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Team coordinators are prepared to manage multiple situations such as misunderstanding, conflicts, different levels of engagement and they are usually willing to take risks while accepting a leading position. Yet, not all of them are prepared for crisis such as COVID-19 pandemic. The way they communicate with their teams in this type of periods is essential to ensure continuity and establish organizational trust (Guzzo et al, 2021). In this context, many corporations had to face a new challenge: working mostly or even entirely from home. Employees as well as managers switched to virtual meetings, the concept of a team has suffered modifications and virtual meetings replaced all face-to-face interactions. Leaders had to adapt and learn how to improve their skills to engage with their teams and to ensure performance. The purpose of our study is to see what specific activities were implemented within teams while working from home, what is the perception leaders have about team performance and to find out if this context has diminished their level of control. Data for this paper are gathered using in-depth interviews with team leaders/coordinators/managers from different corporations installed in Bucharest, Romania. The results show that the performance has increased, the teams and coordinators showed a great adaptability, and their level of trust has improved. Recommendations are put forward for teams to consider creating a better balance between their personal and professional lives and to find new ways of socializing at work from time to time on other topics that the business-related ones.

We are living in an extremely globalized and digitalized world where social media represent the core of our existence whether for personal or professional reasons. Social media impact on business in general caught the attention of researchers (Grizane & Jurgelane, 2017) during the last years, especially to measure the impact of their use in business growth, increasing sales and/or customer loyalty. There are more and more studies that focus on the harmful effect of fake news on specific markets, news that may appear easily and are difficult to control. Fake news can affect both the customers and/ or the business depending on the context. The purpose of this study is to identify how are the fake news appearing in a world where access to information is so simple and everybody can check the truthfulness of information and what kind of barriers are used to protect the business from being affected and the customers from being misinformed. Data for this paper are gathered using in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs from real estate businesses. The results show that the level of increasing fake news is affecting the trust building process. Recommendations are put forward for organizations to analyze more user behavior and use it for the decision-making process in order to limit the negative effects of fake news. Also, customers need to learn to identify quality brand communication, pay attention to details and be very precautions while taking decisions based on news that may be fake.

Our paper tackles the development of media reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the January - November 2020 time span, in France, Germany, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. We aim to make media reporting transparent on two dimensions: the coverage of COVID-19-related topics and the negativity of the COVID-19 media reporting. To achieve this goal, we analysed a large news dataset with 841,415 pieces of news—including 202,608 COVID-19 media reports—on an LSTM neural network. The news sentiment data and the corresponding coverage are set in relation to the WHO data on COVID-19 and to Google Trends. This compares the reality, that is WHO data, the perceived and reported reality, that is news data, and the actions based on the perceived and the actual reality, that is Google Trends. The results show that media reporting on COVID-19 is unprecedented in terms of coverage and negativity. Furthermore, the study quantifies how far media reporting detached from the facts after the first wave of COVID-19 and how an Infodemic spread across Europe.

Nowadays, the use of smartphones has become essential for daily activities that have either a personal or professional purpose. A large number of resources is necessary for both the production and the use of these devices, which means that solutions in terms of sustainability are needed. The purpose of this research is to highlight the concept of sustainability when talking about smartphones, as well to underline the possibilities that exist for the consumers. This study examines the habits of young consumers in Romania, the reasons behind a mobile phone replacement, and the factors that influence the purchase decision. The methodology section follows quantitative and qualitative market research. An analysis was performed in order to have a deep understanding of trends in terms of mobile phone ownership and preferred brands. This study also provides a general view on the neglectfulness of the young population of Romania regarding the dangers to which the environment is exposed because of the purchasing habits that go against sustainability. For accomplishing this purpose, important results have been discovered through the analysis of the data obtained from self-administered questionnaires and interviews. The results show that people are usually using only one mobile phone at a time and they change it once every two years for sustainability and financial reasons. The same applies when it comes to choosing a certain brand. The reasons behind the purchase of a new phone and the decisions regarding an old one are based on healthy principles of the circular economy and sustainability. The preferences in terms of technology and design, and the decision process are correlated with incomes.

