What Do We Know about Europe?

Pearson eBooks, 2006

Perception and interpretation 3 Learning and memory 4 Motivation, values and involvement 5 Attitudes 6 Attitude change and interactive communication 7 The self Part C Consumers as Decision Makers 8 Individual decision-making 9 Shopping, buying, evaluating and disposing 10 Group influence and opinion leadership Part D A Portrait of European Consumers 11 European family structure and household decision-making 12 Income and social class 13 Age subcultures Part E Culture and European Lifestyles 14 Culture and consumer behaviour 15 Cultural change processes 16 Lifestyles and European cultures 17 New times, new consumers

Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 2014

The paper focuses on development of consumer behavior on the basis of household expenditures in 1996, 1999 and 2002 in individual countries in Europe. As a tool to examine the changes in behavior was used cluster analysis. The results of this analysis are illustrated in dendrograms, which help to estimate the greatest differences in consumer behavior among northwestern European countries and new countries joining EU, then also among western European countries and south European countries. For the analysis of factors with influence on consumer behavior is required a research about motives of behavior and consumption of main agricultural commodities.

Przegląd Europejski 4/2019, 2019

The article aims to analyse the specificities of modern consumer society in the European Union and, therefore, it presents the genesis and the essence of consumer society development in Europe. It points to the idea of consumer society in terms of economy, politics, sociology, and philosophy. The specificities of the modern consumer society in the European Union are influenced by legislative processes in regard to the economical safety of consumers including safety of goods in terms of information, education, and redress, with special regard to cross-border transactions. The article presents the definition of consumer ethics and the specifics of certain ethical norms connected with the purchase process, what have evolved together with the development of consumer society in the EU. Uwarunkowania współczesnego społeczeństwa konsumpcyjnego w Unii Europejskiej Streszczenie Artykuł ma na celu dokonanie syntezy uwarunkowań funkcjonowania współczesnego społeczeń-stwa konsumpcyjnego w Unii Europejskiej. Przedstawiono genezę oraz istotę rozwoju społeczeń-stwa konsumpcyjnego w Europie. Wskazano na definicję społeczeństwa konsumpcyjnego w ujęciu ekonomiczno-politycznym i socjologiczno-filozoficznym. Na uwarunkowania współczesnego społeczeństwa konsumpcyjnego Unii Europejskiej wpływają procesy prawotwórcze w zakresie ochrony bezpieczeństwa ekonomicznego konsumentów, w tym bezpieczeństwa towarów, w zakre-sie informacyjnym i edukacyjnym oraz w zakresie systemu dochodzenia roszczeń, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem zakupów transgranicznych. W artykule zdefiniowano pojęcie etyki konsumenckiej oraz określono, że wraz z rozwojem społeczeństwa konsumenckiego w Unii Europejskiej wykształ-ciły się specyficzne normy etyczne związane z procesem nabywczym. Słowa kluczowe: etyka konsumencka, polityka konsumencka, społeczeństwo konsumpcyjne, Unia Europejska, uwarunkowania.

Consumers are considered, within the European vision, the “life force” of the economy. Although the technological means are increasingly available, both European SMEs and consumers are still suspicious of conducting cross-border trade. Single European market has the potential to become the largest market in the world. Currently, it remains largely fragmented along national borders, forming 27 mini-markets. The European Commission’s aim is to achieve a more integrated internal market such that consumers from each Member State have an equally high level of confidence in products, traders, selling methods, as well as consumer protection – no matter where they decide to make their purchases within the EU. The paper presents a secondary analysis of data regarding the many differences in terms of Europeans’ consumption patterns for different product categories (as a percentage of total expenditures). For example, the share of household budget used to purchase food is highest in our countr...

