Segmentation of the Spanish automotive industry with respect to the environmental orientation of firms: towards an ad-hoc vertical policy to promote eco-innovation

• Three environmentally oriented groups within the Spanish automobile industry.
• We named them eco-balanced, eco-marketers and eco-blind.
• Eco-balanced firms are orientated towards the environment being the biggest group.
• Eco-marketers are highly influenced by market information sources.
• Eco-blinds don't see the general path toward approaching environmental aspects.

The achievement of competitive advantages by companies as a result of the enhancement of their environmental commitment is a vibrant research topic. This paper identifies groups of companies within the automotive industry that are driven by the same patterns in their environmental activity and clarifies the different approaches that act to encourage the environmental orientation of these firms. The purpose of this study was to identify groups of companies within the automotive industry that have different mechanisms driving their environmental proactivity. Using a PLS-FIMIX analysis; we identified three different behaviors of automotive companies that correspond to what we describe as the eco-balanced, the eco-marketers and the eco-blind groups depending on how interact with the market demand and take advantage of eco-innovation.