Abstract:

This paper is aimed at land transport, logistics industry, and logistic innovation activities of enterprises in the Czech Republic between 2008 and 2014. This period covers the economic crisis of 2008. Heterogeneous strategies of enterprises were observed. The goal is to find and interpret possible determinants of logistics innovations and explain innovation activities of enterprises in the land transport and logistics industries in comparison to other industries. Czech Republic and thereby its economy are in the center of the European Union and thanks to its lower personnel and rental costs (in comparison to its neighbors Germany or Austria) remains a strategic choice of multinational enterprises. This paper uses standard econometrics modeling and deals with high endogeneity and selection bias issues given by the nature of limited data availability. The data from the Czech statistical office is mainly from the manufacturing, trade and service industries. The full sample of innovators and non-innovators consists of 22,232 observations of (10+ employees) enterprises from four Community innovation surveys (2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014). There are 7,087 observations about innovators, of which 58 % are new-to-the-market innovators, regardless of the type of innovation. Results suggest that there is a negative relationship between the decision to innovate and the land transport or logistics industry (defined according to the NACE classification). Logistics innovations had a decreasing trend during the analyzed period; the only statistically significant positive determinant of this type of innovation was foreign ownership. Logistics innovation was a contributing factor across the industries in terms of higher sales of new-to-the-market goods and services per employee in the period 2006-2016. Land transport and urban transport industries are oriented at adaptation and new-to-the-market innovation activities and are predominant in this sector. Further research should be aimed at the differences between new-to-the-market and new-to-the enterprise innovators and their ability to capture profits.