Changes in consumer behavior on the market with food[Změny chování spotřebitelů na trhu s potravinami]

Czech Republic has experienced significant changes on the market with food in last two decades. The paper presents summary of results of conducted analyses focusing on changes in levels of most important food categories, changes in consumer preferences, and suggests what trends we can expect in the near future. The analyses were based on date from Czech Statistical Office Yearbooks, EUROSTAT, INCOMA and GfK, and data from primary researches conducted on sample of total 2522 households in the Czech Republic through questionnaire researches in 2005, 2006 and 2007. The results show that in the Czech Republic, the ratio of expenditures for food out of total consumer expenditures is slowly decreasing and advances to (still lower) level typical for traditional EU countries. We have experienced growth of demand for products with higher added value; customers put more emphasis on perceived quality, longer durability and special product characteristics. Czech consumers increase their consumption of vegetables and fruit, bottled beverages, wine and alcoholic beverages, cheese, they decreased their consumption of meat (in total), milk and potatoes, stagnation was typical for bakery products, sugar and fats and oils. Development in all social classes was very similar. For the future, we can expect growing interest for food products in smaller packages and targeted at specific needs, growing demand for food products with higher added value, consumption of food formerly unusual for the Czech, more frequent out-of-home eating, and growing differences between individual segments of social groups, mainly due to uneven income distribution.