SUMMARY OF DOCTORAL PAPER “THE IMPACT OF

ECOLOGICAL MARKETING ON THE ROMANIAN

ENTERPRISES”
Roca Mihai Ioan
Bucharest University of Economics, Marketing Faculty, str. Mihai Eminescu, no. 13-15, sect
1,Bucharest, mirosca@ase.ro, 021.319.19.00
Ctoiu Iacob
Bucharest University of Economics, Marketing Faculty, str. Mihai Eminescu, no. 13-15, sect
1,Bucharest, facultatea.marketing@ase.ro, 021.319.19.00

Resume: This article is a summary of doctoral paper “The impact of ecological marketing on the
Romanian Enterprises” sustains in November 2006 by Mihai Rosca and coordinated by prof. Iacob Catoiu
at the Bucharest University of Economics.
Key words: green marketing, eco-marketing, environmental marketing, ecological behavior.,

The work is structurest in 3 well defined parts. While the first part analyses the knowledge state in the
field, the second part tries to be an analysis of the marketing medium and the third is dedicated to a series
of research studies unique to date in Romania.
The part dedicated to the knowledge state in the field opens with a review of the scientific ideas about
ecologic marketing. First chapter starts from the appearance of the concept of ecologic marketing, passing
by its various definitions and senses used by various authors and ends with the role and place of ecologic
marketing in science.
The second chapter is dedicated to the ecologic marketing peculiarities; a chapter talks about the ecological
products market and another one about consumers. On this market there is a paradox: people with big
revenues try to become ecologists, while the ones with small revenues, due to the lack of money, use
cleaner, environment-friendlier methods to satisfy their needs, being in this way better ecologists than the
ones who want to be ecologists.
It is serious, however, that everyone wants an improvement in their life level, following the example of the
most developed state, USA. The problem is that we would need a few more planets if every Earth
inhabitant would adopt the American life model. From this perspective I tried to analyze what is an
ecologic consumer and I offered a set of market segmentations based on this criterion from the
international scientific literature. This subchapter supported an absolute novelty in Romania, the author’s
segmentation of ecologist clients presented in chapter eight of this work.
As we cannot talk about ecologic marketing without an ecologic policy of marketing/marketing mix, I had
studied and developed ecological policies inside each element of the traditional marketing mix from the
third chapter. The products which are more ecologic from a customer point of view are not necessarily
more ecologic. The concept of ecologic product starts from the idea of a total product, followed during its
whole life, from the project phase to the phase of its reintegration in environment at the end of the life
cycle. The price of ecologic producs hides many aspects developed in this chapter, from ecologic costs to
strategies of ecologic price. In the subchapter about promotion I followed the influence of communication
of ecologic character messages, a whole section being dedicated to the correct communication. In the
subchapter about distribution, I proposed a new logistic chain, in which to be also covered the gestion of
goods after use. I gave a strong importance to the inverse distribution as an anti-polutant activity, while a
different section is dedicated to the strategies of ecologic distribution, with an accent on the strategies of
prevention of polutants and on the strategies of recource recovery.
The second part of the doctoral paper is dedicated to the marketing medium. I wanted this part to be a
helping instrument for the ones interested in introducting an ecologic marketing policy in their company.
As the implementation of ecologic marketing in a company cannot be realized without the implication of
its leading factors, in the first chapter of this part I analyzed aspects connected with the internal company
aspects, such as management problems. I analyzed the management of ecologic marketing, with all that its
1180
implementation in a company means. Here we pointed to the means of economic management, as well as
to numerous strategies of ecologic marketing, that can be used in a company. The chapter tries to unify
theory and practice, mentioning on one hand theoretical aspects and on the other hand numerous exemples
of companies that used various ecologic principles.
The fifth chapter is dedicated to the macro-environment factors. The elements of macro-environment have
a large influence in the implementation of ecologic marketing: the continuous degradation of the
environment is the main reason inspiring the writing of this dissertation. The impact of people on the
environment is provoking maybe one of the the largest unbalances in nature. If for each natural substance
there is some living factor that can transform it, people are the only ones who managed to introduce in
nature materials that cannot be decomposed and keep accumulating.
Another problem treated by me was the political implication of various nations in treaties to limit the
pollution, as well as a presentation of the most important treaties in which Romania participates.
The last subchapter was not planned when I had started to work on this dissertation. It was not planned for
two reasons: first, because the year of intergration of Romania in European Union was not a certitude in
that moment. The second reason was discovered during my research in Romanian companies. The starting
hypothesis of my research was that, due to economic development, the Romanian companies will be more
and more responsable for their hosting society and they will integrate environmental protection policies in
their activities. I was sincerely surprised by the unmodified lack of interest and I realized that most changes
regarding environment are made not due to an internal pressure from the company, not even due to civil
society or consumer pressure, but due to external pressures, especially the ones coming from the European
Union as conditions of integration of Romania. This is why I consider that the mimum ecologic direction
appeared in the Romanian economic medium is not started by companies or clients (as the theory of
ecologic marketing says) but it is due to european integration.
In the sixth chapter I analyzed the elements of micro-environment and their role in ecologic marketing
implementation. The role of civil society, so important in other countries for a „green” transformation, is in
Romania quite unimportant. But a surprising case appeared; while I was ready to jump to somber
conclusions on the lack of citizen impication in social problems: the Roúia Montana case, the first battle
between the ecologist organizations and a large company. The restart of economic growth in Romania
brought with it new investitions. The new mining investition, with plans to exploit whole mountains using
cyanides flamed the unrest of some ecologist organizations. The fight between the non-governmantal
organizations and the mining company was an extremely new thing for Romania, and I am very happy to
have had the opportunity to analyze it. Truly interesting is the fact that both camps used a full arsenal of
communication tehniques to touch their objectives. This fight is presented in the last subchapter of chapter
six.
The third part of the dissertation is completely dedicated to direct research. I consider this research to be an
absolute novelty for Romania because in my search for secondary data I found no published study on a
similar subject. The two chapters of the last part are divided after two big studies of the dissertation. In the
first is the longitudinal research in the Romanian companies from years 2002, 2004 and 2006, while the
second comprises the 2006 study on the Romanian consumers.
The study regarding the impact of ecologic marketing on Romanian companies was interested in obtaining
general information on the way in which companies had integrated ecologic marketing concepts at the level
of upper management of the organization. This study, designed as a longitudinal search, is not a complete
study but rather a research interested in the general traits. In fact, started as a longitudinal research, it was
transformed based on the better understanding of Romanian business environment and of the way this
problem is perceived. Thought in 2001, this research wanted to see the transormations in Romanian
companies during my Ph.D. studies. To this end, data collection were organized in the years 2002, 2004
and 2006. Of course, in the 3 data collection campains, the research morphed under the light on previously
collected information, some research areas being stressed, while other areas had been abandonned. Because
the studies were thought as omnibus-type studies, the quantity of data being somehow limited, in 2006 I
realized two personal studies inside the business environment. Moreover, due to the data collected at the
level of years 2002 and 2004 and of the conclusions based on those, presented also in the oral exam phase
of my Ph.D., I decided to start a study of the consumers.
This last research, initially unplanned, appeared due to the surprising conclusions from the first research.
Although my hypothesis was that the companies will be more and more ecologist, this did not proved true
1181
during the three studied year. Trying to find answers to the initial question of this dissertation, I studied
consumers’ interest in ecologic ideas. The primary reason for the start of ecologic marketing in companies
is the appearence of consumer needs that have to be satisfied in ecologic ways. As long as the market will
not require ecologic behavior and products, the business environment will not offer them. A list of my
studies related to this dissertation, together with their year of data collection, follows:
1. Organizational behaviour regarding ecologic products and activities (2002)
2. Organizational behaviour regarding ecologic products and activities (2004)
3. Organizational behaviour regarding ecologic products and activities (2006)
4. Social responsability of businesses (2006)
5. Ecologic behavior of consumers (2006)

