THE STRUCTURE OF THE STORE ASSORTMENT – A DETERMINING COMPONENT OF THE COMMERCIAL UNIT PROFITABILITY

Setting up an assortment involves a complex choice in order to achieve a defined market share, to make the assortment adaptation to customer needs, optimizing the space available in a commercial unit, using the space and the commercial establishment more profitable. Choosing the products will be performed differently, depending on the area of point of sale and, and especially according to the vocation of the store: neighborhood shop or multi specialized store.assortment, spread, consumer demand, distributors

THE RETAIL COMPANY BETWEEN CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS

All things are about to change. World economic crisis of 2008-2009 exposed the deficiencies and imbalances within all the global economic system. When overvalued property prices collapsed, international financial institutions have suffered heavy casualties. Loss of investor confidence led to the closure of almost all global credit markets, while indebted consumers were forced to dramatically change consumer and buying behavior. Recession is running out and recovery can be seen at the horizon, but one thing is certain, consumer behavior over the last decade will not return too soon. The ceaseless changes of position in retail have forced retailers to be in a constant battle for maintaining the best position. The costumers are extremely whimsical, and their fidelity is lessened. They are drawn to the latest sensation. In order to stay in the competition, retailers have to keep in mind some aspects: competition, consumers, technology and own actions.modern retail, traditional retail, retail change, consumer behavior

THE STRATEGIES OF DISCOUNT STORES ON THE ROMANIAN RETAIL MARKET

A pertinent analysis of the retail industry's future must include a substantial analysis on emerging countries. These markets will play a more important role in future global economic dynamics, but nevertheless, most concerns focus still on the side that brings opportunities for major retailers. In this context, this article proposes a presentation of the Romanian discount market, with emphasis on positioning strategies of discount supermarkets and hypermarkets.Romanian retail market, discount, strategies, supermarket, hypermarket

Project Management Competencies for Master Students: Curriculum Development in Two Romanian Universities

The Bologna Process has as one of its main pillars the link between academic curricula and labour market requirements. This process has built a space for dialogue and cooperation which reaches far beyondEurope, where the basic values of the European society – freedom of expression and research, free movements of academics and students, students active participation to learning and tolerance – have been put at the forefront of education. Since 1999, Romanian universities have tried to adjust their curricula and academic offers for study programs to the requirements of the labour market, sometimes with some reluctance from the various partners involved in this process. As the field of Project Management has gained more standing on the Romanian labour market, the need for graduates skilled in Project Management increased, thus leading to the need of providing students enrolled in master programs in Economics, but with different specializations, courses and topics in Project Management. The paper outlines the experience of adapting the curriculum of master programs in Economics in two renowned Romanian universities – Bucharest University of Economic Studies and Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu - to Project management needs, within a project implemented with the support of the European Social Fund for Human Resources Development (POSDRU). The paper presents the most important curriculum changes implemented for the master programs under analysis and explains the importance of these changes

FROM FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE FOR SHAREHOLDERS TO GLOBAL PERFORMANCE FOR STAKEHOLDERS

The global business environment (at every of its levels and by any of its forms) is more and more competitive and challenging for firms nowadays. On the other hand, firms themselves exercise a growing pressure and influence over the society (by their economic, social and environmental – wanted or not – outputs/effects). There is no doubt about those facts. Under these circumstances, new theories and practices emerged, in order to bring together and make long term peace between firms/businesses and society (as a whole and considering each part and category of it as well). Stakeholders’ theory and corporate responsibility theory come into discussion when we talk about business cooperation and sustainable development, according with the future generations best interests. As a result, together with the new theory and philosophy of the firm, we (and firm management) must consider a new paradigm when measuring corporate performance: the transition form shareholders to stakeholders brings with it the transition from financial reporting to social reporting, in order for firms and their management to be able to manage and measure global firm performance (financial, as well as social and environmental, in the idea to positively answer to all the interests stakeholders have – a request of doing well by doing good). By this paper, we would like to analyze how the transition from satisfying shareholders interests theory to satisfying stakeholders interests’ theory changes the way management seeks for and measures corporate performance, and how this shift is perceived. In order to do this, we will bring together the Most Profitable Fortune Global 500 versus 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World and will analyze: the correlation between financial performance and social performance; the measure these two kinds of performance leverage each other – in order to achieve global corporate performance by satisfying all kind of stakeholders’ interests.global corporate performance, financial performance, social performance, stakeholders

Corruption and Organised Crime Signalling Indicators for Foreign Investors as Applied to Eastern European Countries

The former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe and, implicitly, their economies, went through specific and sometimes asymmetric developments since the fall of the “iron curtain” at the end of the 1980s. During those years, they faced many challenges to create a secure and predictable economic environment for individuals and businesses, local or foreign. We propose a framework that considers legal, social, and economic indicators which can be used by foreign investors to make wise and efficient business decisions. Our main purpose is to expand the traditional economic analysis framework and enrich it with new institutional and societal indicators from the social, quality of life and legal layers of research. This new landscape could offer relevant information on vulnerabilities that could favour organized crime and corruption in some Central and Eastern European countries, a factor that foreign investors may need to address before deciding to invest in the region. Keywords: foreign direct investments, organised crime, corruption, economic vulnerabilities, GD

