Behaviour of financial consumers in banking market: a central and eastern European perspective regarding gender gap

The international financial crisis has demonstrated the fragility of the international system, the weak supervision of markets by public authorities and, the precarious position of consumers in the face of large transnational giants that dominate the banking markets. The crisis highlighted the vulnerability of the financial consumers, unethical behaviour of financial institutions, but even so the corporate social responsibility practice seems to be accepted by the banking system. This shows that customers, nowadays, have to pay huge attention in understanding if financial institutions are really following ethical strategies or if they are just interested in promoting themselves using the sustainability as a window dressing approach. The aim of the research is the analysis of individual's adaptation to prolonged crisis situations specific to countries, with a precarious financial education of the population and the gender gap in terms of the degree of financial inclusion for specific indicators.