The profile of Romanian consumer and how the economic crisis impacts the consumer mentality

The paper deals with the Romanian consumer’s profile, analyzed in terms of household expenditure structure, by main destinations for food, non-food, services and taxes components, and household’s consumption, in terms of size and structure of food consumption.Synthetic images of quantitative parameters were made using national and international statistical data, between 1991 and 2009. We took into account the total expenditure of households, total consumption expenditure, the structure of monetary consumption expenditure, the average consumption of main food products, in structure and dynamics.Diagnostic analyses were performed by multi-annual approach of these indicators, important warning signals in the evolution of the household consumption. The multi-country and multi-annual benchmarking contributes to the highlighting of the national consumer profile, compared to those of the other 30-40 countries. These issues underline the extent of the economic crisis seen by the national households like an influence in shaping the consumer’s mentality