A review of life cycle based ecological marketing strategy for new product development in the organizational environment

Abstract

Life cycle marketing strategy is emerging as a way for firms to enhance new product development efforts whilst managing ecological impacts. Such pursuits combining life cycle assessment and ecological marketing offer promise when it comes to assisting firms to decrease product based ecological impacts. The current lack of definition has implications for firms running such strategies with potential for adverse outcomes from well-meaning projects ranging from incorrect claims to the market place, through to products that actually contribute to, rather than mitigate, ecological impacts. The first contribution of this paper is the identification of key aspects of the emerging area of life cycle marketing strategy, and where these insights apply in practise. The reason to do this is to create an understanding of life cycle marketing strategy and the extent of issues facing marketers and companies embarking on such strategies. Life cycle marketing strategy is analyzed in the context of a new product development framework, to explore where it may fit within organizations. This is a pre-theoretical inductive framework rather than deductive allowing the model to be flexible and adaptive as further knowledge is uncovered. Investigations identify who or what may drive marketing strategies incorporating life cycle assessment, and how life cycle assessment may integrate into such strategies in organizations engaged with new product development. Insights meaningful to current managerial practise are developed using an organizational environment, life cycle assessment and ecological marketing lens, which derive from and develop the pre theoretical framework. This paper also contributes propositions for further organizational based research, in order to consolidate the findings of this review further with the body of new product development knowledge. Review results, insights and further research is envisioned to assist firms by providing a method to support global efforts in attaining ecological sustainability, rather than adversely contribute to ecological impacts through the marketing process.