/minus 3.35 percent. Since 2000, MEDNET Center has conducted market researches, retail surveys, and DIY in fields such as banking, insurance, telecommunications, medicine and pharmaceuticals, media, agriculture, cars, industrial products, etc.