Central European Business Review

3-3

Authors: Ondřej Machek

Editorial

14-22

Authors: Peter Baláž, Juraj Bayer

Since 2007, globalization of the world economy has led to the expansion of the financial crisis. It affects the long-term international negative positions of EU members. They reacted to the new situation by carrying out structural reforms and by support of new adaptation programs. An important element of this process was the preparing of the convergence of the national energy policies in the framework of the Europe 20-20-20 program, which should remain one of the determining elements of their success in support of the international competitiveness of the EU.

37-49

Authors: Stanislav Richter

This article elaborates the export promotion framework in the Czech Republic. It reviews the current literature and introduces the basic approaches and objectives that should be followed by a properly established export promotion system and describes the historical as well as contemporary development of the export support scheme in the Czech Republic. Subsequent research was then conducted in order to obtain a basic idea how the awareness about export support is spread among Czech companies. Outcomes of the survey are then used as inputs to suggest how to increase the effectiveness of export support.

61-73

Authors: Gabor Szucs

The present study aims to investigate the economic processes taking place in the Hungarian automotive industry primarily by means of descriptive and multivariate statistical models. The purpose of the analysis is to present the performance of the sector via the ratios describing the operation. First the database and the applied methods – which are the factor and cluster analysis – will be described. Statement of the results begins with a descriptive statistical analysis of the financial ratios, where besides market share we get a whole picture of the operation of the determinative companies of the branch and the factors influencing the last six years. The capital structure ratios are examined in a separate chapter, where the changes of the last 10 years can be followed. The multivariate statistical models try to present a complex picture of the characteristics of the economic field and the underlying boundaries by means of the different ratios. On the basis of these findings, the study concludes that the automotive industry, which is named as a driving force of the economy, maintains its unbroken momentum predominantly due to the foreign-owned segment. Despite the given circumstances, the role of the liabilities is not of great importance.

7-13

Authors: Tahal, Radek

One of the topical themes of today´s marketing is customer loyalty. There are many tools that can be used to attract a customer and make him loyal. Most frequently applied are special loyalty programs. Some of them are well designed; others are often difficult to understand and they do not bring positive effect. This paper concentrates on e-shop loyalty programs with regard to the young generation of customers. Based on primary data, the goals of e-shops’ loyalty programs are compared to the loyalty benefits preferred by customers. Whereas e-shop providers often remunerate their customers on the scheme of cumulative purchase history, customers appreciate an instant reward, regardless of whether it’s small or not.

18-27

Authors: Jelica Marković, Lukrecija Djeri, Ivana Blešić, Adam Galamboš, Tamaš Galamboš

This paper examined customers’ perceived importance and performance of shopping center ambience on the examples of the Mercator shopping center and Sad Novi Bazaar shopping center in Novi Sad, Serbia. The shopping center ambience was examined through exterior and interior attributes. It was found that a number of them are very important to customers and their shopping behavior. According to the present research, the most important exterior attributes are: address and location, parking availability, congestion and traffic, exterior display windows and entrances. The most important interior attributes are: cleanliness, temperature, merchandise, lighting, music, scents, absence of tobacco smoke, width of aisles and P.A. usage. The paper also provided information for two studied shopping centers with ambience attributes that performed well or not and everything was presented on the importance-performance grids, which can serve managers as guidelines for further development.

36-43

Authors: Slawomir Czarniewski

The article presents the idea of gaining a position of competitive advantage by companies operating in the knowledge-based economy and in the age of modern technology. The rate of change in companies’ environments forces organizations to react quickly to clients’ needs. In recent years, there has been an observed systematic increase in the importance of communicating customer value in Poland. This paper shows changes (trends) in the system of market communication in the age of modern technology and changes in the economy. The author presents the mechanisms and effects of communication in age new technology in Poland. Modern technologies enable the collection, storage and transmission of information. Reflections contained in the paper do not have definite characteristics and should be treated as an opinion in the discussion.

54-56

Authors: Tomáš Poucha

Branislav Šebo is the Country General Manager of IBM Czech Republic and leader for the central region, including Czech Republic and Slovakia. In this interview, he talks about the main trends in business, in particular in the IT industry. He also highlights the specifics of Central Europe from the managerial point of view and the quality of educational systems in this region.

7-12

Authors: Michael Bahles

In international macroeconomics, there is a specific concept explaining deviations in international trade relations showing that countries have a bias and a strong preference for the consumption of their home-country goods. This article presents an application of the concept on brand preferences in West and East Germany, where a home-bias-inconsumption has been observed for the East of Germany. It is the first application of the concept on the territory of brand preference that explains the strong rootedness of the Eastern German consumers to their regionally known and familiar brands. The goal of the article is to elaborate more deeply the differences in attitudes towards brands between Eastern and Western German consumers. The main research method is secondary analysis of the data collected in two large research studies: (1) “West-East brand study”, and (2) “Consumer Analysis”. The results of the presented study have interesting managerial implications in brand management, showing that brands should utilize their local rootedness.

