Comparison of Marketing Vitality of Family and Non Family Companies doing Business in the Czech Republic

Abstract

Family businesses were founded in the Czech Republic mostly after 1989, and they are now undergoing the first generational change. Throughout their existence, they have become major employers in the regions, bringing about innovation, progress and social responsibility. If they are to develop further, if they are to be competitive against non-family companies that are managed by professional management, the successors must also use modern marketing and management tools. The issue of family business becomes a big challenge for the Czech academic environment. This is a very topical issue, but not yet studied, bringing new scientific knowledge in the field of realities of marketing management of family businesses in the Czech Republic. The survey period of marketing vitality was between 2016, 2017. Literature review has been prepared by desk-research. Its elaboration was based mainly on foreign monographic sources, scientific articles in the Web of Science, Proquest, Scopus and others. The scientific method was primary quantitative research – a questionnaire survey – which aimed to compare the marketing vitality of family and non-family businesses, and to compare the use of defined marketing tools in family and non-family businesses. Survey data on 264 enterprises were analyzed using descriptive static, graphically processed, evaluated through correlation analysis. The results of this paper confirmed the hypothesis that family businesses as well as non-family small-sized businesses have their success based on so-called “value marketing” (and in the opinion of the authors intuitively) on building long-term customer loyalty by constantly increasing the value offered.