Preface

For decades we have been confronted with estimates and predictions of the possible impact of innovations on the global market. With concepts where traditional retail turns into a form of showroom, respectively even further in the predictions, that retail, as we know it today, will disappear completely. The customer, therefore, gets the space to create a product according to their ideas and needs. This method gives the customer a sense of product and even brand development. Businesses, therefore, obtain data for the needs of targeted communication with their target groups. Based on customer behavior, businesses then analyze customers' habits, ways of preferred presentation, and taste.

Entrepreneurship through customer care is part of modern business strategy textbooks, where online is no longer only recommended, but rather required. At the end of 2019, it was inconceivable that brick- and-mortar stores could be temporarily closed by the decision of governments. The unprecedented situation of the first half of 2020 cleared the market in an unthinkable way. As a result, small- and medium-sized companies have been faced with the difficult task of finding new ways of communicating with customers as well as new ways of selling goods and providing services. Online business today does not fill the position of an ancillary service, but under the pressure of circumstances it has become a necessary part of the tools for the basic survival of companies across the global economies. Traditional companies built on history-proven foundations and forms of sales no longer have a choice.

The situation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has also alerted traditionalists and staunch opponents of social networks. However, it should be borne in mind that this situation is not the result of market formation or the global market economy, but rather is an externality, the black swan that only a few risk managers anticipated. From a financial point of view, the term "reserve fund" has taken first place in the value ranking of corporate strategy. Once a term envisaged only by multinational companies, it has become an essential part of the management of small- and medium-sized companies. Creating a financial reserve to cover short-term outages is also not the answer. The pandemic has created a new chapter in global risk management that is moving into the microeconomy in response to customer retention, considering real-time government actions. The level of preparedness of companies for unexpected circumstances will be verified only by the fact itself. If we look at the repeatability of similar externalities, we find that we have a decimal sinusoid here. This fact creates the possibility of a model of preparation for a given situation, although it should be noted that each pandemic brings new inputs to economic analysis.

At present, consumers are placing greater emphasis on online communication at the level of their comfort whereby interactions result only from everyday needs. However, in a time of the pandemic, companies are forced to take measures that do not come as market impulses, but rather as state regulations. All these acts in business management function as a catalyst for innovation.

Within this context, even the concept of corporate assets has become multidimensional.

*Communication Management* is an edited volume of chapters written by scholars researching various areas of marketing and management sciences. It presents several issues of marketing management within the limits of marketing communication. Starting from the issue of communication channels and basic sensory apparatus for processing information and stimuli, the book continues with a description of the issue of social media in the time of accelerated digitization. The last chapter introduces the reader to the issue of marketing communication in a sharply non-standard environment. The topic itself creates the opportunity to seek qualitative knowledge for future in-depth research into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on both national and transnational economies.

> **František Pollák** University of Economics in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia

> > **Jakub Soviar** University of Žilina, Žilina, Slovakia

**Roman Vavrek** VŠB - Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czechia

## Section 1