This study examines the differences and similarities in the perceptions of popular tourist destinations between the English and German media in an empirical and quantitative way. The perception of a tourist destination country is measured by the sentiment in the media in the tourists' countries of origin—either the UK or Germany. The study measures such perceptions with the help of a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) artificial neural network that analyzes the perceptions in publicly available news streams in the UK and Germany. The results show that the online media indeed generates different perceptions for some of the popular travel destinations. An equally interesting finding is that there is, in general, a broad consensus between the sentiments in the British and German media. Businesses in the tourism and hospitality sectors, news providers, political actors, and policymakers can use the methodology to analyze the source of this information gap and the impact on their operations and policies.

This article is investigating the Romanian consumer behavior in the context of the evolution of the online shopping. Given that online stores are a profitable business model in the area of electronic commerce and because the relationship between consumer digital Romania and its decision to purchase products or services on the Internet has not been sufficiently explored, this study aims to identify specific features of the new type of consumer and to examine the level of online shopping in Romania. Therefore a documentary study was carried out with statistic data regarding the volume and the number of transactions of the online shopping in Romania during 2010-2014, the type of products and services that Romanians are searching the Internet for and demographics of these people. In addition, to study more closely the online consumer behavior, and to interpret the detailed secondary data provided, an exploratory research was performed as a structured questionnaire with five closed questions on the distribution of individuals according to the gender category they belong (male or female); decision to purchase products / services in the virtual environment in the past year; the source of the goods / services purchased (Romanian or foreign sites); factors that have determined the consumers to buy products from foreign sites; categories of products purchased through online transactions from foreign merchants. The questionnaire was distributed electronically via Facebook social network users and the data collected was processed directly in the Facebook official app to create and interpret responses to surveys. The results of this research correlated with the official data reveals the following characteristics of the digital consumer in Romania: atypical European consumer, interested more in online purchases from abroad, influenced by the quality and price of the purchase. This paper assumed a careful analysis of the online acquisitions phenomenon and also represents a direction for conducting a future research. The particularities identified in the Romanian digital consumer can help develop an online marketing mix based on behavioral study.

The social media is composed of easily accessible web tools through which people converse, participate, create, recommend, valorify information and respond online to everything that happens around them. These web tools offer a dynamic virtual environment where users are engaged in a continuous traffic generated by information and interactivity. Internet development and access to information led to a change in consumer behavior in Romania. In this context, it must be taken into account that the buying decision and the decision to include certain foods in daily diet is significantly influenced by the views and experiences of other consumers, expressed in the virtual environment. Thus a new communication channel provided by the internet through social media (forums, chat, blogs, sites reviews) appeared. In this respect, we conducted a research - using the main search engines – with the aim to analyze the evolution of the number of forums and blogs, and also of the posts on these, related to the words bio-eggs, eggs from battery raised chickens and eggs numbering, during December 2009 – June 2010.

In the last decades, our society and the economy have undergone great changes that led to the emergence of new economic models. These models emerged in the developed countries. Subsequently, the informational revolution has expanded across the globe, and contributed to the development of these new models. The sharing economy is one of them. Through technology and the internet, tools that provide instant access to information from anywhere in the world, the collaborative economy expands and grows continuously. This allows for easier interaction between people of all categories. The aim of this paper is to highlight the challenges, opportunities and benefits brought by the sharing economy regarding the national and international tourism, as well as to find out to what extent is the availability, accessibility, consumer and stakeholders’ degree of acceptance towards the current technological infrastructure. The paper contains the analysis of a study case regarding the Airbnb business model, company that has been involved in the economic transition of the last years and contributed to the emergence of the sharing economy. As well, the article contains a study of collected data with regards to the distributed spaces on the company’s site from 5 Romanian cities, and 5 European cities, in a certain period, statistical data regarding the online bookings made in member countries of the European Union, and data about the accommodation units in Romania, the number of overnight stays and arrivals. This research is useful for all individuals or legal entities involved in the tourism field in order to acknowledge in what way and to what extent the accommodation units in Romania are evaluated and rated. Moreover, the possible options for touristic improvement and development through the sharing economy, in terms of quality, technological infrastructure and approach are evaluated. We consider that it is important how the sharing economy impacts and influences Romania to a lesser extent, and what repercussions or changes will occur in the future.