“Great expectations by consumers” is probably the most common phrase whenever we talk of market changes and marketing development in countries in transition. I had also felt strong expectations when landing on Warsaw airport ten days ago, to attend the 2nd ESOMAR East and Central European Conference. As a matter of fact, I have high expectations for every ESOMAR event, ever since my first ESOMAR encounter in Monte Carlo in 1986. Interesting and relevant papers, high quality presentations, and perfect organization, are my associations with ESOMAR brand. But this time I had reasons, to expect even more, than just another good seminar. Market and marketing developments in former socialist countries are of my primary concern, as of ordinary consumer, and as of researcher.

At the 1990 ESOMAR Congress in Monte Carlo, I presented a paper in Special Session “Where East meets the West”, and ever since I have tried to participate at every event concerning the above topic. Ljubljana, 1991 and Budapest, 1993 were the two places where ESOMAR had such meetings, but both were too early for a more complex evaluation of development in Central and Eastern Europe. Five years period seems more like the right time to put things into perspective, so I have truly looked forward to a seminar with such promising title.

But as Dariusz Rosati, Chief of Transition Economies Section at UN and key speaker at the seminar, put it, five years ago there had been optimism and expectations, now we see disappointment and frustration among consumers in Central and Eastern Europe. Though we can observe signs of improvement in all transition countries, such as no shortage, inflation under control and growth of private sector, we can see even more of unpleasant surprises. Everywhere there is a severe recession, large and long term unemployment, persistent inflation, still dispersed and passive ownership, slow reform of the banking sector, and modest foreign investment. After more or less soft revolutions, in all, but one country, we have governing parties with roots in socialist past, showing astonishing consensus on a very tight monetary policies. And claim for more imaginative monetary policies has been one of the main messages in Rosati’s excellent introduction to the situation in Central and Eastern Europe.

Unfortunately, during the course of seminar, few papers matched the promising beginning, and further raised expectations. Conference program was divided into five sections: Micro-economic Developments, Changes in Aspirations and Social Values, Strategy and Behavior, The Role of Brands, Media and Advertising. Due to such broad concept of the conference, papers were very heterogeneous, some more in the field of management, other going into purely academic areas. Too often, authors presented cases on descriptive level, or research in exploratory phase, without really saying what had been their lesson. The worst situation was, when somebody from big research network agency took the stand only for promotional purposes. To some extent, participants in their comments tried to overcome such shortcomings, but time had been too limited to really get discussion going. Had there been workshops for smaller groups, authors and participants could certainly benefit more from each other.

Despite above criticism, several papers left strong impression on me:

• Kolio Kolev of GfK-Bulgaria, probably gave us the most insightful description of a society in transition, which could never be caught by numbers.
• Triin Vihalemm of EMOR Estonia, showed in her paper very creative approach for designing marketing strategies on fast developing markets.
• Marek Boguszak and Jennifer Gibbs of AISA Czech Republic, and three other papers were introducing interesting consumer typologies in Poland and in Czech Republic, but unfortunately we had no time to compare them or discuss their practical value.
• Jim Williams of Young & Rubicam, Europe and Malcom Mather of Gallup UK, introduced results from their Brand Asset Valuator, concerning Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia. This project may be an ideal approach to study intercultural and international market differences, using brands as the new, universal language.
• Peter Damisch of GfK Austria shared some data from the panel on consumer brand purchase behavior, from which we could see that local brands in countries in transition play similar role as noname products or dealer’s brands in highly developed markets.
• Jane Perry of Young & Rubicam Europe had very profound presentation of emerging media scene in Central and Eastern Europe, and one could only wish to get such excellent overview of other marketing areas.

Wednesday morning we had one whole hour for panel discussion, starting with brilliant cartoons about consumer life in transition economies. It may be the only true about an average consumer from former socialist countries, that he used to have full pockets in empty stores but now having empty pockets in stores with abundant supply. Discussion then went into relationship between client and researcher, showing high expectations and lack of trust on both sides. However, there has been general optimistic view on this ever-changing relationship, where further growth could be expected for international, as well as for local, domestic research suppliers.

Social side of the conference is also worth mentioning; due to extensive evening brand image study of Polish vodkas, we experienced, for market researchers, relatively wild party. But this unusual event may also be related to interesting national structure of participants. Among fifty participants, who actually traveled to Warsaw (other thirty were Polish or were based in Warsaw), we had quite representative sample of the researchers population from so called “new Europe”, with Czechs and Slovenes taking the lead. From “old or real Europe” countries, only UK and Austria were more strongly represented, which might be of little surprise.

Conference Chairman, Rudolf Bretschneider, had probably anticipated that conference will provide few answers, when saying in his opening speech, “total understanding is difficult”. When closing, two days later, he restrained himself from any conclusions, what was certainly the safest thing to do. But in response to my original high expectations and later small disappointments, I definitely conclude, coming to Warsaw ESOMAR Conference was the right choice.

Damjan Janez (1995), "Toward a market economy: Beyond the point of no return," ESOMAR NewsBrief, Harrow, (Vol. 6), 18-19.