Qualitative-Environmental Actions Expected by SMEs from V4 Countries to Improve Products

Sustainable development encourages companies to anticipate actions that will help reduce their negative impact on the environment, but will also be beneficial to customers in terms of meeting their expectations. Hence, the purpose was to define the actions that can be expected from SMEs from the V4 countries when improving products and minimizing the negative impact on the natural environment. The research tool was a survey, the presented results of which were obtained from March to September 2023. They included 379 SMEs from the Visegrad Group countries, i.e. Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. The results were analyzed using statistical tests performed in STATISTICA 13.3. For this purpose, the ANOVA test (repeated measurement designs) and the Mann Whitney U test were used to analyze statistically significant differences between the test results. Analyzes were performed at the significance level of α=0.05. The analysis showed that entrepreneurs from the V4 countries expect relatively different actions from SMEs when improving products and minimizing the negative impact on the natural environment. The results from the analysis may be useful in planning sustainable activities in SMEs from the V4 countries, so that these activities contribute to improving the quality of products and at the same time minimizing the negative environmental impact.