The Establishment of New Businesses as a Seasonal Phenomenon: A Polish Example
Purpose: The aim of the article is to analyse the phenomenon of seasonality in the context of registration of new economic entities in the form of a sole proprietorship based on the data from the Central Registration and Information on Business (CEIDG) in the years 2012-2021. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research method and tools applied in the article are subordinated to the identification of the occurence of statistically significant differences between average values of numbers of applications filed with CEIDG in the assumption category on a month-to-month basis. As part of the research process post hoc tests, preceded by the one-way analysis of variance, ANOVA, were used. Due to the imperfection of statistical tests and the nature of deterministic methods for the verification of the research hypothesis the Kruskal–Wallis was also used. The ANOVA was preceded by the verification of meeting the distribution normality criterion (by means of the Kolmogorowv-Smirnov test and the Shapiro-Wilk test) and of the variance uniformity (the Levine test). Findings: A stable economic situation in a macroeconomic aspect together with an unchanging regulatory, economic and financial, technical and organisational as well as market environment translates to a statistical repeatability of market behaviours. In this context, a projection of the number of applications filed with CEIDG including seasonal fluctuations was developed. Practical Implications: The knowledge of seasonality in terms of undertaking economic activity may prove helpful in selecting the right economic policy tools, in organising entrepreneur administrative service processes as well as useful for companies providing outsourcing services (inter alia, within the scope of marketing, bookkeeping and human resources service or recapitalisation) for new businesses. Originality/Value: This type of analyses have not been conducted to date on such a wide and diversified time spectre. In addition, the situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to be exact, the observation of correlation between future decisions of entrepreneurs with respect to continuing or establishing business activity and a specified seasonality also seems extremely significant.