The first question of the questionnaire was: „Which is the nationality of the commercial firms’ capital?”
The purpose of this question was to determine the foreign capital weight in the commercial activity and lead to the following conclusion: 74% of commercial firms have domestic/Romanian capital, 20% of them have joint capital and only 6% of them have foreign capital, due to the foreign investors reserves to start a business in Romania.
On the other hand, by analyzing the size of the commercial firms after their sales figures we observed that 76,7% of them have sales figures under 30.000 lei, 12,5% of them have sales figures between 30.000 and 60.000 lei and 10,8% of them have sales figures over 60.000 lei.
By analyzing the provisioning expenditures we can say that the analysed firms are very well balanced, because the weights of the provisioning expenditures are quasi-equally distributed. This aspect emphasizes the managers’ efficient work, their abilities in finding solutions and minimizing the provisioning costs.
Regarding the firms’ favourite acquisition method there were obtained the following results : 64,5% of the firms prefer cash payment modality; 23% of them prefer the overdue payment method; 5,4% of them prefer the biddings method; 4,4% of them prefer direct contracts with the producers as acquisition method; 1,6%
of them prefer as acquisition method the compensation in goods (barter) due to existence of a significant unsold yet quantity of goods and to the fact that some commercial firms temporally don’t possess liquidities ant they are preferring these methods, but the weight is far to be significantly; and only 1,1% of them prefer other methods, which weren’t specified when they filled in the questionnaire.
Referring to the payment of the distribution activities 84,9% of the firms prefer „cash sales”, 11,2% of aren’t strongly enough to afford supplementary costs on hirings, which frequently generates low economic results, low productivity and is creating firms’ problems and difficulties.
The fact that 33,8% of the firms afford to hire unqualified workers reveals a whole series of aspects, some connected with the costs, and others connected with the low complexity of the operations performed by the firm, which determinate, directly but not necessarily, a reduced level of productivity. On the other hand, the weight of qualified workers is about 57,5%, which is good, and if this fact is maintained there are chances that the productivity level is adequate, with direct repercussions on the profit’s level and on the incomes level. It seems that only 8,7% of the firms have higher qualified personnel.
By analyzing the oldness of firms’ commercial activity we observed that almost 86,5% of the firms develop commercial activities in the business domain over 7 years, 10% of them are in the business from 4-7 years, and only 3,5% of them are newly entered in the business domain.
The firm’s development possibilities seemed to come mainly from investments (66,7%), from the advertising domain (9,3 %), from the drawing of foreign investments (7,2%), from the infrastructure development (11%) and from the distribution network’s development (5,8 %).
We also observed that over 87% of the interrogated firms have long term development plans, 5,5% of them have medium term plans, 4,2% of them have short term plans and 3,3% of them don’t have development plans.
The marketing methods tend to be used on a large scale by the analysed firms too, and not only, but we might have doubts about their efficiency. Therefore, 25,2% of the firms are applying the direct marketing techniques, 23,2% of them are investing in advertising and publicity, 25,8% of them are using the selling promotion method and the rest of them are using other methods.
We also established that 41,7% of managers have incomes under 1000 lei, 20% of them have incomes between 1000 and 2000 lei, almost 13,3% have incomes between 2000 and 3000 lei and 25% of them have incomes over 3000 lei.
The managers’ favourite information’s sources are as follows: 41% of the informations come from mass-media, an almost equal ratio of 28% and respectively 25% of the informations came from friends and from official sources and only 6% from other sources.
3. Conclusions
By analyzing the obtained results, we realized a characterization of the typical commercial firm and we determined the main characteristics of commercial firm’s typical manager as follows.
The main characteristics of a typical commercial firm are:
− it has at least ten years old;
− the majority of the capital is private;
− it has over ten employees;
− it prefers as acquisition methods cash payments or overdue payment and cash sales;
− it recruits the personnel from the Labour Force Office and by its self effort;
− the large majority of its personnel is represented by qualified workers, mainly trained in the sells domain;
− it realizes investments and advertising expenditures, mainly from their own capital or by credit use.
The main characteristics of commercial firm’s typical manager are:
− he prefers the methods of sells promoting and direct marketing;
− his main objective is to satisfy the customer’s needs in a higher degree;
− he informs himself mainly from mass-media;
− he uses his connexions in his business;
− he manifest his integrity both with the clients and with his employees;
− he considers that the work environment of his employees is acceptable;
− he is a mature person, with experience;
− he is aged 38 to 48 years old;
− he is male.
Considering the fact that we are living in the information’s technology era, we should follow the existing trends and, along with the information systems development, the goods movement surveying system, assisted by computer, must be also developed.
In the actual circumstances of the market economy consolidation, the commercial firm’s profitability cannot be increased only by favourable market’s circumstances. It must be also realized a quick reorganization of the commercial activity at the micro economical level.
In Romania, the legislation’s harmonisation represents a necessity which derives from the option for reform and for the consolidation of the market economy, compatible with the western countries economies.
References:
1. Ciupagea C., Unguru M. C., Cojanu V., Alanoca S., - “Adaptarea politicilor României la cerinŃele UE cu privire la taxele vamale i politica comercială”, Institutul European din România, Bucure ti, 2003
2. Cristache S. E., - “Metode statistice de calcul i analiză a eficienŃei economice în comerŃ”, Editura ASE, Bucure ti, 2003
3. erban D., - “Statistică pentru studii de marketing i administrarea afacerilor”, Editura ASE, Bucure ti, 2004
4. www.ccir.ro 5. www.mfinante.ro