Regional Formation and Development Studies

On purpose to increase the demand for insurance services in Lithuania there still remains a problem of how consumers perceive this service as well as what components, influencing their decision to purchase non-life insurance products, they accentuate in the price of insurance service. Emphasizing the assumptions of sustainable economic development in Lithuania and attempting to form regional policy by means of research, the study was implemented in order to identify factors and causal relationships that determine non-life insurance product purchasing motives in Lithuania. The study conducted a survey of Klaipeda city residents who buy various insurance products in different insurance companies. In total 420 respondents participated in this survey. To verify the results of the research three tests were applied: Pearson‘s Chi-square test, Fisher test (Fisher’s exact) and Cramer’s V test. It was identified that friends’ recommendations do not affect consumer‘s choice for insurance products. Higher rates of benefits as well as flexible pricing policy were not important factors choosing an insurance company. High insurance product’s cost and unclear conditions set in the contracts do not encourage consumers to purchase them. In the course of the research significant relationships between the consumer’s choice to insure by specific insurance product and consumer’s discount-enhanced motivation to purchase insurance products were not observed. All measured insurance products did not reflect statistically significant correlations between the decision to get insured and the knowledge about the prices in other insurance companies.

Published patent applications. All published applications for inventions subdivided into the three groups. The number of applicants (inventors) in the separate application are ascertained. The number of published applications in the International Patent Classification sections for the 2005-2014 years are ascertained. Selecting published applications R&D and high technology development directions are described.

Author analyzed the ways of overcoming the negative tendency to the degradation of the human capital in the provincial regions of Russia and other countries of the Eastern Europe. It’s shown that the important role in the processes of solving the problem should be played by the technical universities, situated in the small towns of the region. The development of the universities should be carried on according to the specific strategy, which’s goal is a training of the qualified specialists, and to take as the students the local young people, which are going to live and get a job in the region in future. There are also presented a set of requirements for this kind of the strategy, which are based on the idea of the institutional projecting of the University Technopolis.

The article examines the theoretical approach of the terms stereotypes and occupational stereotyping. The term “stereotype” is seldom encountered in the sociological or economical papers dealing with farmer, farming and agriculture. There are existing differences of characteristics of stereotypes therefore article will try to detect features described by W. Lipmann, R. Dyer, S. Oskamp, R. W. Schultz and others. Some of the definitions offer thought that stereotypes are oversimplifications or generalizations while they are more complicated as it seems from the first sight. The current article will discover sociological concern of how stereotypes function in social thought and the specific concerns how stereotypes function in urban youth thoughts. Article will distinguish negative, neutral and positive stereotypes. The article will include both qualitative and quantitative research methods in order to reveal Lithuanian and Latvian urban youth perceptions and stereotypes of Farmer and Agriculture.

The article presents the evaluation of organizational culture of SC „Klaipėdos kartonas“. The employees’ attitude towards the importance and influence of OK, values, symbols, history, heroes, traditions and communication is evaluated by questioner created by authors of article. The survey revealed that employees appreciate their OK positively. They are guided by the values of organization in their work. The employees know the values and their impact, the history of organization, and have their heroes-employees. Common traditions are prevalent in organization. The communication in organization is business-like. Statistically important difference was revealed: managers of all levels expressed more agreement for statements about all elements of OK; meanwhile employees without subordinates expressed less agreement or disagreement. It is suggested to involve employees without subordinates in processes of formation and implementation of OK more actively.

Tourism is a sophisticated activity of any national economy. The originality of regional tourism impacts the application of special mix of means concerning insufficient professional knowledge and competences of enterpreneurs in the frame of providence of high quality services, hence, the regional tourism development interferens with specific problems. By current driven factors in regional tourism, such as high entrepreneurship, investments, variety of serviness, warrant a new era of local economy and serve for the strategic tourism development as tools and specific scenario. Sustainable tourism sector accesses new stock of acitivities concerning competitiveness amplification and popularization or implication of new resources. The current task of research is to identify the impacts of sustainable tourism development in the frame of amplification of new tourism resources concerning business range and sustainability of regional development.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the most current problems and issues in marketing management. As all enterprises deal with various difficulties in their business planning, implementation and control, these issues and problems have to be recognized, dealt with, and solved. Most of the business strains will have a lot to do with diverse marketing aspects, as marketing is the main link between enterprises and their markets and customers; strategically mappedand implemented marketing helps to create competitive advantage and pave the way for success, but different problems can endanger firms’ marketing process, thus in today’s volatile business environment marketing executives have to bear in mind and deal with various facets of the marketing in rapidly changing world.

This article aims to compare the change of living standard in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia after joining the European Union. The characteristics of living standard are analyzing before joining the EU and after 2004. It is also compared changes of living standard characteristics after the economic crisis. Indicators of living standard, such as the average monthly gross wages, consumer price index, purchasing power, unemployment rate, at-risk-of-poverty rate and others are calculated and compared. The three Baltic states are not only compared with each other, but are also analyzed in the context of the EU. Thus, it can be stated that among the three Baltic States, Estonia is distinguished by highest living standard. Although before the integration Lithuania was ahead of Latvia, but now Lithuania was lower than Latvia by particular characteristics of living standard.

Hemp is a very valuable plant because each part of it can be used in many ways. It can be used to produce innovative products for building construction, chemical industry, medicine, textile production, consumption, and agriculture. In the article, the authors have aggregated the information about hemp cultivation and processing sector development in the European Union and Latvia and have described its cultivation possibilities, technological processes, and processing capabilities. The aim of the present article was to reveal the topicalities of hemp industry development in the European Union and Latvia. The tasks of the research were to present an overall description of hemp industry development trends in the European Union and to characterize hemp industry development in Latvia focusing on the national support activities and hemp cultivation and processing opportunities. The authors of the article have performed an extensive secondary data analysis to summarize the most important activities that should be done at the national scale to further enhance the development of hemp industry in Latvia.

In the condition of demographic issues in Europe and competition for specialist between public and private sector on the labour market public organisations’ as employers’ image is an important aspect of development. The research aim is to identify principles of Employer Branding (EB) and ways public organisations can organize and develop employees’ education on this topic. There are EB activities examined in ten socially responsible (SR) organisations from public sector in Latvia. Authors prepare theoretical bases for the research analysing scientific literature to explain the main point of the approaches framework and define the main terms in depth implementing qualitative and quantitative research methods. In the result proposals for the EB training development for public organisations were developed. Training programs on EB for the public sector organisations should consist of blocks connected to marketing and HRM. Managers should decide whom to train and why and develop different training tracks for each employees level. Training should be implemented periodically reflecting on the changes in external and internal organisational environment.