Annals of Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University Economy, Commerce and Tourism Series

Volume II/2010

The European Consumers Profile in a Global World

Viorica Ionacu
Daniela Vladu
Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University
Faculty of Touristic and Commercial Management, Bucharest, Romania
Email: [email protected]
Abstract
The key to success in business is to focus on the client. You must concentrates
less on the product. The client must be seen as a financial active. The great challenge for
a modern company is to keep their clients longer than their products. From a new point
of view the marketing department has an important role in creating a database of clients.
Some new phenomena have appeared on the base of some less perfect
competition mechanism of Romanias transition to the market economy, avoiding the
European structures and its participation on the international market. The community
citizen must have some characteristic to all the citizens from each participant (partner)
country.
Keywords: consumer, financial active, customer typology, consumer behaviour;
J.E.L. Classification: M30
In the modern marketing, the consumer is placed in the centre of attention, for the
companies interested in a long term full success. In the opinion of Ph. Kotler (2004) we
reached to a customer's economy, an economy where the client is king! It is one of the
results of the capacity excess. The clients, not the goods, are in deficit.
In these conditions, the companies should learn how to focus on the product
and to give up to the concentration on product and replace it with the concentration on
keeping the client. More than that, Kotler (2004) affirmed that If the company doesn't
take care of its clients, there will be someone who will.
The companies should see in the client a financial active, which needs to be
administrated and optimized same as any active. The acceptance of the value of the active
will determinate the companies to recreate their total marketing system, obtaining a
higher rate to attract the clients, using their own products and services and marketing
strategies created and applied.
30 years ago, Peter Drucker appointed the importance of a company to focus on
the client. In this sense, he shows that the purpose of a company is to create a client.
Therefore, the company has two and not only basic functions: marketing and
innovation. Only the marketing and the innovation produce results all the other
represent costs.
The great challenge of a company is to keep their clients longer than their
products. In general the companies spend the most part of their financial resources to

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Annals of Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University Economy, Commerce and Tourism Series
Volume II/2010

attract new clients and they are not concentrating to keep the existing clients and the
transaction volumes they have with them. Almost 70% from the marketing budget is
spent for attracting the new clients, in the conditions when 90% from their expenses come
from transactions with the current clients.
The modern marketing idea has deviated from the perspective of increasing the
company's profit from each made transaction, getting closer of the optimization of the
profit. Therefore, in a not far perspective, an important role comes to maximization of the
data base concerning the clients and adapted to the client's request. The perspective
according to which we need to see a client in each individual should be changed into the
concept according to which we see the individual from each client.
The specialists agree that after Romania joined the European Union, the
estimated impact on the consumer's behaviour will be very different according to their
structures. In this sense, basing on some competition imperfect mechanisms, the
transition to the market economy and the efforts made in order to integrate the European
structures in Romania, certain phenomena already appeared:
Passion for variety concerning the goods;
The confrontation with an enormous variety of goods compared to the planned
economy;
The appearance of an important commercial deficit for many categories of goods
which should normally be equilibrated by an export of industrial Romanian
goods;
The confrontation of Romanian companies, as users, with a conjuncture which
influenced substantial the conditions of developing the activity, especially the
investments and the profit level. Although the volume of the low or very low, the
commercial supplements have disproportional levels, which make the Romanian
products to be less competitive.
Therefore, in relation between the consumers behaviour and the marketing
practice a multidisciplinary approached is welcomed, where the economy,
sociology and psychology are found again. In this sense, the necessity of taking
into consideration many elements appears:
The attitude towards price, because the acquisition act represents an act of
resource allocation. Therefore, the theory of the consumers behaviour cannot
limit only to attitudes and psychological processes. The multidisciplinary
approach represents at the same time an examination of the resource allocation
act and also the attitudes and psychological resources, both of them having the
product as an economic object;
The acquisition act, the multidisciplinary approach requires a substitution vision
between products, marks etc.;
The market study must take into consideration the psychological elements
related to the product and also the elements of the quantitative analyze and
request prospect. The results of individual observation are satisfactory, being
absolutely necessary the transition from microscopic level (individual
observation) to macroscopic level (generalization of collectively level);

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Annals of Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University Economy, Commerce and Tourism Series
Volume II/2010

