Facilitating the Development of Innovative Competencies and Strategic Marketing Sustainability Commitment

Innovations are the main driving force of enterprise development. Therefore, many enterprises improve their performance on the market through fostering of innovation. Sustainable development must be incorporated into business models helping enterprises and industries to become more responsible and at the same time efficient. It represents the conditio sine qua non for enterprise positioning as a successful and competitive factor that delivers top value to consumers and other stakeholders, directly or indirectly involved in building a sustainable society. The aim of the paper is to determine how and to what extent innovations are contributing in shaping of a strategic marketing orientation for sustainability. The purpose of the paper is to present utility of innovations in responsible and sustainable enterprises on their applied marketing strategy. In this sense, it is assumed that the enterprises which are encouraged to develop sustainable innovations, apply a strategic marketing orientation for sustainability. The survey was conducted on a sample of experts of largest successful Croatian enterprises. In order to establish the importance of innovation adaptation to and its impact on achieving sustainability marketing strategy, a correlation analysis was conducted between independent and dependent variables that represent the attitudes of respondents regarding strategic sustainable marketing issues and applied innovation. Correlation analysis showed strong connection between factors that drive innovation implementation and some factor of marketing efficiency. This model represents a good basis for organizational adaptation since it represents an innovative approach in marketing planning and thus strategic commitment to the sustainability principle.