Transactions and Human Resource Management before and after restrictions of Sunday trading in Poland

Abstract

Aim. In March 2018, the Solidarity trade union forced new Polish law banning nearly all commercial transactions on Sundays, including supermarkets and majority of other retailers. However, there were exceptions, such as petrol stations and e-commerce online shops that were permitted to continue their operations. Therefore, a number of additional transactions in e-commerce and stationary hot spots in petrol stations on Sundays increased significantly. In our research, the quantitative relationship between these restrictions and a demand expressed by a number of transactions hourly and daily has been considered according to real data sets and observations collected from e-commerce transactions and a local petrol station in Głogów (Poland) that belong to the British Petroleum network.
 Methods. The Detrended Fluctuations Analysis (DFA) has been applied to detect new clients on Sundays and to exploit and track their behaviour and customs from time series on other trading days in petrol stations.
 Results. According to our results, free market as an equilibrium theory works well because significant groups of additional customers on Sundays were detected. Moreover, these new customers may continue purchasing on other trading days, which depends on human resources of the petrol stations. This result is consistent with other effects, such as e-commerce development in Poland after 2018.
 Conclusion. The success of involving new customers is determined by the quality of human resources development at local petrol stations. On the other hand, e-commerce development may constitute an alternative solution.