The Role of Marketing Strategies in Modern Business and Society

This chapter introduces the role of marketing strategies in modern business and society, thus explaining the theoretical and practical concepts of competitive strategy, market segmentation strategy, differentiation strategy, cost leadership strategy, focus strategy, market orientation, and organizational performance; the significance of marketing strategies in modern business and society; and the impact of marketing strategies on organizational performance. Marketing strategies serve as the valuable foundation of marketing plans designed to fill marketing needs and reach marketing objectives. Marketing strategies include all basic and long-term activities in the field of marketing, thus dealing with the analysis of the strategic situation of an organization and the formulation, evaluation and selection of market-oriented strategies and effectively contribute to the goals of the organization and its marketing objectives. The chapter argues that applying marketing strategies has the potential to increase organizational performance and gain sustainable competitive advantage in the social media age.

Rural Tourism in Transitional Russia's Economics

This chapter assesses the potential of rural tourism in Russia, addresses such threats to sustainable rural development as unemployment and depopulation, and substantiates the practicality of diversification of traditional rural sources of income by means of tourism and other alternative activities. The system approach is utilized, which envisages systematization and stocktaking of various aspects of sustainable development: available resources, economic conditions of agricultural production, market capacity and demand for agricultural commodities and food, employment and social issues, environmental conditions, and alternative sources of income for rural inhabitants.

Organic Agriculture as a Tool to Make Economy Green

The main questions that trouble ecologists are concentrated on the state of the environment per square unit, while concerns of food security supporters are concentrated on a cost of production unit (which is bigger in comparison with standard for organic agriculture). Economists, in turn, are concerned about the low cost of decision for achievement of food security in comparison with environmental safety. The point, discussed in the chapter, is related to implementation of organic and traditional technologies of farming. It is expedient to estimate the changes of environment per units of production, if there is a set of food production and soils of a variable quality.

New Approaches to Regional Branding through Green Production and Utilization of Existing Natural Advantages

The chapter aims at the identification of existing natural, environmental, and rural resources that have worked together to promote the individual brand of Stavropol Region as a producer of green agricultural commodities and food, as well as a resort area, attractive by its unique environmental conditions. The perspectives of the development of green production are accessed in order to exploit existing regional resources in the long term, encourage local/regional producers and stimulate their economies, which is vital to quality of life in the countryside and a balanced development of rural and urban areas. Special attention is paid to the elaboration of possible ways to increase effectiveness of natural management as an approach to improve the competitiveness and sustainability of rural economies whilst at the same time opening up alternative employment opportunities for rural people.

Russia's Foreign Trade in Agricultural Commodities in Its Transition to Liberalization

The chapter includes an analysis of the current state of the international organic market and contemporary tendencies in the production and marketing of green products in Russia. Analysis of Russia's foreign trade in agricultural products is also provided. This chapter includes an overview of major threats and opportunities for organic production in Russia in view of trade liberalization. This is also related to state support of green production in Russia and CIS and its influence on volumes, directions, structure and effectiveness of trade. The chapter concludes with assessment of perspective tools to ensure sustainability of green production through a set of political, social and financial tools, and bigger involvement of rural households into international competition, diversification of traditional rural sources of income by means of green production, local identification and specialization, and utilization of existing competitive advantages.

Green Agricultural Marketing

This chapter presents the key elements of green agricultural marketing, referring to distribution and promotion. Similarities and discrepancies of conventional and green marketing of agricultural products are identified, using comparative analysis. Models of sustainable distribution and promotions are designed. The results and discussions reveal that green products, distribution and promotion meet both ecological principles (referring to environment), and economic ones (reduced costs). Green agricultural marketing is ethical, beneficial and safe for individuals and target groups.

Global Warming, Climate Policy, and the Green Paradox

Scholarship about the role of managed systems when considering the impacts of climate change, the environmental problem arising from polluting-resource use, the economic aspects of strategies to slow climate change, and the connection between climate change and economic growth has increased and consolidated, especially in recent years. The main objective of this chapter is to explore and describe the effects of climate policy on greenhouse gas emissions, the societal aspects of climate change, the technology-based determinants of green growth, and the productivity impacts of environmental quality. The results of the current chapter converge with prior research on the harmful results of climate change, reduced use of polluting inputs as a consequence of environmental policy, the prevailing governmental policies for fighting global warming, and measures to mitigate the temperature increase by reducing CO2 emissions.

Intensification of Agricultural Production vs. Environmental Management

The chapter includes analysis of the current state of agricultural production in Russia, addresses the major problems and limitations of its efficiency and substantiates the perspective ways of growing intensification of agricultural production in Russia on the basis of integration of agricultural producers, growing scales of agricultural production, rational management of natural resources and effective utilization of existing resource and environmental potential.

Harmonization with EU Regulation Regarding Environmental Protection in Livestock Production

Environmental protection is one of the key problems in the process of accession of the Republic of Serbia to the European Union. That refers to agricultural production and livestock production which can be large source of environmental pollution. To prevent that, the EU Nitrates Directive must be implemented in Serbia in the following period. However, the Nitrates Directive implementation is related to numerous organizational and financial problems, especially at family farms with activity in livestock production. In this chapter, the authors presented characteristics of livestock production in the Republic of Serbia (cattle number, number of family farms, characteristics of housing capacities for animals and facilities for manure and slurry storage). The authors presented ways in which manure is stored, as well as the potentials of biogas production. Also, they presented models of livestock production financing, including subsidized credits for agriculture, which can facilitate the implementation of the Nitrates Directive at farms.

Human Capital as a Factor of Development of the Rural Economy

The challenges of the post-industrial stage of development of society dictate the high quality requirements of human capital, which depends on both the level of economic development of the country as a whole and the state of the rural economy. In this chapter, the authors propose a methodological approach to the definition of the index of multiple-factor conditions for human capital development in rural areas. It reflects the vector of long-term development of human capital under the influence of an interlocking system of social, economic, demographic, environmental and institutional factors that manifest themselves at different levels of its formation. An open trend model building of influence multi-level factors system on the development of human capital in the rural economy of the region allows the authors to model the possible directions of human capital development on the basis of experimental calculations and use them in making management decisions by program-target method.