Worried While Prospering – A study of the contradictions between consumer confidence and spending in Hungary

Understanding how people feel about their financial situation and how they act upon that is a noble challenge to take on, but it is due to this complexity that such research can deliver a significant amount of practical relevance and added value to the scientific disciplines. This study examines the occasional discrepancy between declining consumer sentiment and incresing spending in Hungary. Through a well-constructed deliberative investigation the difficulties of this complex topic were turned into important insights and useful learnings, for theoretical consideration as well as for practical utilization. The first key element was the selection of the phenomenon in the focus of the study. The sentiment of people regarding their financial circumstances and the related actions (like spending or saving) are more than just theoretical concepts: they do have a clear manifestation, one that almost everyone experiences. Due to this background, the research was able to rely on and benefit from solid theoretical foundations and a wide range of empirical data. On the other hand, this wide-spread embeddedness of the topic made it challenging to find a proper perspective for the analysis. This is where the second main achievement was realized. In order to maintain the focus of the research, a deliberative investigation method was applied in a mixed method research form. The benefit of this approach is provided by combining an inductive review of the secondary data, including theoretical foundations and empirical findings, with a deductive primary research that validated the hypotheses and revealed additional insights. The results that emerged from this special combination of methods provided important details about how and why people spend, what makes people discontent with their financial situation, what can caise a discrepancy between higher spending and lower consumer confidence levels, how the measurement can be fine-tuned, as well as holistic recommendations for economic and social decision-makers. The findings of ...