The epic economic and political transformation of Eastern Europe in 1989 has not been accompanied by sudden changes in underlying cultural values or managerial attitudes. As a result, the marketing concept in organizations is in a state of flux. This means that companies are wrestling with identifying their markets and with catering to their old and new customers. Thus, both marketing research and marketing strategy are in the process of evolution. Many studies of Eastern (or: Central) Europe focused on the region and on various macroeconomic forces. A few case studies have appeared discussing and dissecting individual companies. This paper takes a different direction: We look at four Hungarian enterprises in four distinct industrial sectors.
The paper is divided in two parts. The first part discusses the estimations of the economic and social consequences of the transformation process in the Central and East Europe given by the residents of that region. Majority of the region's inhabitants feel the decline of their country's economic situation as well as of their family's financial, situation but they still prefer the economic reform towards the market economy. The second part of the article describes the economic values of the Lithuanian population. The concept of the potential entrepreneurship is introduced in this part and the typology of the Lithuanian population based on that concept is presented. Data used for the analysis of the economic values and for the classification were obtained from the studies of the quantitative nature conducted by the "Baltic surveys" company in 1990-1993. Four types of people according to their attitudes towards the different kinds of activities and prefered sphere of the activity are described. Special attention is devoted to the issues of the privatization and involvment in the reform. Influence of the socio-demographic variables on the potential entrepreneurship and individual activity is discussed. Analysis of the data obtained from both international comparative and regular Lithuanian surveys show that in spite of the hardship in the every 7 day life the majority of the Lithuanians support the economic reform. Younger group is more enterprising and future-oriented than the older group in Lithuanian society.
HENRY BRENNER has been associated with several research companies, many of which he founded. These include NPD Research, Acker Retail Audits, McCollum/Spieiman, OPOC Computing, Marketing Evaluations, and Home Testing Institute, among others. He is a founding member and former chairman of the Market Research Council of the Conference Board, in which he is still active. He is also a past president of the Radio and Television Research Council. Brenners present activities include memberships in the AAPOR, the American Marketing Association, and the Market Research Council.
The title of my assigned report is "Hypermarket's development in Italy". Since the total of these establishments, calculated with some generosity, is of about 20, we may immediately conclude that this development is anything but impressive. If we then take into account the fact that the first one was opened 13 years ago, we may observe that the average has been one per year and that in some lucky year we reached the total of 2. Someone could therefore suppose that this is a highly risky business, because such a slow development could be probably attributed to a supreme prudence of the Italian commercial entrepreneurs. But this is not the case, since hypermarkets are in general the most successful part of modern commerce in our Country.
In stimulating the economy governments have to stimulate entrepreneurship and have to reach the entrepreneurs which are together responsable for changes in the aggregate statistics. To do so one has to realize that due to differences in entrepreneurial climate there is not one uniform approach. Each country has to define its own policy. Herewith one may learn from the policies abroad but one cannot adopt a regulation without surveying its effects within the different entrepreneurial climate.