Eco-Innovation: The Toyota Prius Case

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Operations Research, grade: 1,0, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to argue why the Toyota Prius can be classified as product eco-innovation and to study why the eco-innovation Toyota Prius has been successful. For this purpose the general literature on eco-innovation is reviewed and applied on the specific case of the Prius. The paper is organized as follows: section 2.1 provides a brief overview of the different definitions of the term eco-innovation that are proposed in the literature. Next, section 2.2 depicts the factors determining the success of an eco-innovation which are named in the eco-innovation literature. After this, section 3 introduces the case of the Toyota Prius and argues why the Prius can be classified as product eco-innovation. Then, section 4 studies which determinants of eco-innovation have contributed to the success of the Prius. Finally, section 5 summarizes the findings of this paper and evaluates them critically.