THE INFLUENCE OF MACROECONOMIC FACTORS ON THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY IN THE EU

The aim of this paper is to examine whether macroeconomic factors affect the automotive market. The difficult situation on the global market, a result of the numerous disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, has once again brought to the fore the issue of interruptions in supply chains and their vulnerability. Supply chains in the automotive industry are in a particularly difficult situation because their members are often very geographically dislocated, and the problems that arise in the present are very complex. For the authors of this paper, such a situation was the main driver of looking at the context and looking for potential solutions on the way to reducing negative effects. The main idea of this paper is to look at macroeconomic factors and their connection with supply chains in the automotive industry in the context of their impact on one of the most important performance factors – sales. Based on the panel analysis conducted as part of the research, it is possible to observe three very important macroeconomic factors that affect the automobile market, namely the inflation rate, GDP, and household income. The analysis of all factors indicated the existence of the influence of these variables on sales in the automotive industry.