When a $500 Electrolux (ELUXb.ST), opens new tab oven briefly went on sale for 1% of its list price in Hungary last week, within hours shoppers flooded the online store with thousands of orders.
But what looked like the bargain of the century turned out to be a technical glitch and neither the customers had any realistic chance to score such an improbable bargain nor the Swedish home appliance group can count on such exuberant demand.
"We expect weak consumer sentiment to persist in the European market in 2024 as consumers opt for lower prices and delay non-essential or occasional expenditure," Peter Toth, head of Central and Eastern Europe South sales area at Electrolux, told Reuters when asked about the health of demand on the European Union's eastern wing.
The reality across the region is that there are scant signs of a recovery in consumption that governments were counting on to offset weaker demand for exports from a stuttering German economy and pull the region out from last year's inflation-led downturn.
Both the Czech Republic and Hungary slid into recession, while Poland avoided it by the narrowest of margins.
Just four weeks into the new year, the Czech government cut its 2024 growth forecast citing weaker-than-expected recovery in consumption, while the Hungarian central bank has issued a similar warning.
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