Environmental Responsibility in Marketing Activities of Companies

Current negative course of events in the environment influences the activities of companies, as well as the behaviour of consumers. Companies are forced to take these trends into account also in the marketing activities. Consumers also treat the environment with higher responsibility. The behaviour of companies and consumers is closely connected. Consumers, while they are making purchase decisions, react to various stimuli from the external environment, including marketing stimuli of companies. In that context, the aim is to define the environmental marketing and examine consumer perception of it with an emphasis on particular tools of marketing mix. Design/methodology/approach: Secondary data analysis is supplemented by selected results of the preliminary questionnaire survey from March 2016, through which we determined whether the environmental efforts of companies have a sense of consumers and whether consumers are adequately responding to them. Structured questionnaire was designed to elicit responses about the effects of various environmental marketing tools on consumer purchase behaviour and it´s perception from 420 respondents from the Slovak Republic.Findings: The selected outcomes of the preliminary questionnaire survey focused on examination of consumers´ environmental behaviour and reactions to environmental initiatives of companies are presented. We found out that the environmental awareness of our respondents is low. They recognize environmental activities of companies only partially and they rarely take them into consideration when making buying decisions. This reality may seem discouraging for the environmentally oriented companies and may lead to less responsible behaviour of them in the field of environmental protection. Research/practical implications: Rising concerns about our planet´s future mobilize all market participants towards active protection as well as the removal of existing damage. Responsible marketing managers, who assess all their decisions with respect to the environmental impact, are no exception. We summarize the basic recommendations for companies focused on improvement of their behaviour concerning creation of an environmental marketing mix respecting needs and desires of the developing segment of environmentally responsible consumers. The achieved results will be the basis for a more detailed examination of the issues for the subsequent representative research.Originality/value: The results of our survey confirmed that responsibility for solving current long-run environmental problems must be taken not only by the companies but also by consumers themselves. If behaviour of both partners is responsible, the relationship will be beneficial for both market participants. This paper fulfils a need for advancing knowledge on implementation of environmental responsibility in marketing activities and provides a practical framework for responsible and environmentally-friendly (marketing) managers.