Structure and Determinants of Consumer Expenditures

Article deals with consumer expenditures development. Concretely with a potential which marketing research disposes with within these questions. a brief literature overview shows consumer expenditures as a result of product and service seeking, from that consumers expect satisfying of their needs. On the basis of introduced determination authors realized a marketing research which main aim was to enable more detailed insight into this economic category. The data was divided according to the data of the European Bureau of Statistics, the percentage compound of consumption expenditures. For better comparison possibilities, the structure of individual market subject consumption expenditures was added. The structure was averaged to original 15 European Union member countries, which are considered as the most developed regions. Before analysing the results of this marketing study the structure of consumer expenditures development of Czech households is briefly outlined. Its scheme shows a gradual convergence to EU15 countries. Realized facts in combination with a marketing insight into consumer expenditures realization served as a starting-point for an analysis of factors forming a consumer’s buying decision. Summary of results enabling both relative and absolute comparison through surveyed consumption categories and influencing factors is presented at the end of the article. Except confirmation of intuitively perceived facts (whose explicit confirmation authors regard as exceptionally valuable), there were found several relatively surprising facts providing new possible points of view on consumer decision making process and results.