| Abstract: | The marketing literature has traditionally viewed the business environment as fixed and not subject to manipulation by marketing decision makers. However, a number of researchers have suggested that some environmental control and manipulation by marketers is possible. Some of these researchers suggest that marketing strategies can be developed and directed toward affecting and changing the environment to suit the objectives of the company. The purpose of this research is to investigate the phenomenon of environmental management among marketing decision makers. The study focused on the efforts of marketing decision makers to manage specific environmental issues in their industries. To facilitate this investigation a set of environmental "framing" variables were developed and measured. These variables are perceived threat level, perceived environmental manageability, and commitment to act. A set of hypotheses were developed linking these three framing variables to antecedent variables. The framing variables were dichotomized to produce an 8-celled matrix of environmental management approaches, or archetypes. Eight hypotheses relating each of these archetypes to specific environmental management strategies were developed. The study focused on the environmental issue of deregulation in four industries. These industries were banking, national and regional airlines, trucking, and savings and loans. The hypotheses were tested using data gathered from the chief marketing decision maker at each company. The findings of the analysis indicated that five of the hypothesized antecedent variables were significantly related to their respective framing variables. However, regression analysis showed weak joint adequacy of the variables in explaining the variation of the framing variables. MANOVA analysis indicated a significant difference across the archetypes due to strategy responses. However, these differences proved not to be the specific strategy patterns predicted. A post hoc analysis of the relative rank of each archetype on a strategy-by-strategy basis revealed three distinct groupings of the archetypes, showing a general difference in the level of intensity of environmental strategy use. Discriminant analysis indicated that it was possible to assign respondents to their a priori archetypes on the basis of strategy response vectors alone at a rate significantly greater than would be expected from chance. |
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