Revealed! The spending habits of Baltic households

  • 2014-02-03
  • From wire reports, RIGA

Most Baltic households spend up to 50 percent of their monthly income on food, a survey shows.

The survey by the GfK research company and Nozare.lv proves that the lower the income, the greater the percentage of income spent on basic needs, including food products.

The study finds that 53 percent of respondents in Estonia and Lithuania spend up to 50 percent of monthly income on food, whereas in Latvia the figure is 48 percent.

On the other hand, 22 percent of Latvian and Lithuanian residents spend only 25 percent of monthly income on food, as do 18 percent of residents in Estonia.

A total of 19 percent of respondents in Latvia, 18 percent in Estonia and 17 percent in Lithuania said they were spending up to 75 percent of the household's monthly income on food.

The study also shows that quality of food products is the main factor for the Baltic residents when buying food, as confirmed by 57 percent of respondents. Various discount campaigns were named by 47 percent of respondents and product freshness by 40 percent.

The other important factors include low price (as stated by 39 percent of respondents), prior positive experience (32 percent), product ingredients (22 percent), healthiness (19 percent).

Packaging, other people's recommendations, brand names and ecological origins of a product are not considered important factors.

Estonians are the most convinced that local food products are of good quality - two-thirds of Estonian respondents said that quality of food products in their country was good enough.

One-fourth of Latvians and Lithuanians, however, said that they did not consider local food products of good enough quality.
The survey was carried out at the end of 2013.