Energy Efficiency and Environmental Friendliness of Production as Factors of Consumer Value of Goods and Image of the Enterprise

Abstract

Nowadays, environmental safety and resource saving are important parts of public consciousness. The consumer value of goods is traditionally considered as a ratio of the consumer received benefits and the buying costs. However, environmental properties and energy efficiency of production are seldom considered as parts of consumer value, in contradistinction to functional, economic, and service benefits. The paper contains a methodical approach to assessment of influence of an environmental management system on the consumer value of goods and image of the producer.

The paper reveals the role of environmental safety and energy saving in a choice of Russian consumers, volatility of indicators, and their share in the consumer value of goods. The dependence of the changes in sales volumes of machine-building and metallurgical enterprises from receiving and the subsequent confirmation of the ecological certificate herein are analyzed. The authors’ conclusion is that in the current situation in Russia, environmental friendliness and energy efficiency are not considered by consumers as a part of value. Consequently, enterprises are not interested in investments in environmental safety and energy saving. Considering the image component in calculation of the economic effect of activities in the field of energy saving and environment protection is proposed as one of the ways to solve the outlined problem.