Selected references
1. Button, John, How to Be Green, Century Hutchinson, London, 1989
2. Cairncross, Frances .Costing the Earth: The Challenge for Governments, the Opportunities for
Business. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. 1992
3. Cătoiu Iacob (coord.), Cercetări de marketing, Editura Uranus, Bucureúti, 2002
4. Charter M., Polansky MJ (editors) Greener Marketing: a Global Perspective on Greening
Marketing Practice, 2nd edition Greenleaf: Sheffield.(1999)
5. Coddington, Walter, Environmental Marketing, Mc Graw-Hill, Inc, Ney York, 1993
6. Donald Fuller, Sustainable Marketing, SAGE Publication, Thousand Oaks, 1999
7. Elkington, John úi Tom Burke The Green Capitalists. London: Victor Galloncz, 1987.
8. Elkington, John, Toward the Sustainable Corporation: Win-Win-Win Business Strategies for
Sustainable Development. California Management Review. 36(2), 1994
9. Iosif, Gh. N., Florina Bran, Victor Manole, Stanca Iosif, Mirela Stoian: Ecomarketingul
societăĠilor comerciale, Bucureúti 1999, Tribuna Economică
10. Irvin, Sandy, Beyond Green Consumerism, London: Friends of the Earth, 1989
11. Johnston, David, Building Green in a Black and White World, Home Builder Press, Washington,
2000
12. Ken, Peattie, Environmental Marketing Management. Pitman Publishing, London, 1995
13. Kit Sadgrove, Ghidul ecologic al managerilor, Editura Tehnica , Bucureúti, 1998
14. Ottman, Jacquelyn, Green Marketing, NTC Business Books, Lincolnwood, 1993
15. Oyewole, Philemon, Social costs of environmental justice associated with the practice of green
marketing, Journal of Business Ethics. Dordrecht: Feb 2001. Vol. 29, Iss. 3;
16. Peattie, K. 1992. Green Marketing. London: Pitman Publishing
17. Polaski, Michael Jay, Alma T Mintu-Wimsatt, Environmental Marketing, The Haworth Press,
New York, London, 1995
18. Roúca, Mihai Ioan, Alin Stancu A behavior analysis of Romanian consumers from ”green
marketing” point of view, Marketing and Development 1971/2006 35 years of marketing in
Romania Editura ASE Bucuresti 2006
19. Roúca, Mihai Ioan, Cercetarea impactului marketingului ecologic in intreprinderile din Romania,
Revista Romana de Marketing anul I, nr 1 2006
20. Smith, Toby M. The Myth of Green Marketing. University of Toronto Press. Incorporated 1998.
21. Document de pozitie al Romaniei, Capitolul 22, Protectia Mediului Inconjurator, Conferinta
Interguvernamentala pentru aderarea la Uniunea Europeana
22. United Nations, Profiting from green Consumerism in Germany, Opportunities for Developing
Countries in Three Sectors: Leather and Footwear, Textiles and Clothing, and Furniture

1182