Business Dynamics in Recovery Times: A Comparative Perspective on Manufacturing Firms’ Performance in the European Union

Our paper investigates the gaps in performance in the manufacturing sector between Western and Eastern European countries and attempts to analyze how enterprises from these two parts of Europe have tackled recovery after the Global financial crisis of 2007-2009. We uncover the patterns of performance in the after-crisis period and offer insights into the prospects of the manufacturing sector in the European Union, faced nowadays with a new recovery, after the coronavirus crisis. Moreover, we study these patterns in industries with different technological levels. We have selected five performance variables, namely Turnover growth rate, Turnover per employee, Wage-adjusted labor productivity, Gross operating rate, and Investment rate, and employed statistical cluster analysis, which is a multivariate data analysis technique that can detect these patterns in performance, in both its approaches: hierarchical and k-means clustering. Our findings show that the almost perfect groupings of businesses from Western, more developed economies, and Eastern, less developed ones, in all industries, with the notable exception of Portugal, is -> are rather striking, regardless of the technological level of industries. We show that Eastern EU businesses were not the worst performers in the after-crisis period, but rather on the contrary. Certainly, they are smaller in size but have enjoyed higher labor productivity and profitability, as well as higher investment rates in all industries. This points towards a higher dynamism of smaller-sized businesses in general, and Eastern EU located ones, in particular, in the years after the Global financial crisis, which has been reflected in superior performance

An Exploratory Study of Financial Performance in CEE Countries

Our research investigates the performance of companies from Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in the period after the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 with the aim of identifying the driving factors behind accounting- and market-based performance. We include in the analysis companies from various industries in CEE countries that are European Union members and we study their performance between 2008-2016 over the following areas of performance:  liquidity,  solvency and indebtedness, operational profitability, global performance (through Return on assets and Return on equity), returns available to shareholders and market-based performance (through price/book value and Tobin Q ratio). Employing the hierarchical and non-hierarchical k-means cluster analysis companies are segmented into various homogeneous groups using various financial performance indicators as variables, Euclidian distances and the Ward amalgamation method. Furthermore, the resulting clusters have been grouped according to the country of origin and industry. Our findings show that specific groups of companies in these countries share common attributes, as evidenced by their performance indicators, which do not seem to be entirely based on their countries of origin and industry. Moreover, our exploration of CEE companies’ performance dynamics after 2008 evidences the increased competition in all industries particularly after 2009, as well as businesses’ need to adjust their activities after the losses incurred during the crisis period, but these phenomena is present with different intensities depending on country of origin and industry. At the same, we note the enhancement of global performance through improvements in the operational performance instead of financial leverage and indebtedness, which is a sound business approach by CEE companies. Keywords: financial performance, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), statistical cluster analysis, return to investor

La dynamique du binôme capital financier – capital intellectuel dans la création de la valeur de l’entreprise dans une société basée sur la connaissance

The idea that the value of the firm is given by its financial capital and its intellectual capital is generally accepted. But, what is changing nowadays is the importance/weight that each one of these two components claims to have regarding the value of the firm – based on the dynamics of the changes and the intensity of the competition within an industry, on one hand, and on the measure of connection/networking to the knowledge-based economy of the given industry, on the other hand. So, we are the witnesses of: (1) a repositioning into the dynamics of the financial capital – intellectual capital binomial relationship regarding the value creation process of a firm and (2) the need to reformulate the sustainable value creation strategies by firm management. But no value creation strategy is complete until it is transposed into the firm’s managerial processes, in models and indicators, and proofs itself viable in time. By this paper we would like to emphasize the changes and the tendencies which are taking place into the content and structure of the market value of the firm, and to propose a guideline framework of an integrative model of analysis

Researching the impact of corruption and organized crime on FDI in Europe: a literature review

Eastern European societies and their economies have experienced specific and/or asymmetrical developments over the last 70 years. The political regime changes at the end of the 80s led these countries on the path of market economy and opened the doors for foreign investors’ presence, as privatizations of previously state-owned companies were considered beneficial for economic progress. Starting in the mid-90s and more so after the association of countries in the region to the European Union and NATO, foreign investors found interesting opportunities as greenfield projects or partnerships with local entities. However, the presence of foreign direct investments (FDI) in Eastern Europe was uneven across countries and regions, which may be due to a certain extent to corruption and organized crime groups. This paper aims to conduct a systematic review of the literature that has focused on analyzing the influence of corruption and organized crime in attracting foreign direct investment using quantitative methods, focusing on empirical studies conducted in Europe since 2000. Our main purpose is to summarize the different research approaches, to offer a discussion and suggestions for future research, and to provide some relevant and justified answers to the following question: To what extent are corruption, organized crime, and FDI analyzed in European countries? Keywords: foreign direct investments, organized crime, corruption, GDP, quantitative method