The dynamic changes in tertiary education that were observed in Poland for the last 20 years transformed the Polish educational market and led to the immense expansion of educational institutions. The rapid increase in the number of students that continued until 2006 is however over and Polish universities have begun to compete for their clients. Increased competition along with the pessimistic forecasts for Poland with regard to demographic changes result in the growing demand for the knowledge on determinants of student educational choices and satisfaction. Although the amount of studies in this field is growing, Poland is still substantially underrepresented in the current research. The purpose of this article was to examine the underlying factors behind the choices that Polish students make while pursuing their tertiary education. The research method that combines focus groups' discussions and a survey study among 1,420 business major students helped us to identify the factors behind three phases of the decision making process: pursuing higher education; information search along with final choice of a university; and satisfaction from chosen studies. Our research implies that decision making with regard to tertiary education is multifaceted and longitudinal as it combines a different set of factors in each stage of the decision making process.

For the last 20 years Polish education faced turbulent changes, first experiencing a rapid increase in the number of students and the dynamic growth of educational institutions, and then facing the reverse trend of decreasing number of students and universities being closed down or facing serious financial problems. Furthermore, forecasts for the next 10 years predict that most of the non-public universities in Poland will experience serious problems to survive in the market. Facing new challenges, universities changed the way they think about their students and the customer-oriented approach became the dominant management imperative for most of them. Ability to understand the reasons behind students tertiary education decisions emerged as a key issue in increasing enrollments. Predicting students choice determinants may be however more difficult than expected as those choices are dynamic and might change over time. While the literature on the university choice factors is growing, still little is evidenced with regard to the dynamism of the tertiary education decision making process and this article is aimed to contribute to filling this gap. We identified that both aspects of students decision making process-pursuing tertiary education and the choice of the particular university-are a subject of change over time and might be conditioned on economic, social and demographic changes of the given market.

The article offers an analysis of purchase determinants of food for individual consumers in 8 large cities in Poland The analysis has been based on the outcomes of consumer research carried out in years 2015 and 2016 at Poznan University of Economics as well as on other research studies published in Polish sources. As a result, the identification and comparison of basic groups of determinants shaping the purchasing of food products has been provided, as well as the exploratory factor analysis was used for in-depth analysis of data.

Celem opracowania jest identyfikacja wybranych obszarów procesu współkreowania wartości w kontekście relacji B2C z perspektywy klienta. W pierwszej części opracowania scharakteryzowano koncepcję współkreowania wartości dla klienta. W drugiej zaprezentowano wyniki badań empirycznych przeprowadzonych w grupach klientów na wybranych rynkach: odzieży i obuwia, dóbr trwałego użytku, usług fitness oraz usług mobilnych. Prezentacja wyników ogranicza się do wybranych obszarów procesu współkreowania wartości dla klienta – zasobów angażowanych przez klienta w ten proces, kanałów komunikacji z przedsiębiorstwem, ryzyka związanego z partycypacją w procesie współkreowania wartości dla klienta oraz determinant wyboru oferty rynkowej na badanych rynkach. Do identyfikacji podstawowych obszarów procesu współkreowania wartości dla klienta wykorzystano metodę eksploracyjnejanalizy czynnikowej.

Purpose: The main objective of the research is to identify a competence gap in "Industry4.0" – the difference between the competencies currently acquired by students at universities with a technical and economic profile, and the competencies desired by companies from the industrial processing sector. Design/methodology/approach: Empirical material was obtained in two studies. The first survey was conducted among 120 companies in the industrial engineering sector, while the second was carried out among over a thousand students and graduates of economic and technical universities. Findings: This work contributes to an in-depth understanding of companies’ needs regarding “Manager 4.0” competencies, and enables the identification of existing educational gaps. Our research results show that there is a competence gap on the labour market in each of the analysed categories of competencies: social, personal, managerial, technical and professional. At the same time, some differences are visible between students of economic and technical universities. The findings of the study suggest the need to redesign student education programs at universities so as to provide interdisciplinary education taking into account key competencies for Industry 4.0. Research limitations/implications: We identified three limitations of our research, resulting both from the size of the research sample of the analyzed comapanies, the possible ambiguity of the respondents' understanding of the examined competences (ambiguity of their interpretations) and their mutual interdependencies, as well as the subjective assessment of the students themselves. Practical and social implications: The study indicated the need for specific employee competencies, the development of which requires interdisciplinary study programmes in areas including production engineering and management. Besieds, the results of our research are particularly important for adapting employee training systems. We assume that the development of new training programs best suited to the needs of the market (need for specific employee competencies) should be done through cooperation between companies in the industrial processing sector and the academic community. Originality/value: The conclusions of the research shed new light on requirements regarding managerial positions in companies from the industrial processing sector, by indicating the need to modify curricula at universities in selected areas of competence. Keywords: Industry 4.0, Manager 4.0, human resources, managerial competencies. Category of the paper: Research paper.