Corina Pelau

Clusters of Tourism Consumers in Romania

Abstract The analysis and determination of typologies of tourism consumers has been a major concern for scientists, specialists and companies as well. Knowing the demographic and motivational factors that determine consumers to buy tourism products can have a major impact on the marketing strategy by a more efficient targeting of customers. This article presents the results of a research that aims to determine the factors which influence the buying decision for tourism products and the clusters of consumers resulted from these factors. 90 persons have been surveyed pursuing the determination of the most important factors for buying a tourism product and the correlation between them. The factor analysis and the cluster analysis have been applied with the help of the SPSS program. The results of the factor analysis group the items into six factors. In a second phase, the consumers have been divided into three categories based on a hierarchical Ward cluster analysis. The three clusters have been defined and analyzed and recommendations for the future research have been given.

Cluster Analysis for the Determination of Innovative and Sustainable Oriented Regions in Europe

Abstract In the past decades the preoccupation of decision-makers towards innovation and sustainable development has gained a major importance in the policy of most countries in Europe. On one hand, efficient innovation can differentiate a country or a region from another and make a difference in the intense increasing economic, technological and social competition. On the other hand, the orientation towards sustainable development assures a clean and unpolluted, social oriented and healthy environment as a framework for the growth of a country or a region. In many cases, innovation and sustainable development go hand in hand, as innovations contribute to the development of clean technologies, while sustainable societies assure the proper environment and background for stimulating the innovation research. The objective of this research is to determine the cluster of countries in Europe which are rather oriented to innovation or to sustainable development or both and to forecast their future developments and tendencies. In order to achieve this objective, the multivariate cluster analysis was applied with the help of the SPSS program, for data provided by the Eurostat for several innovation, sustainable development and contextual indicators. In a first step, for each of the analyzed countries, the values of the indicators have been collected for the same period and the correlations among them have been determined. In the second phase the number of clusters and the cluster membership of each country was determined, by running the Ward cluster analysis. Based on the results, the characteristics of each cluster of countries was defined.

The influence of personality types on the impulsive buying behavior of a consumer

Abstract The relation between the personality of consumers and their buying behavior has been a very much debated topic in the field of marketing researches. Several studies have shown that personality has a significant influence on the way consumer behave in their social and economic environment, in the way they approach and accept innovations and new developed products or even in their shopping behavior. This paper presents the influence of the Myers-Briggs personality dichotomies on the impulsive consumer behavior and the openness to buy newly launched products. Discriminant analysis was used to evaluate primary collected data and the core results show that extroverted, feeling-based decision-makers and perception oriented persons have more frequently an impulsive buying behavior at shopping sessions. Extroverts and intuition based consumers are more open to new products. The temptation to buy attractive unplanned products is higher for extroverts, feeling based decision makers and perceiving persons. Despite of this, none of the personality dichotomies influences the amount and care for spending in stores, this being influenced by other independent factors, mainly economic ones.

Changes in the Romanian Consumer Behavior

The consumer behavior is an important aspect for the way marketing departments develop their strategies. One of the biggest challenges in consumer behavior analysis is to determine its dynamic. On one hand, there are changes at the level of each individual when passing from one stage of his life to another, but on the other hand, there are also changes determined by the society such as changes in values and norms, trends, technological developments. For this reason, in consumer behavior it is important to analyze this dynamic and try to find the reasons for these changes, because only by this forecasts can be made. In this article, there are presented several aspects of the Romanian consumer behavior and its dynamic. There are analyzed the amount spent depending on age, the frequency of buying, the time spend in the store and other aspects regarding the emotional aspects. By analyzing these changes, there can be observed the changes in the consumer behavior from one generation to another.