Consumer Behaviour in Conditions of Dual Quality of Daily Consumption Goods in Slovakia

Abstract

The problem of dual quality of daily consumption goods in the countries of the European Union has been known for a while. Well-known manufacturers do not offer their products in the same composition and quality in all countries of the join European market but produce two variants. The first variant for Western countries includes other basic and auxiliary ingredients, other proportions of basic raw materials, other active ingredients, as the second variant designated for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Research into this problem has been conducted mainly in the Czech Republic. However, several specific product tests have already been conducted in Slovakia, confirming that the composition of products purchased in Western countries (Austria and Germany in particular) is different from products purchased in the Slovak Republic, but the research of consumers' opinions is lacking. This paper addresses the issue whether consumers are aware of the dual quality problem of daily consumption goods, whether they are consider the information they receive and how their consumer behaviour changes accordingly.

Dual quality of products: myths and facts through the opinions of millennial consumers

“…These findings provide various ideas for possible solutions to this problem that would suit this specific consumer segment. Some researches confirm that consumers (including those in Slovakia) increasingly prefer quality over price when buying goods, especially food products (GfK, 2008;GfK, 2015;KuSnírova, 2016;GfK, 2017;Bartkova et al, 2018). In turn, this research's findings indicated that this fact also applies to the Millennial generation, for which the quality at the time of purchase is more important than the price of the goods.…”

“…These hypotheses were formulated based on previous research studies conducted on the issue of dual quality perceptions (Bartkova et al, 2018;Bartkova, 2019;Bartkova et al, 2019;Veselovska, 2020). However, these surveys focused on customers of all age segments without distinguishing the differences in consumer behaviour that age could create.…”