Adoption and Benefits of Statistical Methods in Enterprises: Differences between Croatian Regions

This paper aims to address differences in the use of statistical methods by enterprises as one of the factors leading to the uneven level of economic development between different regions. For research purposes, a web survey was conducted on a sample of 667 Croatian enterprises in 2013. In order to better distinguish between Croatian regions, a complex sample survey design was used. The results show that the highest rates of statistical methods use among enterprises are in the Central and East region (36.96%). The conducted logistic regression analysis showed that the enterprises that use statistical methods have 63.5% greater odds of achieving positive net income than enterprises that do not. The research results point out the need for the adoption of statistical methods as a tool for achieving higher net income and for reducing economic dissimilarities between regions.