ABSTRACT
Maintaining an adequate level of services becomes a particularly difficult challenge in the current conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, which greatly complicates the organization and implementation of tasks assigned to public entities. Therefore, it was deemed important to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, considered in the context of global risk, on the quality of customer service in the local government units. In the theoretical part, the investigations presented in this study contain a discussion of public service provision by local government units. The publication includes a study of the concepts of quality and satisfaction. The article also draws attention to the aspect of risk as an indispensable element of business entities in relation to the global risk caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The empirical part presents the results of surveys conducted using the Servqual method and the Kruskal-Wallis test. In conclusion, providing high-quality services is a challenge for many local government units. The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the dimensions of reliability and trust that make up the quality of customer service in local government units. This is evidenced by the results which show the deterioration of the quality of customer service during the pandemic. The current situation exacerbates the negative trend resulting from the gap between the perception of the services provided and the actual requirements of the respondents. © 2022, Bucharest University of Economic Studies Publishing House. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was an unexpected phenomenon that triggered a multitude of changes within various aspects of socioeconomic functioning. The ongoing pandemic is a threat to health and life. What is more, it negatively impacts the economy and alters social and consumer behavior. These transformations are visible in relation to commercial activities, which have largely been transferred to the online zone. The aim of this paper was to verify the adopted hypotheses whether the pandemic has a statistically significant impact on the opinions of respondents aged 45+ about the e-commerce market. Two statistical methods, such as, chi-squared test of independence and Wilcoxon pairwise rank test were used to verify the accepted hypotheses. Based on the statistical analysis, it has been proven that the pandemic had a significant impact on the opinions of the respondents concerning online safety, unlimited availability of the offered products and the need for further improvements in current technologies. During the pandemic, a correlation has also been established between the gender of the respondents and their opinions on online shopping as a better alternative to brick-and-mortar shopping. Moreover, a relationship was demonstrated between gender and the opinions of the respondents, that further development of new information and communication technologies is necessary. The study showed that the COVID-19 pandemic statistically influenced differences in the distribution of variables, in the area of respondents' behavior, within the e-commerce market. © 2021, Budapest Tech Polytechnical Institution. All rights reserved.