Poverty and consumption: cheaper products are more popular than promotions

GfK Hungária carried out a survey on the consumption habits of more than 3 million Hungarians, who live below the poverty line. Despite being poor, these people spend significant amounts on the market – they simply have different focal points. Overhead costs have increased significantly in the past few years; therefore poor people have less to spend on daily consumer goods. With the exception of agglomerations, those who live in small villages and are unemployed are quite probable to belong to the group of poor consumers. Otília Dörnyei, GfK Hungária’s client service director told that these people use modern retail channels less frequently. From HUF 100 they spend 36 in small shops, while those in the middle class only spend HUF 26 in these.

Cheap products are popular among poor people and somewhat surprisingly they do not look for promotions with greater intensity. This fact also has to do with the smaller number of shops in villages. They consume soda water, syrup and sour cream in large quantity as most of the time they eat at home; they also buy lots of hair dye. Poor families tend to have more children, but they cannot and do not economise on costs related to children.