Zait Adriana

Across the whole world, more than half of the global workforce have their main employment in the informal economy. EU member state factsheets suggest that undeclared work in its various manifestations is a real problem for all countries, hence the need for appropriate tackling strategies, from a multitude of theoretical and practical perspectives. One of these, the neoinstitutional theoretical perspective, considers that individuals` behaviour is shaped by the institutional environment they are embedded in, defined by three pillars namely, the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive pillars. Based on this perspective, in our study we aim to investigate, at exploratory level, the relationship between the degree of development of e-Government services and the level of informal economy, with a specific focus on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on people’s perceptions about this relationship in several EU countries with high percentages of undeclared work and a lower degree of ...

Studies have shown that the more people watch television, the higher are their estimates of certain portrayed beliefs and values, one of which is materialism. The present article aims to show if and how television and other media channels might shape mater mind the theories of cultivation and social cognition, testing a possible connection between television consumption and materialism. Also, we were interested in finding out if there are different characterizations of materialisti demographical variables. The research methodology included an exploratory research and a quantitative one – survey on a sample of 407 persons. We used Richins’ scales of materialism, for the first time in Romania, testing them in this cultural specific context in order to have a mutual, common base in comparing values.

Our interdisciplinary research examines consumer perceptions and behavioral tendencies generated by these perceptions. The study is placed in the context of online networking and it uses marketing, branding and psychology literature, especially the theory of warmth and competence from social cognition and Aaker et al.'s research results about firm stereotyping: 'for-profits' as high in competence vs. 'non-profits' as high in warmth. We used an experimental approach to investigate ways to attain the 'golden quadrant of consumer perceptions' (high warmth and high competence) that would jointly drive sales and brand advocacy in social networking sites. Offering a ready-to-use hint for companies, our results suggest people's proneness to support new market-comers and start-ups combining for-profit with social entrepreneurship. The effects of corporate communications on online user's perceptions are discussed

Abstract: The establishment of a research strategy doesn't necessarily suppose a specific standardization. Nothing seems to impose to the researcher a projected structure as a basis for his future approach. Our article attempts to identify a few methodological landmarks for ...

In recent decades scholars have acknowledged that transactions in the informal economy have not vanished with modernization and industrialization as expected but rather remain an important contemporary aspect of overall production and consumption across the world, in both developing and developed countries. Yet little is known about the profile of the consumers in this realm or what drives them to purchase from the informal economy. A systematic review of the literature investigating consumption in the informal economy reveals a severely underdeveloped area of consumer studies with significant gaps in terms of its theoretical approaches, methods and regional coverage. The findings of the existing literature is that multiple motives are used by consumers for justifying their purchases in the informal economy beyond the dominant simplistic view that they do simply for financial gain or for a lower price (namely, it identifies social ends and failures in formal market provision in term...

Despre origini si problematica interculturalului in management; cultura si specificitate culturala, asupra principiilor si modalitatilor de diagnosticare interculturala; abordari diferentiate in managementul intercultural: piete financiare, asigurari, marketing si management resurse umane; erori in cercetarea interculturala pentru management

Abstract: The study presents three methods which can be used to assess discriminant validity for multi-item scales. Q-sorting is presented as a method that can be used in early stages of research, being more exploratory, while the chisquare difference test and the average variance extracted analysis are recommended for the confirmatory stages of research. The paper describes briefly the three methods and presents evidence from two surveys that aimed to develop a scale for measuring perceived risk in e-commerce. ...

E-commerce continues to develop as an important
channel for consumer purchases. This
explains the growing interest in determining the
most important variables which affect online
consumer behavior, especially perceived risk as a
well-known behavioral deterrent. Previous studies
have proved a negative influence of perceived
risk on the intention to adopt e-commerce. However,
depending on the type of product and the
population investigated, results were often contradictory
and this relationship was found to be
stronger, weaker or even inconclusive. This led
us to conclude that, besides direct influence factors, there could be moderating effects for the
analyzed relationship. Moderators are qualitative
or quantitative variables which modify a relationship,
and affect the direction and/or strength of
that relationship between an independent and a
dependant variable.
The purpose of our research was to investigate
potential moderator variables which could
change the relationship between perceived risk
and the intention to buy online. We used three
observable variables – gender, experience in
using the Internet and experience with online
shopping – and three latent, psychological variables
– fear of uncertainty, trust in e-commerce
and materialism. The research consisted of a survey
conducted on a sample of 481 business students,
followed by a Structural Equation Modeling
approach. Although no moderation effect
was proved, partly due to the homogeneity of
the investigated pilot population, fear of uncertainty
and trust in e-commerce were found to
be antecedents of perceived risk in e-commerce,
making perceived risk a mediator between these
two variables and the intention to buy online.

The study aims to identify differences in response styles between regions which belong
to Romania, but have previously been under foreign occupation. To do that, we employ data
from the European Social Survey, the 2006 round. We investigate extreme response styles as
this is known as a common problem in cross-cultural research. Extreme response styles
increase reliability, but affect the validity as all correlation specific methods can be biased in
this case. We compare response styles across regions and inside regions using language as a
factor variable to identify ethnic groups. Results show that in some cases there are significant
differences between regions of the same country, whereas there are none for neighbouring
regions belonging to different countries.