THE IMPACT OF GREEN SUPPLY CIIAIN MANAGEMBNT PRACTICES ON FIRM COMPETITIVENESS WITH THE MEDIATING ROLE OF GREEN MARI(ETING (WTTH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MANUFACTURING COMPANIES IN TRINCOMALEE DISTRICT)

Abstract

Businesses have to adapt completely new marketing channels to determine how to invest and use new technologies, as well as compete on a global platform, where there is an increasing need to combine environmentally friendly choices into organizations' supply chain management. In this situation, green business has become increasingly important in today's business world and many progressive companies advocate Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) practices to gain competitive advantage. Hence, this study focuses on the impact of GSCM practices on firm competitiveness with the mediating role of green marketing. Thus, the study objectives are to identify the levels of GSCM practices, firm competitiveness, and green marketing, to identify the relationships among GSCM practices, firm competitiveness, and green marketing, and to identify whether green marketing mediates the relationship between GSCM practices and firm competitiveness among the executive level employees of three selected manufacturing companies. The study accompanies with quantitative research approach. The study used primary data as well as secondary data. A structured questionnaire was used as the method of data collection, and the questionnaire included 40 questions with five-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. In this study, the researcher attempts to highlight the firm competitiveness with respect to other variables, by using the information found in the 159 executive level employees from three selected manufacturing companies. A stratified random sampling technique was used to make the method of sampling framervork. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 analysis. The data were measured using descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analysis. In this study, the statistical tools that used to analyze the levels of variables are mean and SD values, while relationships were measured by Pearson coefficients and linear regressions for further mediation analyses. Moreover, the result shows significant positive associations among all the variables. Hence, this study helps managers to understand GSCM practices, firm competitiveness. and green marketing relationships in order to face and control the high competitiveness in their otganizations in an effective, efficient and practical manner.