Sustainability marketing research: current status and future challenges

Abstract

This paper reviews the academic literature on sustainability marketing, compile, classify and analyse the papers to understand the role of sustainability as a marketing strategy and provide a comprehensive bibliography. A range of databases from 1960-013 were researched. One hundred and fifty one articles were selected and each of these was further reviewed and classified according to various criteria. The content analysis led to classification of literature into three broad categories - environmental, social and economic sustainability which were further segregated into 15 sub-categories. The study identifies various untapped areas for further research in terms of sustainable product development process, sustainable supply chain management, sustainable consumer behaviour, etc. The findings relate to the field of marketing from selected online databases for the given time period, but not to the larger universe of literature on sustainability from other disciplines.