THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE END CONSUMERS OF THE LOGISTIC PRODUCT FLOWS IN WESTERN UKRAINE

Abstract

Consumption is the end stage of the logistic movement of the final products. The main end consumer of these flows are people (individuals and households). Therefore, human-geographical analysis, directed on the regional spatial population pattern, is important for optimization of logistic flows. In this paper, the population of the region is segmented by three important aspects: place of residence (urban or rural), sex (female, male), main age groups. The maximal amounts of consumers in the Western Ukraine is concentrated in Lviv region, while Chernivtsi region has minimal amount of consumers. Consumers from urban settlements dominate in Lviv, Khmelnytskyi and Volyn regions, while rural consumers prevail in all other regions. Generally, in Western region of Ukraine, rural consumers dominate over urban ones. The share of female consumers dominates over the share of male consumers in the Western Ukraine in whole and in all separately taken districts. Administrative districts, located along the Western Ukrainian borderland, have deviation from the average regional structure, specifically, a larger share of female population. On the contrary, deviation from the average regional structure in internal regions consists in a larger share of male population. Conserning the age structure, consumers of the working age dominate in Western region of Ukraine, and the younger working age customers prevail over the older working age consumers. Zakarpattya and northern part of Volyn have relatively larger share of younger working age customers, while Podolian areas are characterized by relatively larger share of older working age consumers.