Issue #3 (Volume 15 2019)

The startup ecosystem in the Czech Republic falls far below the level of the developed economies of its Western neighbors. The startup map of the Czech Republic shows 1,717 continuously operating startups. And yet they have yet to receive priority attention in the academic realm. The primary goal of this article is to define the key factors of startup sustainability and to look for dependencies between them. The secondary goal is to identify the weaknesses of the Czech startup environment. The scientific hypotheses formulated focus on demonstrating the dependencies of selected factors influencing the startup sustainability. These have been verified on the basis of evaluation of data obtained via primary qualitative and quantitative research. Its findings were compared with the data of secondary research and with the conclusions of the scientific studies of international authors. The data were processed using statistical apparatus. Thanks to this research, the authors have identified in their conclusion the factors of the remote, immediate, and interior environments that can influence startup sustainability. They demonstrate a correlation between the level of strategic management and the quality of internal communications processes, between the capacities of startup management to manage relationships with customers (CRM) and to drive communications strategy, including brand support. In real practice, however, nine out of ten startups do not succeed. The reason is that their design fails to understand and address the needs of customers and lacks marketing and managed sales.

The objective of the research was to identify statistically significant differences in selected engagement indicators on Facebook – likes and shares in relation to the different types of content that brands on this platform add to. The analysis was performed on a sample of three global companies from the top 25 most valuable brands in the world and their posts. Using quantitative statistical methods – MANOVA (Multivariate analysis of variance) and Gammes-Howell post hoc test, a total of 1,280 brand posts were analyzed in order to differentiate the liking and sharing of content types. Data collection was carried out in the first half of 2018. The findings pointed to two statistically significant differences that were also interpreted in the discussion of the research. The findings have shown that in case of liking, in two cases out of three, there is a statistically significant difference in terms of the type of content added, when photos came out as those with the greatest potential to get like from Facebook users and fans. At the same time, the same finding appeared in the case of sharing, which is an even stronger form of engagement. Likewise, photos were shown to be the most promising in terms of potential content sharing by Facebook users and fans. The study provided some clues as to where this research should go further and explore the relationship more deeply in view of the more extensive quantitative research, and also the potential qualitative approach. The future research directions include analyzing companies of different types and sizes and also taking into account the contribution from other social networks with the same or similar engagement indicators.

The use of display advertising enables companies to reach target audience and show them your ads on specific sites, which increases sales. In particular, YouTube video ads can reach a wide audience and attract many customers. One of the most important issues in the development of display advertising is the analysis and modeling of advertising reviews from media advertisements and practical tools with the aim of taking
synergistic effects of advertising reviews. The purpose of the paper is to research the synergistic effects of advertising reviews in the system of successive advertising display. The study used a statistical analysis of empirical data, in particular statistics of annotations of video clips demonstration; viewing a video clip, and also approaching ad rotation time series using the Fourier series. The synergistic effects of advertising reviews in the system of successive advertising display are revealed. The approximation of time series of advertising reviews in the synergistic system of successive advertising display is presented. The analytical periodic function of advertising reviews, which takes into account manifestation of the short-term current effect of video advertising messages, is developed. The functions of advertising reviews in the Fourier series are presented, which allows to simulate video advertising messages as a reaction in the form of revision annotations in media advertising.

The marketing environment of the world economy is changing due to intensive digitalization of trade exchange operations. Formation of marketing forecasts based on current and past periods in modern conditions is irrelevant to the current situation. The purpose of the article is to assess the situational precedents of business readiness for digitalization based on monitoring data, operating environment, applications and management system when using the tools of marketing and neural network modeling. The article uses a systematic approach and methods of statistical, financial and marketing analysis, tools for modeling a neural network. Based on the estimated indicators, the current and forecasted levels of electronic retail in the world are revealed. Based on the application of the concept of portfolio analysis to the data of national and international monitoring, а marketing model of research has been built, in which low business efficiency has been determined, situational modeling of business readiness for digital transformation has been carried out and characteristics of the identified precedents have been given. A low degree of business readiness to digitize the economy has been established. The results emphasize the importance of monitoring business readiness for the digitalization of the economy in real time with marketing and neural network modeling.

