Consumer behavior of region's population and the features of their adaptation to the economic crisis conditions in 2014-2015

Economic crises are an inevitable and natural phenomenon of market development. The 2014-2015 crisis in Russia was caused by both internal structural problems in the economy and external causes, primarily Western sanctions and the declined world oil prices. Crisis processes affected Russian regions, including the Vologda Oblast. During the crisis, the main macr-oeconomic indicators and indicators of the population’s quality of life and standard of living demonstrated negative performance. Crisis phenomena in the economy have a significant impact on household consumption, significantly limiting consumer choice, forcing people to optimize their budget, change consumer activity, practices, habits and styles of consumption in response to the decline in consumer opportunities. The purpose for the study is to analyze the trends in consumer behavior of the region’s population and the features of their adaptation to the economic crisis conditions. The study of trends in material consumption of the region’s residents is based on data from the Federal State Statistics Service, the territorial body of the Federal State Statistics Service of the Vologda Oblast, as well as public opinion monitoring of the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Science “Vologda Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences”. Multiple regression analysis in the R-studio software environment is used to analyze the factors influencing the changes in population’s consumer behavior. The studies indicate that during 2014-2015, the sphere of consumption demonstrated negative trends. The declining estimates of goods and services consumption were due to a decrease in the population’s income growth rates and increased inflation. The adaptation of population’s consumer behavior in the Vologda Oblast to crisis conditions of 2014-2015 took place in three directions: increased share of food expenses in the structure of consumer spending, reduced number (volume) of goods and services consumption, deterioration of the quality of purchased goods. These mechanisms of adaptation to crisis conditions in 2014-2015 among the residents of the Vologda Oblast demonstrate serious transformations of population’s consumer behavior, which in the long term can lead to violation of the reproduction of human potential.