Research project
Dynamic Green Capabilities and Performance by Firms in the International Contexts: Systematic Literature Review on Green Marketing and Performance
- Start date: 1 August 2023
- End date: 31 July 2024
- Principal investigator: Dr Jieke Chen
- Co-investigators: Ming Cheng
Description
The research is driven by the growing global concern over the environment, which has increasingly pressured firms to adopt green marketing strategies in response to demands for sustainability and climate action.
Moreover, green marketing research has expanded rapidly between 2019 and 2023, with over 952 publications on the subject. Despite this growth, however, existing literature still offers limited insights into the empirical foundations and theoretical explanations, particularly regarding how green marketing impacts both environmental and financial outcomes. Therefore, as a foundational step in a larger project, this review aims to bridge these gaps by deepening the understanding of existing empirical research on green marketing, focusing on its underlying theories, context, constructs, and methodologies.
This project is funded by Leeds University Business School’s Climate Change and Environmental Research Fund.
Key findings
The key findings from the review reveal mixed results regarding the impact of green product and process innovation, green pricing, green distribution, and green promotion on performance. A significant limitation is the dominance of cross-sectional data, highlighting the need for more longitudinal studies to better understand the long-term effects and sustainability of green marketing strategies.
Additionally, there is inconsistent measurement of green marketing components across studies, making research comparability and reliability challenging. Standardized measurement frameworks are necessary for consistency.
Furthermore, endogeneity issues have been largely overlooked, and more attention is needed to address these for more robust causal analysis.
The review also points to a lack of insights in the international marketing context, especially regarding green strategies employed by multinational and exporting firms, such as green advertising, market-entry, communication, and offshoring.
Moreover, many studies focus heavily on financial outcomes, with insufficient attention given to the role of green marketing in addressing environmental crises.
Finally, while Resource-Based View and Natural Resource-Based View theories are fundamental in this field, future research should consider integrating them with theories like institutional theory and contingency theory to explore how internal resources and external environmental factors interact within green marketing strategies in different contexts.
Impact
The review helps to understand the existing empirical research on green marketing and its outcomes by examining the underlying theory, context, construct, and methodology in the field. Furthermore, it provides evidence of the growing importance of green marketing practices, highlighting the need for firms to contribute to addressing the environmental crisis.
By summarising the conceptual framework, the review offers managers valuable insights from the literature, helping them understand the mechanisms through which green marketing drives both firm financial performance and environmental contributions.