Consumer Resilience in Romania within a Dynamic Food Consumption Context

Facing unseen global challenges, it is necessary to understand how individuals maintain stability in their basic needs, especially in an emerging economy such as Romania. This paper investigates consumer resilience within the Romanian food market, a sector currently defined by high volatility, fast pace rising prices, and shifting supply chain dynamics. A review of the current scientific literature reveals a growing interest in consumer resilience, yet much of the existing research focuses on Western economies, and approaches the issue from a general sustainability perspective, rather than as a direct focus on how consumers adapt to market changes, overlooking the specificity of Eastern European economies. This research aims to offer some insights that can contribute to fill this gap by presenting theories of adaptive capacity and proactive consumer behavior. A structured survey was developed and circulated online to obtain relevant and up-to-date data on the main factors that influence food choice in times of crisis and coping mechanisms by different income, residence and education groups. The most important findings show some categories of consumers manage to adapt better to inflationary pressures, for example, while some tend to lean more on digital technology as a tool to create resilience. This study offers and image of how Romanian consumers adapt their habits to inflation by applying saving strategies. The survey results confirm that in hard times, Romanians choose cheaper products and brands, to maintain their financial stability, and this finding could offer local producers` informational resources to build strategies that strengthen their relationship with consumers in the long term.