2005

The ongoing unification which takes place on the European political scene, along with recent advances in consumer mobility and communication technology, raises the question whether the European Union can be treated as a single market to fully exploit the potential synergy effects from pan-European marketing strategies. Previous research, which mostly used domain-specific segmentation bases, has resulted in mixed conclusions. In this paper, a more general segmentation base is adopted, as we consider the homogeneity in the European countries' Consumer Confidence Indicators. Moreover, rather than analyzing more traditional static similarity measures, we adopt the concepts of dynamic correlation and cohesion between countries. The short-run fluctuations in consumer confidence are found to be largely country specific. However, a myopic focus on these fluctuations may inspire management to adopt multi-country strategies, foregoing the potential longer-run benefits from more standardized marketing strategies. Indeed, the Consumer Confidence Indicators become much more homogeneous as the planning horizon is extended. However, this homogeneity is found to remain inversely related to the cultural, economic and geographic distances among the various Member States. Hence, pan-regional rather pan-European strategies are called for.

China-USA Business Review, 2015

Generation Y is a group of young people, who draw on life to the full, with unlimited possibilities of choice. The segment of young consumers constitutes an attractive target market of many companies functioning on the Internet. The aim of paper is identification and comparison of e-consumers' purchasing behaviors in selected European countries. The results present following aspects of online purchasing process: motives for online shopping, a way of collecting and sources of information about an offer, determinants of product selection, conditions for online shopping and commerce organizational forms on the Internet, and determinants of selection of a shopping place. The extensive objectives of report required narrowing its subject scope and spatial direct research. The subjects of the study were e-consumers aged from 18 to 25, doing online shopping. The study was conducted in 2012 in six ultimately selected European countries: France, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Italy, by a random survey on a sample of 1,800 e-consumers. The thesis was made that the differences of psychographic features (resulting from a national culture) and living conditions (resulting from social-economic development of particular countries) of e-consumers do not significantly influence their purchasing behaviors on the Internet, thanks to which people may treat e-consumers from different European countries as a homogenous group of e-purchasers. However, when analyzing young consumers' behaviors in the virtual scope (on the Internet), this paper may propose a thesis that regardless of a country and culture of origin, these behaviors are similar to each other. Young e-consumers "making a living" from the Internet on a daily basis, search for information in the same sources (www websites, in e-shops, and on Internet forum), in a similar way (e.g., using an Internet browser or a price comparer), and for the same reason (to compare prices of products).

Insight into the Beverage Industry

The chapter focuses on cultural differences in consumption across Europe and describes general attitudes towards consumption and brands, the significance of shopping, and how these are linked to the motives of consumption of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. These topics have been analysed using the Hofstede dimensions, and the evaluation also considers regional differences within the European Union. The main objective of this research is to attempt to understand consumption patterns and national cultural dimensions, general consumption values, and what their connections are to alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinking patterns. The main research question is how cultural styles influence consumption styles within Europe.

Science, Technology and Human Values, 2019

Politically, Europe has been unable to address itself to a constituted polity and people as more than an agglomeration of nation-states. From the resurgence of nationalisms to the crisis of the single currency and the unprecedented decision of a member state to leave the European Union (EU), core questions about the future of Europe have been rearticulated: Who are the people of Europe? Is there a European identity? What does it mean to say, "I am European?" Where does Europe begin and end? and Who can legitimately claim to be a part of a "European" people? The special issue (SI) seeks to contest dominant framings of the question "Who are the people of Europe?" as only a matter of government policies, electoral campaigns, or parliamentary debates. Instead, the contributions start from the assumption that answers to this question exist in data practices where people are addressed, framed, known, and governed as European. The central argument of this SI is that it is through data practices that the EU seeks to simultaneously constitute its population as a knowable, governable entity, and as a distinct form of peoplehood where common personhood is more important than differences.

Journal of East European Management Studies

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2008

In the summer of 2004 we organized a workshop at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) in Berlin about regionalised social data in Germany. From our empirical work we had learned that there were increasingly datasets at many regional levels from different sources available, but that both their combination and the interdisciplinary collaboration of users and producers were still wanting. The workshop proved very stimulating, and the proceedings were published in Grözinger and Matiaske (2005). However, in the course of the workshop the critical question was also raised if today the nation-state could still be seen as an adequate level of analysis or whether it would not be better to move toward international data. We therefore decided to organize a second workshop about regionalized social science data in Europe, which was held in the summer of 2006. Again the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) Group at DIW Berlin was the host of the workshop, since they maintain one of the most used data sets in the world. As with the first workshop we decided to invite data providers, users and methodologists – this time from all over Europe. This volume thus includes contributions from all these different sides.