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The outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic has strongly affected different issues of everyday life. The pandemic has changed consumer attitudes and behavior. Consequently, during COVID-19, businesses had to decide how to organize the advertising campaigns and what content should be addressed to consumers. Considering the limited number of articles concerning these issues, it seems important to evaluate the impact of the global health crisis on advertising messages in different countries. The main objective of this paper is to assess TV commercial campaigns implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the specific epidemic situation in the selected countries. The research methodology was based on the observation, a qualitative method of collecting data obtained through monitoring the content of TV commercials aired during the afternoon, before or after the main news service. The research was conducted in May 2020 and in May 2021 in five selected European countries affected to varying degrees by the coronavirus pandemic. The research results allowed evaluation of the advertising messages in terms of their content and values exposed. The findings indicate that the number of COVID-related TV commercials is not correlated with the number of patients and deaths from COVID-19. The themes appearing the most often in the TV commercials in the studied period were the #StayAtHome idea, family and friends, the aspect of safety during the crisis, and brands' special offers. The tone of the advertisements was usually uplifting and hopeful, trying to cheer the stressed societies. From a theoretical perspective, the research results show the advertising strategy issues in specific conditions in different European countries. These findings concerning TV commercial strategy during a pandemic crisis could provide references for other countries, especially in Europe. The research results could be useful for marketing managers in developing strategies concerning the successful planning of TV commercials in crisis periods in European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disease mapping seeks to represent the risk of a disease. This paper focuses on the spatial analysis of risk for pandemic COVID-19 in Europe and the Mediterranean. Morbidity and mortality data for 54 countries in ratio format were used. Two hypotheses were considered, the first one is that the data are homogeneous and the second one is that the ratios are defined in a heterogeneous manner requiring the stratification on the basis of covariables and the methodology of Jenks' intervals. Spatial risk models were applied as well as methods for the representation of clusters. The results show that the best representation is obtained with the Poisson-Gamma Model under stratification. The variations in the ratios are due to the individual policies of each country for the management of the pandemic. The cluster analysis shows that there is a high mortality process in Eastern Europe. The behavior of the pandemic should be evaluated in the space-time process as well as in other heterogeneous and highly unequal regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]