Households’ Adjustment to the Economic Crisis and the Impact on the Retail Sector in Romania

This paper aims at a better understanding of how Romanian households’ consumption volumes and trends have changed during the economic crisis and how retailers responded to these changes, a topic under-studied in the Romanian literature despite the fact consumption was the main driver of economic growth previously to the crisis. A qualitative methodology is used, based mainly on secondary data of the Eurostat and the Romanian National Institute of Statistics. Based on this data, we were able to observe that households’ income in real terms has decreased during the crisis in Romania. For the period 2005 – 2012, real earnings have almost stagnated. In 2012, the real annual income represented 100.94% of the incomes of 2005, which indicates an important erosion of the purchasing power of Romanian salaries. Negative evolutions were identified also for the retail sector, as the turnover of retail trade (except motor vehicles and motorcycles) businesses started to decrease in 2007, with a decline more accentuated in 2008, followed by a timid recovery in 2009 and a positive trend in 2012. This adjustments of the households to the effects of the crisis have made retailers to adapt business strategies to the new emerging type of consumer - the wise consumer.