20-26

Authors: Alena Farková, Marketa Lhotaková

A lot has been said and written about online communication in the past several years, and just as any new phenomenon, online communication is a disputable topic in many companies. The objective of this article is to analyse the behaviour of Czech consumers online and their preferences for the different online communication channels in the consumer goods category. We have examined what digital media are and how companies can use them, including a close examination of the Czech Internet population. As many of the research studies and data lead to different conclusions, especially concerning communication on social media, we have decided to apply the theoretical knowledge on a case of the Tassimo brand, a capsule coffee machine maker. This study lead us to the conclusion that consumer relevant online communication is about ensuring easily accessible clear information, especially via websites, reviews and recommendations, while social media play a minor role at the moment.

35-41

Authors: Inka Neumaierová, Ivan Neumaier

Financial analysis is an essential tool for those interested in assessing the economic management situation of enterprises and subsequent decision making. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the capacity the IN Financial Analysis (INFA) system has to inform, i.e. its information capability. This is a tool that allows users to comprehensively assess the economic management of enterprises in that it causally links the indicators of financial controlling and risk controlling. We apply it to the best industrial enterprises in the Czech Republic in 2011 and 2012 and at the same time use the representative database of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic.

1-14

Authors: Dina Lončarić, Marina Perišić Prodan, Lidija Bagarić

This paper contributes to the debate about the relationships among tourism experience co-creation, satisfaction with vacation experience, satisfaction with the impact of vacation on overall life, life satisfaction and behavioral intentions. The main purpose of this paper is to point out the importance of tourist engagement in the co-creation of the vacation experience and the impact of satisfaction with that experience on life satisfaction and behavioral intentions. A survey was conducted on a convenience sample of 263 international tourists who visited several tourist destinations in Croatia. To test the proposed model, partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed. It has been established that co-creation of tourism experience significantly contributes to the satisfaction of tourists staying in a destination, which has a positive effect on life satisfaction and future behavioral intentions.

34-60

Authors: Jindřich Špička

The article aims to evaluate the impacts of strategic investments in biogas plants on the economic sustainability and vulnerability of farms with a special focus on investment subsidies. Data spanning 148 farms from the Czech Republic over a thirteen-year period (2004-2016) are used to estimate random effects panel regression models to quantify the short-term and long-term economic sustainability and vulnerability of integrated energy production in the context of mixed type farming. Investments in biogas plants can negatively affect the viability of agricultural companies in the short term because farms which invest in biogas suffer from debt pressures due to inadequate revenues in the construction phase. However, in the long term, the effects of biogas plant operations are positive: economic sustainability is enhanced and vulnerability is reduced mainly due to public support for renewable energy production in the form of feed-in tariffs and green bonuses. Comparing farms that received investment subsidies with nonparticipating farms indicates a high deadweight loss effect which means that programme participants would undertake a similar investment without programme support. However, the investment subsidies improve recipients´ cash flows.

16

Authors: Aliaa El Shoubaki, Meike Stephan

The life satisfaction of entrepreneurs is a subject of increasing importance. Research shows that entrepreneurs are more satisfied with their jobs when compared to wage earners. However, it remains poorly understood how satisfied entrepreneurs are with their lives. We argue that the family can contribute largely to how individuals feel about their lives. In particular, research suggests that the life partner influences the individual’s life satisfaction differently depending on their occupation (employed or self-employed). Thus, in this paper we investigate the effect of life partners on the life satisfaction of entrepreneurs. To do so, we use arguments from the family embeddedness perspective on entrepreneurship and test them using data from the 2016 cohort of the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) and regression models. We find that the life partner contributes positively to the life satisfaction of entrepreneurs and wage earners. This effect is greater for entrepreneurs without employees as compared to entrepreneurs with employees. These results contribute to the understanding of an under researched outcome of entrepreneurship which is the life satisfaction of entrepreneurs.

25

Authors: Květa Olšanová, Gina Gook, Marija Zlatić

The topics of sustainability and strategic corporate social responsibility are currently being discussed by different stakeholders on academic, industry and various activist levels; however, the level to which they are incorporated into organizations’ strategy varies significantly by industry. The needs of the customers as well as the requirements from state governance may challenge the currently relatively “CSR silent” luxury industry to become more active in its contribution to social responsibility. This paper investigates the topic of corporate social responsibility within the context of the luxury industry, the extent to which customers are aware of CSR and the significance of the role it plays in their customer journey. The authors provide a literature review focused on exploring CSR variables that impact customer purchase intention in general and specifically in the luxury segment, from which they identify key CSR measures and conduct qualitative research to develop a theoretical framework. It suggests that purchase intention in the luxury segment is dependent on the luxury values, individual sustainable dimension and awareness of the brand’s CSR, the last two relationships being potentially moderated by certain conditions such as demographics and general positive attitudes towards CSR and sustainability. The model’s output is in the formulation of several propositions for further research. Overall, the qualitative interviews indicate that while knowledge of the specific CSR activities of particular luxury brands was low, luxury buyers in this research tend to express quite positive attitudes towards CSR in general, were rational, and very open to considering CSR as an added value to their luxury shopping.