D12 - Consumer Economics: Empirical AnalysisReturn

Our study approaches consumers’ orientation towards e-commerce during disruptive times, taking the COVID-19 pandemic, the most prominent recent disruptive event, as a reference. The analysis of the phenomenon was targeted at two differently developed European countries, Romania and Germany, which were investigated. Considering the time span from January 2020 to January 2022, Google Trends was used to track the search volumes associated with the main e-commerce platforms in the analysed countries, serving as a proxy measure for gauging consumers’ orientation towards e-commerce. Based on sound sentiment and quantitative analyses, our study revealed no statistically significant correlation between consumers’ orientation towards e-commerce and the negativity of news in the media reporting on COVID-19 topics. In contrast to that, the investigation revealed statistically significant positive correlations between consumers’ orientation towards e-commerce and the incidence of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Germany and only partially in Romania. Moreover, consumers’ orientation towards e-commerce was influenced by regulatory interventions, such as the enforced lockdown measures. Particularly during the initial surge of COVID-19 cases, a strong consumer orientation towards e-commerce coincided, from a temporal perspective, with the imposition of lockdown measures. Framed by consumer behaviour literature, our study outlines different behavioural characteristics of consumers during disruptive times – in our case, health crises – and derived typologies of consumers with direct influence on entrepreneurial practice.
Implications for Central European audience: Theoretically placed in the field of consumer behaviour research, our study adds to the literature as it reveals insights about consumers’ orientation towards e-commerce during disruptive times. Focusing on the most recent prominent disruptive phenomenon, the COVID-19 pandemic, our paper also has practical implications of entrepreneurial relevance. By outlining invaluable insights into consumers’ behaviour and their orientation towards e-commerce during the pandemic, our study might set starting points in designing entrepreneurial strategies for survival or development during disruptive times (e.g., health crises).

The success of sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) depends upon the active support of all stakeholders. Thus, it is highly relevant and becomes the goal of this paper to perform a pilot case study of the negative determinants of readiness of the new Central European generation of financially sufficiently strong consumers to support CSR, in particular, to answer two research questions: (i) which is the prevailing determinant and (ii) whether it is gender-sensitive. Therefore, 53 male and 53 female Generation Z students from a private university in Prague, ready to pay a CSR bonus, were surveyed in the summer of 2021 regarding the negative determinants of their decisions. The collected answers were statistically processed via cross-tabulation and chi-squared test measures, and the dependence between negative determinants and genders was considered to answer both research questions. The data analysis implies four prevailing negative determinants, two of them related to the infodemic, represented differently by male and female members of Generation Z. This leads to propositions linked to prior studies and advancing them in a new direction. Namely, this indicative pilot case study suggests that Generation Z's readiness to support CSR by paying a CSR bonus is eroded by the infodemic and that male members of Generation Z are more sensitive in this respect than female members.
Implications for Central European audience: This article targets the underestimated issue of factors deterring committed young consumers from their support to sustainability via their readiness to pay a CSR bonus. It empirically points out the relevance of proper information and the negative and gender-sensitive impacts of the infodemic. Theoretical implications include a pioneering contribution to the conceptual appreciation, methodological processing and assessment of particular aspects of infodemic and negative CSR determinants for an emerging cohort of Central European consumers. Practical implications include the dramatic importance of enhancement of awareness and practical suggestions regarding how to inform these male and female consumers and engage them in sustainability and CSR.

Perceived price and perceived quality are two generic factors influencing purchasing decisions. Their importance is also connected with the effect of the country of origin. The main aim of the article is to examine the perception of price and quality in the context of individual countries of origin of the European Union and influence of the consumer ethnocentrism on this perception. From the point of view of methodology, we use general philosophical-scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, scientific abstraction etc.) and, to a large extent, also methods of descriptive and inductive statistics. Specifically, we use correlation analysis to examine the direction and intensity of relationships, cluster analysis to examine the similarities of individual countries of the European Union in terms of perceived price and quality, as well as a one-way ANOVA test to verify hypotheses. Scale tools for measuring perceived quality, perceived price, and the degree of consumer ethnocentrism achieve a high degree of estimation of validity and reliability (estimated using McDonald's omega and Cronbach's alpha). The results indicate differences in the perception of price and quality of individual countries of origin of food. It can be assumed that the level of consumer ethnocentrism is below average in the conditions of Slovakia, and it has an impact on food evaluation only in the home country. The results can be used both for marketing and in the conditions of international trade, tourism, and in many other fields of theory and praxis.
Implications for Central European audience: Knowledge of the perception of price and quality of individual countries is important for international trade and marketing. Knowledge of the perception of these two factors helps to create strategies for both domestic and foreign companies operating in Slovakia. In this article, we examine the perception of all countries in the European Union, which allows for comparison. Foods from certain countries perceived better quality and cheaper will be more in demand. Demonstrating the effectiveness of consumer ethnocentrism has an impact on the development of strategies by domestic companies and the government to create support for the purchase of domestic production.

The world’s human population and its natural environment are currently facing many unfavourable effects from climate change. A significant proportion of this phenomenon is attributable to air pollution generated by combustion engines used in transportation (greenhouse gases, dust particles, etc.). Despite the inevitable need for decisive actions to reverse climate change, central authorities may face significant pushbacks when actually promoting or enforcing electric and hybrid-based mobility, if a wrong (ineffective) mix of restrictions and incentives is applied. Using primary data from the Czech Republic (surveyed in 2019), we use logistic regression and other means of quantitative analysis to provide detailed information on socio-demographic and lifestyle factors affecting individual stances towards different aspects involved with the upcoming transition towards clean personal transportation. In this paper, we focus on topics related to electric and hybrid vehicles. Based on our analysis, we provide actionable information to facilitate the complex process of turning combustion-based transportation into a sustainable feature of our modern society. We find important gender and age-related differences in opinions towards diverse aspects related to changes in personal mobility. Women and older individuals are significantly more in favour of environmentally responsible transportation means. Active car-drivers (individuals who perceive themselves as such) in lifestyle segmentation are distinctively less in favour of ecologically oriented changes – hence such individuals ought be the primary targets for marketing and educational activities (perhaps even state-sponsored) aimed to shift vehicle (mobility in general) procurements towards environmentally responsible choices. Implications for Central European audience: Climate protection is a key subject embedded in multiple EU policies. In Central European countries, the forthcoming transitioning of individual mobility towards EVs and hybrids might be a bit more complicated as compared to “old” EU members: our purchasing power is weaker, our car markets are more price sensitive and they rely heavily on imported second-hand cars. Our insights may be used to alleviate possible complications and bottlenecks in the process of reducing environmental pollution produced by individual transportation.