Artur Kisiołek

The range of functions and the expectations of the users of flooring systems indicate that apart from purely construction-related (i.e. general construction) characteristics, floors used as partition elements have the potential to meet various customer needs on the construction market. Therefore, they constitute interesting research material not only for specialists in the building sector, but also for economists. The aim of this article is to present the results of a survey of the determinants of selection of flooring systems, the popularity of the specific systems on the Polish market, as well as to present the customer needs map as a universal tool in the customer service process on the example of flooring systems. The paper was prepared on the basis of the available literature, as well as the quantitative research carried out in the period from September 2015 to February 2016. The research results indicate that the influential factors taken into consideration in the process of selection of a given flooring system are construction parameters, the speed of assembly and the final cost. Among the key technical parameters influencing customers’ decisions one may list noise insulation, thermal insulation and lower surface finishing. In Poland, monolithic and multi-rib beam-and-block (Teriva-type) flooring systems prevail. Based on the factors and criteria set out in the survey, a special map of customer needs relevant for the process of selection of a flooring system has been created. Among other purposes, the map is supposed to enable more profound relation with customers, individualization, streamlining and unification of the customer service process, as well as better understanding of their needs.

The improvement of global Internet access and the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated mass testing of online teaching methods, have forwarded the competition between higher education institutions from the regional level and the struggle for the rich student into the competition for students in all countries. The paper aims to determine the influence of the rating of higher education institutions on the interest of Internet users by conducting a comparative analysis of the popularity of the official names of higher education institutions in search queries in Ukraine and Poland. To do this, a comparative analysis of the change in the interest in leading higher education institutions in Ukraine and Poland in search queries in the Google search engine is carried out. The analysis is performed using the Google Trends web application. As a result, it is found that a high position of the university in the national ranking does not guarantee more search queries about it on the Internet by both national Internet users and users from the neighboring country. In general, Internet users continue to be most interested in universities located in their region at the time of the search.