This article addresses Marketing 4.0 as an exceptionally dynamic fi eld for company competitiveness that is evolving rapidly. The main goal of this article is to evaluate and compare the overall level of use of modern marketing tools in practice by family and non-family businesses, and subsequently to measure the dependence between the extent of Marketing 4.0 activities and number of employees, volume of sales, fi eld of business, and year the company was established. Primary and secondary data was analyzed using basic and advanced statistical methodologies, including the testing of six hypotheses. The study showed that for both family and non-family businesses there has not been any signifi cant increase in overall marketing vitality in the years studied. Indeed, the long-term focus of companies on values provided to customers and relationships with customers was confi rmed. The results further showed that from the perspective of marketing vitality, one of the currently more signifi cant weaknesses of smaller companies in particular of both family and non-family types is a missing or insuffi cient strategy for realization of marketing activities. This study confi rms the dependence of the level of overall marketing vitality on sales volume and company size by number of employees, but on the other hand no dependence was proven between marketing vitality on fi eld of business or year company established. This study evaluates the liminality and states that family businesses above all others address what is for them the more important strategic question, namely that of succession. The study is unique in that it compares the results of three studies carried out between 2016 and 2019. The context of this study is framed by an appeal to eliminate barriers to change and rapid response by companies to the needs, requirements, and expectations of customers operating in the online world.

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The startup ecosystem in the Czech Republic falls far below the level of the developed economies of its Western neighbors. The startup map of the Czech Republic shows 1,717 continuously operating startups. And yet they have yet to receive priority attention in the academic realm. The primary goal of this article is to define the key factors of startup sustainability and to look for dependencies between them. The secondary goal is to identify the weaknesses of the Czech startup environment. The scientific hypotheses formulated focus on demonstrating the dependencies of selected factors influencing the startup sustainability. These have been verified on the basis of evaluation of data obtained via primary qualitative and quantitative research. Its findings were compared with the data of secondary research and with the conclusions of the scientific studies of international authors. The data were processed using statistical apparatus. Thanks to this research, the authors have identified in their conclusion the factors of the remote, immediate, and interior environments that can influence startup sustainability. They demonstrate a correlation between the level of strategic management and the quality of internal communications processes, between the capacities of startup management to manage relationships with customers (CRM) and to drive communications strategy, including brand support. In real practice, however, nine out of ten startups do not succeed. The reason is that their design fails to understand and address the needs of customers and lacks marketing and managed sales.

Family business is the largest global source of jobs in the private sector, whose multigenerational nature strengthens the stability of individual economies. A competitive small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector into which family businesses are classified is an essential prerequisite for the full-fledged integration of any economy into the global economic space. For the Czech economy, the importance of foreign trade is increasing, and is dependent on the capabilities of companies to expand to foreign markets. The goal of this article is to identify involvement of the generation of successors to export activities of family business, focusing on diversifying export territories in relation to structure of the industry A secondary goal is to discuss the demand mechanisms for SMEs/family business oriented toward export. The scientific hypotheses defined are focused on demonstrating a dependency between the diversification of export territories, the involvement of the generation of successors in the management of the company and structure of industry. Authors have demonstrated that family businesses managed by the first generation of founders export primarily to the territories of Slovakia, Germany, and the EU. Companies where the next generation contributes to management diversify territorial risk and also export outside the EU countries. A significant correlation was demonstrated between automotive industry and Germany, Slovakia and country outside the EU and mechanical engineering and country outside the EU. The uniqueness of this article lies in the topicality of the real transition of Czech family businesses to the next generation, which carries out foreign trade to promote the further development and sustainability of the family business for future generations.

Abstract.Family is an integral part of society in all cultures and time periods. Its mission is to raise the next generation, which will be able to continue and further develop knowledge and experience of the previous generation. The modern history of family entrepreneurship in Czech Republic restarted back in 1989, i.e., straight after the fall of the communist regime and restoration of the democratic system. People went into business with enthusiasm and the most successful ones among then now stand on the verge of generation handover. The literature review prepared using the desk-research method is mainly based on foreign professional sources -monographic publications, scientific articles published in professional magazines, accessed from Proquest, Web of Science, Ebsco, Scopus and some other databases. The objective of our quantitative research was to evaluate, based on parameter E (Experience), the generational representation of family members in relation to leadership and ownership of businesses. Quantitative research was based on the use of statistical and graphical data processing methods, including SPSS software, applied for the authors' own empirical investigation based on the international methodology of family company review through the F-PEC scale, the Experience parameter (Astrachan et al., 2002). It was shown that accumulation of business experience in business families is still mainly concentrated on the founding generation of entrepreneurs. In the conclusion of the paper, deduction and generalisation methods have been applied.