Financing the consumers and new dynamics in time of crisis: An analysis of a well-known furniture and multinational store in Bari, Italy

In 2007, an international crisis began due to the dissemination of bad debts, which spilled over to 2008. The global economy is still facing its consequences. This crisis is serious and its consequences are particularly long and painful. In a research of 2011, the economist John Taylor named “the great deviation” as “the recent period when macro-economic policies are based more on interventionist, less based on rules and less predictable”. Taylor’s appreciation of the failure of these policies has long been discussed, but the pain that governments’ and banks’ mistakes have caused us is widely pervasive. In the last years, the American domain has slowed down but no other country seems to be ready to take its place. Hence, it derives a state of continuous economic uncertainty inside the financial markets. One example is the need, in full compliance with the economic crisis, not to deprive oneself of the money supply, but rather to purchase, resorting "to the consumer loan." Indeed, the consumer loan is not only used to purchase goods, but also for obtaining service. This study will examine consumers’ purchases financed by a well-known multinational furniture, Bari store at Apulia region. Descriptive statistics are used to analyze consumption, income and consumption choices by examining the data collected at the time of loan subscription and stored in a special database. Results show that the borrowing is surprisingly higher with higher income levels.