A typical Serb loves summer from winter vacation, he will rather talk on the phone than send messages to friends, he will rather spend New Year and Christmas at home with his family than to travel during holidays and more often use Cyrillic than Latin script. These are the results of today’s research entitled “Start putting what you care about first”, which Mastercard conducted in November 2018 to better understand the preferences and problems that Serbs face in their everyday lives, and which are the areas in their local community that need to be improved.
The study showed that honesty is the highest virtue for Serbs with 39% of respondents who pointed out this value. After sincerity follow friendship (18%), independence (10%), reliability (9%), and dedication (7%).
Often we talk about Serbia as a sporting country thanks to numerous titles won both in individual and team sports, so it is not surprising that sport is the biggest passion for 24% of Serbs. The trip is in second place with slightly lower number of votes (23.3%), followed by music (10.8%) and culinary and gastronomy (10.1%).
Time for yourself is what the Serbs are missing the most (14%), just like the time to relax (13%), and also consider that intangible things and experiences are the most important thing in life, and every third respondent says that the smile is the best way to beautify your day. People feel better after reading a good book or watching a TV series (16%), enjoying a pleasant walk (15%) or when they can share the success of dear people (13%).
Study “Start putting what you care first” also dealt with the fact that Serbs saw the problem in their local community and one-fourth of the respondents felt that this was a financial situation, 13% said that people were not motivated enough, while Every tenth claims that we need to be more kind and pay more attention to each other. The Serbs, as a problem in their community, see the health system, including long queues in the waiting rooms, as well as the lack of care about the environment.
The Mastercard study also explored how Serbs see different roles of market players in creating change in the community. Individuals would like to influence the culture and changes in bad habits, such as the failure to place pregnant women and the elderly in public transport, throwing rows and throwing garbage out of garbage cans (13%), and they would also like to motivate their community to initiate changes and improvement (11%). When it comes to the state’s role in improving local communities, Serbs say that improving the health system should be a priority (14%), and that the state should motivate people to improve their communities (12%), provide more investment and improve education system (8%). Serbs would like companies to help motivate local communities towards their improvement (13%), but also to invest in health (11%) and environmental protection (11%).
Mastercard understands that local communities are the center of our everyday life and therefore this company offers Serbs an opportunity to contribute to their community by identifying a problem that they and their community consider important. Starting from December 1st, people can send suggestions through Mastercard Serbia Facebook pages or Instagram accounts, describing what they need to improve in their community, and the authors of the five most inspiring stories will be rewarded with 3,000 euros per Mastercard card that will help them to solve or significantly contribute to solving this problem.
Jelena Ristic, market director of Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, said: “We are all part of the same community – we live here, we work here, we create invaluable experiences and lasting memories here. Therefore, why do not we do something important to make our community better? By this action, we give every individual the freedom to hear his or her voice and thereby enable them to really put what they care for first, and together we build a sense of community, trust and common accomplishments. Let’s start something invaluable together. ”
The winners will be announced in January 2019. Jovan Memedovic, a famous TV author and travel writer, will be the Mastercard brand ambassador of this campaign and he will help select the most inspiring stories.
On this occasion, John said: “It’s high time we started to strengthen collective consciousness in our apartment building, in the neighborhood, in the village, in the city. Also, we must restore faith that positive change is possible and that they can come from the idea of an ordinary man, and that there are those who will support it. I can not wait for suggestions and I am very pleased to be part of this action of Mastercard. “