The case study on German and British machine owners: similarities and differences in the coronavirus crisis management

COVID SURVEY by CECE, ERA and LECTURA:

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Covid Special, part 1

Although the Covid survey report provides the audience with a rough comparison of the coronavirus crisis impact in European countries, the current article focuses on detailed analysis of the answers of machine owners from the two most represented countries in the research - Germany (N = 1646) and The United Kingdom (N = 1184). We believe this in depth “case study” provides the readers with an insight into the situation of two big economic subjects and offers a way/clue how to think more deeply about the effects of the crisis.

As mentioned above, most of the respondents who participated in the Survey come from Germany and the United Kingdom. These two countries are also the greatest economic operators in Europe. Moreover, based on the different attitude of inhabitants/representatives of these countries towards European integration (EU), we are really curious to see whether this attitude was also reflected in the way the Coronavirus crisis was managed - at least we expected different preferences of authorities whom German and British respondents expected help from.

Despite the expectation, we realized the differences cover a broader scope of results. First of all, we found that even the intensity of the coronavirus crisis's impact and reactions to the crisis were somewhat different.

First of all, we discovered that respondents from Germany reported less adverse effects than respondents from The United Kingdom (p = 0.01; p < 0.001). Compared to German, where most of the respondents claimed they did not face any change during the crisis (51,30%), most British respondents reported various forms of decrease (45,60%) (graph 1). However, as seen in the second picture/graph, even the most common answer among Brits was they experienced no change during the crisis, too, the sum of responses about various degrees of decrease exceeded the number of respondents who reported no change. Additionally, the greatest difference is observed in the category of people who suffered from a decline higher than 50%. While this option was the second most represented in the British sample (15,30%), only 8,3% of German respondents claimed so - it was the second least represented answer among the Germans.

We also realized that respondents from Germany have a more favorable/open attitude to CAPEX reduction (p < 0.001). Despite the fact that more than one third (36,30%) of German respondents plan to reduce their capital investments, respondents from The United Kingdom are less willing to do so (19,40%).

Furthermore, we also realized different expectations about the sources of help - or let us say help seeking strategies. Overall the British respondents claimed they do not need support at all more openly (67%) than their German counterparts (48,30%). The latter on the other hand said they expect more help from national authorities (33,3%) and European authorities (8,4%) than the former (16,5%; 4,6%). In this case, we consider the possibility of an explanation with regard to the participative and pro-European orientation of the Germans. Contrary to German respondents people from The United Kingdom slightly more frequently said they expect support from banks (9,2%) than German respondents (7,3%).

Finally, even in the preferred type of support were differences. It is obvious that for both the Germans and the Brits, 0% financing was the most popular option (55,4% and 64,5%), and Special leasing the least preferred one (7,1% and 5,3%). However, there are some nuances between our two groups of respondents in the distribution of the given options. For example, as seen in the graph, the distribution of various options in the german sample is flatter indicating smaller differences between preferences of types of help.

So far, we have discussed the differences only. On the other hand, some characteristics have both groups of respondents in common. While inspecting the data from the COVID Survey we discovered that these two countries did not differ at all in a case of whether they have to sell part of the liquidity (p = 0.23) and attitudes towards the green equipment (p = 0.91). For both of these countries, the distributions show that the majority of the respondents neither did sell any part of their fleet to improve liquidity nor change their minds in green equipment investments.

Conclusion

To conclude, the article provided the readers with information about the situation of two European economic leaders and how they dealt with the coronavirus crisis. All the above-mentioned results were generalizable. Furthermore, thanks to statistical testing, we realized there is at least more than 99,95% probability the results are the same as the reality. Moreover, despite the fact we hope this article may be helpful for machine owners mainly, we wonder about other groups of people operating in the heavy machinery industry. For that reason we recommend to focus on the full Covid survey report created in collaboration with CECE and ERA which we consider as a comprehensive source of information about the impact of the Coronavirus crisis on the heavy machinery industry.

Would you like to know more about the impact of COVID pandemic on the construction industry? Click here for the full report by LECTURA, ERA and CECE!

or continue reading the Covid Special ==> Part 2: Differences between the coronavirus crisis impact according to the company size

==> Part 3: Why did some contractors suffer from the decrease during the coronavirus crisis, and others experienced the growth of their business?