Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the relation between the types of the economic activities pursued by enterprises and the method of identifying product life cycle stages applied in the entities which declare implementation of environmental life cycle costing. The aim was accomplished by means of research carried out in entities in Poland, Latvia and Germany with the use of the following research methods: questionnaire interview, survey questionnaire, analysis of the entities’ documentation. The key findings permit new hypotheses, which will be verified at the next stage of the conducted research: (1) the selected methods of identifying product life cycle stages depend on enterprise size; (2) preparation of controlling departments as to the subject matter determines the selection of a method of identifying product life cycle stages; (3) shorter product life cycles determine the applied method of identifying life cycle stages.