Mainstreaming Green Product Innovation: Why and How Companies Integrate Environmental Sustainability

environmental sustainability, green product innovation, life cycle analysis, manufacturing firms, Italy, Canada, multiple case studies,

Integrating environmental issues into product development: understanding the dimensions of perceived driving forces and stakeholders

This paper reviews the literature on driving forces and stakeholders for integrating environmental issues into product development decisions and reports the findings of a research project undertaken on 'environmental management in Britain'. The Environment Unit of Confederation of British Industry (CBI) endorsed this project. Using factor analysis this paper focuses on identifying underlying dimensions of perceived driving forces for environmental responsiveness at product development level in manufacturing firms. This study has identified 6 drivers and stakeholders. The main perceived driving forces are discussed from a multi-stakeholders perspective and implications are drawn

Developing environmentally conscious product strategies: a qualitative study of selected companies in Germany and Britain

With the rise in environmental concerns among the stakeholders of businesses, firms are responding with strategic environmental marketing activities designed to meet the growing demand for environmentally friendly processes, products and packaging. Part of an ongoing major research project being undertaken in Bradford Management Centre, empirically analyses the development of environmentally conscious product strategies (ECPS) in the broader framework of strategic environmental marketing. A multi-case study approach is applied and qualitative methods are used for the data collection in the UK and Germany. The data collected are analysed in terms of strategies (corporate and product level) and structure and processes (internal and external). Suggests that companies in the UK have started internalizing the ecological externalities into their product strategies and a few of them have actually achieved success. Identifies and discusses key factors for the achievement of both environmental and commercial success of ECPS

SVM and ANN Based Classification of Plant Diseases Using Feature Reduction Technique

Computers have been used for mechanization and automation in different applications of agriculture/horticulture. The critical decision on the agricultural yield and plant protection is done with the development of expert system (decision support system) using computer vision techniques. One of the areas considered in the present work is the processing of images of plant diseases affecting agriculture/horticulture crops. The first symptoms of plant disease have to be correctly detected, identified, and quantified in the initial stages. The color and texture features have been used in order to work with the sample images of plant diseases. Algorithms for extraction of color and texture features have been developed, which are in turn used to train support vector machine (SVM) and artificial neural network (ANN) classifiers. The study has presented a reduced feature set based approach for recognition and classification of images of plant diseases. The results reveal that SVM classifier is more suitable for identification and classification of plant diseases affecting agriculture/horticulture crops

Green and competitive: influences on environmental new product development performance

This article reports the findings of a large-scale research project on environmental new product development (ENPD) within British manufacturers. A major contribution of this article is the attempt to integrate new product development (NPD) and environmental management philosophies in order to develop and empirically test a theoretical framework for ENPD and performance. As such, it is one of the first studies to go beyond the anecdotal evidence in the extant literature, to empirically research ENPD activities and their impacts. This contributes to the debate about the potential for firms to be “green and competitive” by examining the relationship between ENPD activities and market and eco-performance for environmental new products. Contrary to the popular perception, the results suggest that there is more synergy than conflict between the conventional and environmental product development paradigms

Organizational antecedents of environmental responsiveness in industrial new product development

The greening of new product development process has been under scrutiny by researchers, but the attention has been limited to consumer products. Based on a survey, this paper investigates the environmental responsiveness in industrial new product development in 82 industrial firms. In comparison to traditional NPD process in the extant literature, the findings revealed additional activities in the greening of industrial NPD. These activities fall under the broader scope of life cycle assessment (LCA) for environmental impact including supplier evaluation and design for environment issues. The paper also investigates the relative impact of organizational antecedents on greening of industrial NPD activities. Organizational antecedents include functional interface of environmental specialists with design and product managers, environmental product policy, and top management support

The impact of perceived interactivity, control and involvement on bank satisfaction and loyalty : an integrated eService model for eBanking

Control and involvement are well researched concepts in traditional marketing, while interactivity is a relatively new concept associated with Internet marketing and communication. From an Internet interaction perspective, the research examines the impact of interactivity, control and involvement on customer satisfaction and loyalty in an eBanking context. Using Flow Theory as the theoretical foundation, it is proposed that these three Internet communication constructs lead to eService dependency and eService encounter satisfaction, which, in turn, enhance the overall satisfaction and loyalty to the principal bank at corporate level. A mixed methodology using both qualitative and quantitative approaches of data collection is adopted. In-depth interviews with eBankers and focus group studies with eBanking customers support the importance of interactivity, control and involvement in the eService encounter. The in-depth interviews and focus groups facilitate the identification of eService dependency as a new construct in the model. Participants' views also help the operationalisation of constructs and development of questionnaire for quantitative data collection. ii Analysis of the quantitative data using structural equation modelling shows support for all three constructs' hypothesised positive relationships with eService dependency and eService encounter satisfaction i.e. satisfaction at the service encounter level. It is also confirmed that eService dependency and eService encounter satisfaction have a positive impact on overall satisfaction with the principal bank i.e. satisfaction at corporate level. However, the influence of eService dependency and eService encounter satisfaction on loyalty to principal bank is not supported. The research concludes with the theoretical contributions and managerial implications of the research. Strategies to enhance interactivity with, control of and involvement by eBanking customers are recommended to eBankers. Limitations of the research and directions for future research in Internet and eService are also suggested.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo