The following countries are defined as the Central & Eastern European and South-Eastern European (CE&SEE) region in the terminology used by technology companies:
- Central Europe represented by Poland, Czech Rep., Slovakia, Hungary.
- Eastern Europe, understood as “everything East of Poland” represented by Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and the subregion Baltics – Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
- South-Eastern Europe represented by all Balkan countries incl. Romania and Moldova.
From the historical point of few we could add to the Central European sub-region all German speaking countries – also in reference to the political agenda of Mitteleuropa. From the business point of view the different sizes of economies, wealth and decision-making processes in these countries are justify the separation of these groups of countries – Germany, Austria and Switzerland are usually described as DACH region. Reg. Poland, Czech Rep., Slovakia and Hungary it is becoming more and more popular to refer to these countries as countries of the Visegrad Group (V4).
In case of Eastern Europe I’m showing only data for Ukraine and Baltics. After the start of the war in Ukraine, hardly any company continues to do business in Belarus and Russia and they are not taken into account in analyzes or reports.
The countries comprising this region have a distinctive element that shaped them differently from other European countries. After the Second World War, these countries were either governed by people subordinate to the Soviet Union or were within its sphere of influence, while maintaining their politically neutral character. with one exception which is Greece.
As a result of the Cold War and the associated isolation from Western European countries, different economic cultures, state structures, and habits developed in this region. After the fall of Russian hegemony in this area, this process started to reverse, and these countries began to resemble Western European countries, but it is a very slow process. The distinctiveness of the people’s characters from this region does not favor this transformation, as they have always had to fight for their independence and survival, being pawns on the chessboard of superpowers.
The above has a direct impact on the effectiveness of the sales process in this territory. What one learns in Spain, the United Kingdom, France, or Germany cannot be directly applied to sales processes in Hungary, Latvia, or Albania.
