Marcela Sokolova

Smart, connected products change a company’s business strategy orientation

ABSTRACT Smart, connected products have the potential to shift rivalries, opening up numerous new avenues for differentiation and value-added services. New entrants in a smart, connected world face significant new obstacles, starting with the high fixed costs of a more complex product design, embedded technology and multiple layers of new IT infrastructure. As smart, connected products expand an industry’s scope and the boundaries of competition, many companies will need to rethink their corporate purpose. As products continue to communicate and collaborate in networks, which are continuously expanding both in number and diversity, many companies will have to re-examine their core mission and value proposition. The authors present an analysis of changes that were initiated by applying new of smart and connected product technologies during creative discussions about disruptive innovation development. The objective of the article is to seek answers to the following research questions: Q 1: What is the role and significance of the new concept of products obtained as a result of substantial innovations? Q 2: How does the new concept of products impact the entrepreneurial strategy of organizations? Q 3: Does this concept trigger a change to the rules of competition?

Organizational and Sociodemographic Determinants of Job Satisfaction in the Czech Republic

This study examines the effect of personal and work-related factors on job satisfaction based on a sample from the Czech Republic. The study, which was based on a questionnaire survey of 1,776 respondents in organizations in the Czech Republic, proposed a number of hypotheses related to demographic and organizational variables and tests using ANOVA. Results of the data analysis revealed similarities to findings in Western countries, in which men show higher job satisfaction than women. Age does not seem to have a significant effect on job satisfaction. There is low job satisfaction in public/governmental organizations and among young people entering the job market. It is suggested that it is necessary to develop a human resources strategy for the public/governmental sector that will not only increase its social prestige but also increase positive feelings among its employees. The need to better prepare undergraduates for the demands of the job market is also discussed.

The creation of the qualitative scenarios in the virtual three-dimensional environment second life

Abstract To set down the amount of the company risk, its specific activities or its investment goals in the form of numerical characteristics such as probability of loss, variance or standard deviation of the company value is necessary to determine the distribution of criteria probability to which the risk is intended. The probabilistically evaluated procedures and simulation Monte Carlo are the basic important instruments which are used to determine the distribution in practice. The abstract is focused on the procedures and defines its two essential types–qualitative and quantitative. It investigates the alternative of procedures formation in the virtual three-dimensional environment Second Life within the project development GACR Decision-making processes in autonomous systems (ID 402/09/0662).

How Product Brand Effects Consumer Decision

The aim of the paper is to evaluate the effect of product brand on consumer decision regarding purchase and in connection with this, to answer the specified research questions using statistical methods. The partial goal is to find out what influence a close person has on consumer decision-making. The theoretical part of the study defines the basic concepts of the given issue. The application part of the paper is first devoted to the characteristics of the analysed markets. The main part of the paper is our own research focused on the brands of laptops, which was conducted through online polling in the Czech Republic and Taiwan. The data obtained from respondents in the 19–26 age group is then analysed and compared. The data showed that there is a relationship between the brand that the consumer owns and whether it is the first brand that comes to his mind. There are some other interesting results such as that the “high cost = high quality” opinion is not related to the results of the survey.

The Role of Social Networks in Online Marketing and Measurement of Their Effectiveness – The Case Study

This paper is devoted to online marketing tools and primarily focuses on the use of social networks and measuring their effectiveness. The theoretical part briefly presents the topic of online marketing and selected tools. The next section deals with the case study that analyses the use of social networks on a particular project, including measuring the efficiency of social networks by comparing the planned and actual state according to the selected metrics. In conclusion, there is a discussion on the results obtained and the possible directions, which would increase the efficiency of social networks, i.e. online marketing, are outlined. The results of assessing the current state of online marketing for the surveyed project in 2017, by comparing the planned and actual metric values, largely fail to meet the targets. With measuring social networking tools, the planned numbers of website visits and social networking orders didn’t reach their planned values. Regarding the number of fans on individual social networks, the planned status was only achieved with the Pinterest and Instagram social networks.

Effectiveness of Learning with the Support of a Virtual Environment (Experiment in University Teaching)

Virtual worlds are very universal environments that can also be used as a didactic means that allows for the application of a wide range of activities, as well as various teaching forms and methods. The introductory section of the article presents a definition of virtual worlds on the conceptual and content levels, and also provides a description of their technological concept. The didactic-technological aspects that accelerate most of the opportunities to use virtual worlds within the education process have been determined using available knowledge. The main aim of the research was to clarify whether the appropriate use of virtual environment in the instruction leads to a corresponding student performance in cognitive learning. The partial aim of the research was a mutual comparison of two leaning virtual environments i.e. Second Life and Minecraft, selection of which was intentional as these have currently been the most widely used virtual environments. Application themes of the action research were focused mainly on the phenomena associated with the implementation of virtual collaborative environment. The assessment was realised by means of didactic and managerial criteria.

Smart, Innovative Teaching Supported by Decision Software – Case Study in Educational Institution

This article aims to describe the use of software Expert Choice and Criterium DecisionPlus in order to support the multi-criteria decision in education and to evaluate the added value of this innovation. Both decision-making software, solves the same problem of the case study. Firstly, the decision-making problem is de-fined, as well as the relevant criteria and possible alternative solutions. Based on the decision-making process and the output decisions are both software evaluated in terms of selected criteria. Students in the role of customers verify the quality of the two software tools and from which they elect a better alternative. Further-more, according to marketing metrics of Customer Perceived Value (CPV) is determined a value perceived by customers/students as the difference between the evaluation of the benefits, supply costs and perceived alternatives.