The video game and virtual reality became a new way of doing marketing considering their growing popularity and the advances of new technologies in the past few decades. In this paper is presented a research that investigates the impact of product placement in video games on gamers’ decisions on the purchase of goods from advertised. This research is focused on two of the most played games nowadays: FIFA 19 and Final Fantasy XV. A survey with 465 respondents was conducted to understand the antecedents that impact the purchase decision considering the stimulus originated from the product placement. To conduct the survey, a framework was designed based in the extant literature reviewed and finally considering the constructs of product placement, quality of virtual reality, brand recognition, brand familiarity, emotional response and purchase frequency. The results of the study suggest that gamers generally respond positively towards product placement and that product placement can indirectly impact emotional responses that will impact on consumer’s purchase intention. Hence, advertising in the video game enhances brand recognition and the perception of virtual reality. The framework presented in this paper represents the theoretical contribution of this paper, relating different concepts in the theory of product placement to the purchase intention. Therefore, the findings on this paper can help managers to find the best way to reach customers by improving the product placement strategy in the video games.

Due to increasing competition in the private hospital sector in Saudi Arabia, the organizations need to adopt the new ways to foster the brand loyalty and repeated visits. In this context, content marketing may have pleasant effects on a business in terms of customer engagement, trust and loyalty. The present research attempts to investigate the multi-dimensional relationships among content marketing, loyalty, trust and customer engagement in the private hospital sector using primary data collected through a questionnaire from 400 randomly selected respondents. A simple random sampling technique is utilized to select the patients or their family members visiting the private hospital to have their perception regarding hypothesized variables. The findings indicate that content marketing has a positive impact on the factors like customer engagement, trust and loyalty. In comparison, content marketing is found more effective in persuading the loyalty of the customers in comparison of trust and loyalty. Further, the customers’ trust towards a brand has a strong positive relationship with the loyalty. Moreover, the positive effect of customer engagement on the trust has also been found. Based on the results, this study suggests that the private healthcare institutions should adopt a multi-channel content marketing approach to exploit its maximum benefit. Multiple social media platforms and popular healthcare blog sites should be chosen for an effective content marketing advertisement.

This research will determine the factors that influence customer preference for local brands over foreign brands in the era of a developing country. This is a quantitative research design. Questionnaires have been used to collect the data on product standards, social media engagement, local positive testimonials, brand application and brand trust. The sample size was 80 – randomly selected. Organizations should improve quality, design, compatibility, consistency, attitude and online appearance on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Celebrity testimonials have more influence on consumers than a non-celebrity testimonial. The research is original in that it was conducted from scratch. Moreover, the researchers sought help from previous research in the field to define technical terms, of which have been cited accordingly.

While consumers play a very crucial role in the marketing strategies of companies, effective development of strategies must satisfy their needs and wants. Therefore, an evaluation and understanding of the underlying factors and/or dimensions influencing consumer buying behavior are critical for supermarkets to both retain and acquire new customers. The article reports on factors impacting the consumer buying behavior and the relationship among the factors. The study uses data from a cross-sectional survey conducted within a random sample of 699 customers at 17 supermarkets in Nairobi, Kenya. Reliability and factorial validity of the self-administered questionnaire were evaluated and considered satisfactory, while structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test several hypotheses. Social characteristics were a good predictor of the consumers’ inclination to patronize a supermarket, thus directly influencing the buying behavior. A strong positive connection between psychological factors and buying behavior was ascertained based on income, which suggests that although psychological characteristics impact consumer attitudes towards the supermarket, income and education levels may well play a determining role in this regard. Retail marketers in general and in Kenya in particular are encouraged to be cognizant of the above when developing strategic marketing programs to increase the level of patronage. As a research paper, the study is limited to the data and prior empirical research. It offers the benefit of new research directions for marketing managers in understanding and satisfying the consumers. The main contribution of the present research, interdisciplinary in nature due to combining elements linked to both marketing and psychology, is its focus on consumer buying behavior towards supermarkets in a developing country, thus producing revealing insights.

In daily life, people tend to use mental shortcuts to simplify and speed up their decision-making processes. A halo effect exists if the impression created by a dominant attribute influences how other attributes of an object or subject are judged. It involves a cognitive bias that leads to distorted assessments. However, the halo effect has barely been researched in a sports-related context, although it can substantially contribute to understanding how sport fans think and behave. The objective of this paper is to answer the question that is of interest for both theory and practice of sports marketing: Is there a halo effect in sports? Does the sporting success or failure of a professional soccer team radiate or even outshine other sports-related and non-sports aspects and influence or distort how the club is perceived by its fans? Fans of six soccer clubs selected from the first German soccer league Bundesliga were interviewed. This paper presents the results of an empirical study based on a data set consisting of a total of 4,180 cases. The results of the analyses substantiate the distortion of the fans’ perception with regard to a very diverse range of aspects that is triggered by the sporting success or failure of their favorite club.