Regional Formation and Development Studies

Advanced internet infrastructure and increasing internet usage both in corporate and home levels broadens opportunities for marketers. The internet as a marketing channel became one of the most important tools for communication between the seller and consumer. More and more companies rely on the internet and increases the budget for the next generation strategies. However, the channels (Search Engines Optimization, Search Engines Marketing, Email Marketing, Invasive Marketing, Syndicated content Marketing, Social Media Marketing and etc.) are chosen intuitively. There is no proven efficiency of different channel or tool. Marketers know the technical description, can calculate budgets but the efficiency differences are unclear. The purpose of the article is to analyse and describe the efficiency of each online marketing channel. Quantitative research method was used to analyse the efficiency of online marketing channels. A survey of Lithuania’s internet users reveals the most acceptable (efficient) online marketing channels. The article scientific aim is to identify which online marketing channels are the most efficient. The findings are valuable at least for Lithuanian market as it reveals the efficiency of different online marketing channels. Companies can make the strategic decisions and choose the most powerful and money efficient channels combination to achieve their marketing goals.

Social entrepreneurship is becoming more and more popular as there is a growing share of people who would like to contribute for social enterprises and are ready to become customers of the social enterprises and in this way participate in reduction of poverty in the country and support entrepreneurship development. For social enterprise marketing communications to be effective, an understanding is necessary not only of the information channels which are most effective but also of the preferences customers hold regarding the information channels that they would like to receive information from. Purpose of research: to investigate the preferences for different information channels among customers of Latvian social enterprises. Research methods: scientific publications analysis, analysis of previous conducted research results, social enterprise customers’ survey conducted by Kristīne Casno. Results of research have indicated that regular customers of social enterprises prefer such information channels as social networks, followed by television and radio.

Within development of telecommunication, e-commerce is rapidly replacing traditional shopping as well as offering new ways to pay for goods. Payment is one of the main phases of buying decision process and it is crucial to e-commerce, because there is a big possibility that consumer will abandon the shopping cart if preferred payment method is not available. Not only flexible payment options can help company to attract and retain customers, but it also can ensure that company get paid more quickly. The aim of the research is to find out how much money Latvian customers invest when shopping online and which payment methods they use to pay for the purchase on internet in Latvia. Research methods used in the study are scientific publication studies, studies of statistics on internet shopping development, survey realised in Latvia at the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018 on internet shopping in co-operation with company iMarketing, University of Latvia and Chamber of Trade and Commerce of Latvia. For many aspects in evaluation of opinion of respondents it was used evaluation scale 1–10, where do not agree with the statement; 10 – fully agree with statement. For data analysis there were used indicators of descriptive statistics, cross – tabulations, statistical tests of hypotheses, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and correlation analysis. Main results and findings of the study reveals that the most commonly used payment methods for online purchases in Latvia are paying with debit or credit card at the moment of purchase and paying at the store, but the least used payment methods for online purchase is cryptocurrency and at the pick-up box place. Also, there is no statistical difference between female and male customers on use of credit or debit card usage for online payments.