Exploring behavioral barriers and interventions in retirement savings: Findings from online focus groups among university students

The world finds itself facing unprecedented conditions as the global pandemic of the COVID-19 virus has led to fundamental changes in the global supply chains. This paper aims to assess the initial response undertaken by Central European companies in the early stages of the outbreak. The survey was conducted as a research method to collect data from a large number of companies. Since it takes time to assess long-term effects of the pandemic and related measures, various changes in supply chains are examined as the early results of the COVID-19 crisis and measures implemented by companies. The study examines how different economy sectors were changed due to this situation. The changes in operating volumes were identified as the most commonly used measures to accommodate new market developments. However, developing the new supply chain partnership was the most successful measure. This measure correlates with an increase in revenues and an increase in the number of customers. In some cases, disruptions in supply chains had positive effects on revenues as a reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak. Cross-country examinations found that all Polish companies implemented at least one new measure to tackle this crisis. Nearly 20% of Slovak companies and nearly 30% of Czech companies made no changes in their operations during the early stages of the crisis. However, overall, the supply chains in Central European countries turned out to be quite resilient, since most companies managed to survive the supply chain disruptions and in some cases even show signs of overcoming them completely.

Acknowledgement
This contribution was supported by the project No. 1/0757/18, “Consumer behavior in buying goods of daily consumption with an emphasis placed different contents of goods offered on markets of selected EU countries”.

This paper seeks to examine the role of factors originated from outside (economic, political, competitive environment and relationships) and within (entrepreneur’s attitude) the organization on the business risk perceived by entrepreneurs. To test the hypothetical relationships, an ordinal regression with two link functions was applied on an original dataset of 641 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in Slovakia and Czech Republic. The analysis revealed that not only economic factors can predict business risk, but along with them are political and competitive environments, relationship with supply chain actors and entrepreneur’s attitude. Consistent with prior research, it is found that an unstable economic environment leads the business to expose themselves to business risk. Also, a friendly regulation framework and quality education contribute significantly to reducing the level of risk. The research triggers the interest of policymakers who design policies aimed at improving the business environment by reducing the level of risk that firms face in doing business. Also, this paper is useful for managerial perspective, since entrepreneur attitude was found to be a predictor of business risk.

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.