A blueprint for sustainability marketing

Abstract

Sustainability marketing is a provocative area of research. Through an integrated knowledge inquiry approach, the conceptual article aims to provide answers to the feasibility of a joint application of sustainability and marketing and a blueprint for future sustainability marketing studies and practices. Five issues pertaining to the credibility and ambiguity of sustainability marketing are addressed—namely, the controversial debate between the incompatibility of marketing and sustainability, what sustainability offers marketing, what marketing offers sustainability, the feasibility of adopting the sustainability concept in marketing, and sustainability marketing myopia. Then, the article identifies a set of dimensions that characterize sustainability marketing, including economic, environmental, social, ethical, and technological dimensions. Unlike previous studies that often focus on only selected dimensions, the current article makes the case to consider the five identified dimensions as a whole to achieve greater sustainability. The article is also the first to incorporate two new dimensions into the sustainability marketing model: (1) the ethical dimension, in which a proposed synthesis among consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics is argued to contribute to the sustainability agenda and (2) the technological dimension, in which the innovation and use of technology is argued to enable communication and education of sustainability and the creation or cocreation of alternatives or solutions that contribute to greater sustainability. Remarks on the proposed blueprint and suggestions for further research conclude the article.