To Provide a Model of the Relationship between Environmental Factors and Ethical Marketing and Its Effect on the Performance of Sportswear Producers

The aim of the present study was to model the relationship between environmental factors and ethical marketing and the effects of the latter on the performance of sportswear producers. This study is a descriptive-comparative research conducted through fieldwork and includes two populations. The first population is comprised of the entire domestic producers of sportswear as 200 firms, which all have been selected as research samples. The second population is comprised of the entire consumers of sportswear, however due to the vastness of the population, the Cochran's formula was applied and resultantly 200 individuals were selected as research samples through the availability random sampling method. Questionnaires have been used for the purpose of data collection. To this end, a researcher-made questionnaire comprising 34 questions and 4 dimensions was used for evaluation of environmental factors. In addition another researcher-made questionnaire comprising 18 questions and 4 dimensions was used for evaluation of ethical marketing. Nevertheless, a third researcher-made questionnaire comprising 28 questions and 4 dimensions was used for evaluation of corporate performance. The validities of the former questionnaires have been approved by authentic professors in sport management and marketing. The reliabilities of the former questionnaires were also evaluated using the Cronbach's alpha method. Descriptive and inferential statistics have been incorporated for analysis of data while the Smart-PLS software was used for inspection of causal relationships between the variables. Results show that there exists a positive and statistically significant relationship between organizational and personal factors and, ethical marketing. Results have also shown another positive and statistically significant relationship between ethical marketing and performance in sportswear producing corporations.