The product, using the multidisciplinary approach the following things are
relevant: the object of the real choice of the consumer is represented the specific
good with its characteristics and not the product without characteristics. The
product is considered as an economic good, which assures many services of
functional nature, psychological and sociological. The product is an object to
which the consumers attribute it an assembly of satisfactions.
From the marketing point of view, the issues of the consumers behaviour in
multidisciplinary vision have serious implications in the transition from the product
psychology to the sociology of the economic good the product.
For the social marketing the economy of the activities could contribute to the
improvement of the methods of the market segments and consumers, putting at hand
additional criteria.
Proud of his own origins or jealous on the neighbour who has a bigger Intern
Brut Product, the European figure is a jovial one and at the same way weird and very
pleasant. In opinion of Toader (2005) the community citizen should be:
Skilled chef ...... as an Englishman;
Nice ...... as a Finn;
Talkative ...... as a German;
Good driver ...... as a French;
Technical ...... as a Portuguese;
Agile ...... as a Swede;
Handsome ...... as a Luxembourg Man;
Patient ...... as an Austrian;
Calm ...... as an Italian;
Awake ...... as an Irish;
Modest ...... as a Spanish;
Generous ...... as a Dutchman;
Organized ...... as a Greek.
Inside the unique European Market, in order to have success in business,
companies should know deeply the European consumer and especially the consumer from
this community space.
The aimed consumers represent the target of the local, national and regional
markets or from the unique European market. In case of a multinational or transnational
company the target consumers join the global market (Adscliei, 2004).
The globalization is an irreversible process which affects the consumers at the
same time and in equal measures. To be a local in a globalized world its a sign of social
inadequacy and degradation (Bauman, 2005).
The globalization phenomenon has profound effects, appointing the complex
transformation of the human conditions parameters and the phenomenon is in full
development. Using the globalization concept the human practices related to the material
changes and the quality of the surrounding world are explained. The globalization
divides and unites at the same time and the division causes are the same with the ones
which promote the uniformity from the globe. The business development, the
informational commerce, as an ample process has as a result the initiation and

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Annals of Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University Economy, Commerce and Tourism Series
Volume II/2010

development effect of another product of space localization. Between these two

processes there is a tight and permanent communication which determines the difference
between the life standards of the consumers at a planetary level and the differences of
their inside segments. The mobility and liberty of movement promoted the stratification
produces at a planetary level during the post modern era.
Once the information expanded to a planetary level it was created a cybernetic
space, on the top of the fabrication, territorial/urban/architectural space. The elements of
the cybernetic space dont have spatial dimensions. People are not separated anymore of
physical obstacles or temporal distances. The differences from here to there lost their
sense (Bauman, 2005).
The behaviour of a consumption society is radically different than the consumers
from the other known societies.
The expressions we work to live or we live to work, dilemma heard in
present refers to: we need to consume in order to live or we live to consume? Therefore,
the question refers to the fact that we only feel the need to separate life from the
consumption (Bauman, 2005).
In present, because of the time mobility and the consumer space, we see everyday
a custom decrement, except the meta-custom, the custom of changing the customs.
The traditional relation between needs and their satisfaction is backwards: the
promise and the hope of satisfaction ante cede the need of the promised satisfaction and it
will always be more intense and attractive than the existing needs (Bauman, 2005).
In a world of economic, political and social changes, the consumers have new
attractions and at the same time they are satisfied quickly and the development of the
society according to the consumption pattern of the market is ready to change its
attractions extremely fast (consumption goods, services, etc.). The travel represents for
the consumers life a bigger pleasure than reaching the destination (Bauman, 2005).

References
Adscliei, V., 2004. Euromarketing fundamente. Uranus Publishing House, Bucharest, p. 55;
Bauman, Z., 2005. Globalizarea i efectele ei sociale. Antet Publishing House, Bucharest, pp. 21,
80-84;
Kotler, Ph., 2004. Marketing de la A la Z, 80 de concepte pe cate trebuie s le tie orice manager.
CODECS Edition, Bucharest, p. 14;
Toader M., 2005. Eu, europeanul perfect. National Journal (online), available at
http://www.jurnalul.ro/jurnalul-national/jurnalul-national/eu-europeanul-perfect-288710.html,
accessed 15 February 2010;

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