The role of marketing strategies in achieving the environmental benefits of innovation

Government agendas are increasingly focused on environmental issues, pressuring companies to reduce the environmental impact of their activities, and innovation plays a key role in this. Substantial evidence from academics and practitioners has revealed that technological innovation can reduce negative environmental impact, but the role of marketing innovation in driving environmental benefits has been overlooked by academic research. This study aims to shed light on the environmental contribution driven by marketing innovation by examining the different roles of four types of marketing innovation (product, promotion, placement and price) in achieving environmental benefits, through an empirical analysis of the latest available Community Innovation Survey in Germany and Portugal related to the period 2012–2014. In our models we consider a multinomial outcome, namely four clusters of companies with a different combination of environmental benefits, constructed using a Cluster Analysis conducted on Principal Component Analysis main factors. Then, the determinants of the cluster membership are analyzed through a Multinomial Logistic Regression model. Results show that the introduction of a marketing innovation yields environmental benefits both within the enterprise (internal) and during the consumption or use of services and products (external). When the four types of marketing innovation are analyzed separately, further results emerge: only two types of innovation, in pricing and placement, were found to be significantly related to both internal and external environmental benefits. Companies are challenged to carefully evaluate the types of marketing innovation that should be introduced to positively impact the environment.