The COVID-19 pandemic has made the world face a whole new reality, and the measures taken for slowing the spread of the disease included social distancing, as well as national, regional, or local lockdowns and restrictions regarding the movement of people. For such an important sector of the Romanian economy as the construction industry, the restrictive measures imposed by the authorities led to postponing, delaying, or stopping the current projects. This paper aims at investigating the main effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Romanian construction sector, as well as the role of the digitalization process in mitigating the negative impact on the companies activating in this domain, in the context of the current levels of use of information technologies. The research involved the use of qualitative (exploratory in-depth interviews) and quantitative (online surveys applied to members of the local building sector, such as engineers, architects, contractors, and managers) data collection methods, respectively descriptive statistics for data categorization and interpretation. In general, the Romanian construction sector was only slightly affected, with the most significant negative effects being the delays and cost overrun due to safety and health issues. This paper is one of the first studies to explore and assess the effects of COVID-19 on the Romanian construction industry and the role of digitalization in reducing the pandemic impact. The main findings reveal that the companies in this industry that have a high digitalization degree overpassed in a smoother manner the current pandemic situation.

Purpose: As satisfaction is one of the most important conditions for loyalty, this study aims to investigate the main factors affecting online satisfaction for buying clothes from the internet. In this research, the authors followed two main objectives: (1) to identify factors influencing online satisfaction and (2) to determine the importance of the main determinants that explain online satisfaction in the retailing clothing sector.Design/methodology/approach: The research combines qualitative and quantitative research methods. The authors used the focus group technique and a survey based on a questionnaire. For the first exploratory phase of the research, we conducted four focus groups with 21 women, 18–39 years old, who have at least two years experiences as online buyers and who made at least two acquisitions for clothing products in the past six months, from the same website. The purpose of this qualitative method was to understand the young women's perception about online satisfaction and to collect items to be included in the questionnaire. For the second quantitative phase of this study, the sample consisted of 241 participants. To analyse the data, two different types of inferential analysis were used: factor analysis (for identifying the factors that compose online customer satisfaction) and analysis of regression (to determine the most important factors that determine and predict online buyers' satisfaction).Findings: The main results indicate that the significant factors determining a satisfactory experience in an e-retailing market are: good deal (savings), product expectations, customer service and website reputation.Originality/value: The study is more relevant in the current pandemic context, when the consumer’s behaviour has changed and online shopping has substantially increased. The research can be used by companies that sell clothing on the internet and are interested in increasing their financial results and also their customers' satisfaction.

Little attention has been paid to why consumers choose to purchase goods and services from the informal economy. Similarly, few studies have been conducted on consumer behaviour in relation to informal markets during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the article is to evaluate, for the first time, whether the COVID-19 pandemic influenced consumer behaviour in relation to the informal economy. Qualitative evidence collected in Iași, Romania, is reported. The finding is that the most important motives for purchasing goods and services from the informal economy are related to social ends, such as supporting local businesses, maintaining relationships with others, and enhancing sustainable development. The novel finding of this research is that community exchange in the form of mutual aid and reciprocity is not activated only for friends, neighbours, kin or work colleagues but also for local businesses facing financial difficulties. The customers are displaying solidarity and empathy for their situation. As such, this article adds to previous findings indicating that the motivation of lower cost is not the universal rationale for purchasing from the informal economy as many consumers choose to make purchases from informal market driven by social rationales. The paper ends by discussing the policy implications of the findings.

Volunteering is a way to express civic behavior, including pro-environmental behavior such as buying products with recycled content. The purpose of this research is to understand the differences between individuals involved in volunteering activities and individuals who have never been involved in volunteering activities. In order to do this, dimensions are analyzed by categories of public: the general public, individuals involved in volunteering activities (volunteers), and individuals who have never been involved in volunteering activities (non-volunteers). Qualitative methods, based on in-depth interviews; and quantitative methods, based on Anova, Independent Samples T tests, factor analyses, and regression analyses have been combined. The sample included 469 respondents. The general dimensions of buying decisions are: product features, social values, promotions, low risk, uniqueness, and affordable price. The volunteers’ dimensions of buying decisions are product features, social values, uniqueness, benefits, and promotions. The non-volunteers’ dimensions of buying decisions are product features, uniqueness, credibility support, promotions, and low risk. In the conclusions section, implications are presented using specific communication for each of the three public categories, based on important resulting dimensions for each public.

The increasing number and diversity of crises in the world economy, both at the macroeconomic and the microeconomic level, justify the consistent theoretical and practical concerns regarding resilience. Our paper aims to evaluate Romanian companies' resilience by investigating the way they addressed the recent pandemic crisis. More concretely, our research is focused on identifying the most important crisis affecting each company and its industry. We analyze their impact on the firm's activity and performance, identify the perceived factors that could help the company to overcome the crisis, and investigate the efficiency of the measures implemented by the Romanian companies in order to overcome the most significant crises they faced. To achieve our research objectives, we conducted in-depth interviews on a sample of 63 respondents who are decision makers in their companies (entrepreneurs, managers, administrators, sales directors, and brand managers), and we used the interview guide as a research instrument for collecting the relevant qualitative data. The main results indicate that the most important crisis affecting these companies are related to issues in their specific field of activity (such as legal regulations, political factors), general country characteristics (socio-demographic or legislative factors) and global factors (such as a global economic crisis, the recent COVID-19 pandemic). These crises affected the firms on the financial, organizational, and marketing levels, but most of the analyzed companies found different ways to adjust and to overcome the crisis. The results are all the more important, as there is a lack of studies on how companies reacted to the recent pandemic in emerging economies, especially in Romania, in order to identify best practices and relevant experiences for potential future crises.

Although major advances have been made in relation to explaining the supply side of the informal economy, this is not the case for the demand-side of the informal economy. This study analyses for the first time the purchasers of undeclared goods and services in the healthcare sector. To evaluate the purchase of undeclared healthcare goods and services, logistic regression analysis and robustness tests are used on 3048 interviews in Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Malta. The finding is that an important share of the purchasers make this type of purchase unknowingly. However, no difference in terms of socio-economics characteristics of those who knowingly and those who unknowingly made purchases of undeclared healthcare goods and services was identified. Meanwhile a significant influence of trust (in government and in other citizens) has been identified in relation to those who made these purchases knowingly. As such, policy measures aimed at decreasing unknowing purchases and at nurturing trust are discussed in the concluding section.