Examination of the Consumers’ Expectations Regarding Company’s Contribution to Ontological Security

Abstract

Security is considered a basic human need, according to Maslow’s hierarchy; however, it is hard to define exactly what the term means. Globalization, the digital environment, bring new dimensions and increasingly diverse interpretations of security to life. These new approaches, while reducing the consistency of the concept, allow an understanding of individual attitudes towards security. In recent years, several researchers have analyzed the psychological dimension of security at a personal level and ontological security in relation to citizens, residents, employees and students; however, based on a review of research history, there is still a scientific gap with regard to the perspective of customers and consumers. Accepting the fact that market actors are increasingly taking their share of creating a secure environment, in our empirical study we focus on corporate involvement and contribution through an examination of consumers’ perceptions of security. Corporate security is originally a field supporting the smooth operation of the organization, but nowadays it has become an important element of corporate strategy and also a factor of competitiveness. Keeping that in mind, our objective is to get a picture of how consumers judge the contribution of companies to the general sense of security in Hungary, what security-related tasks they expect from the corporate actors, and how they feel about a company’s security-related performance. In our study, we develop the ontological security model of consumers, into which we integrate—next to the individual socio-psychological features and the macro-environmental elements—the dimension of the assessment of corporate performance, the possible components of which are analyzed during the quantitative primary research.