Special Issue "Sustainability-Oriented Relationship Marketing"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2022.

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Valérie Swaen
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
UCLouvain, Louvain Research Institute in Management & Organizations, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Interests: corporate social responsibility implementation and communication; relationship marketing; consumer behavior; education to sustainable development
Prof. Dr. Guido Grunwald
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Management, Culture, and Technology, Institute for Dual Study Programmes, 49809 Lingen/Ems, Germany
Interests: relationship marketing; sustainability marketing; consumer behavior; CSR crises; complaint management; participatory impact assessments

Special Issue Information

The traditional relationship marketing approach that goes back to Berry (1983) focuses on the existing customer relationships that need to be designed. Since the 2010s, in the course of globalization and the growing importance of information and communication technologies, there has been a tendency to consider further stakeholders that can also be relevant for the company’s success.

Since stakeholder behavior is increasingly shaped by the values of sustainable development, the basic idea of sustainability-oriented relationship marketing is to integrate economic, ecological, and social issues into the design of the company’s relationships with its external and internal stakeholders, with the aim of generating mutual and lasting benefits by initiating, stabilizing, intensifying, resuming, and if necessary ending relationships.

Managers still often consider themselves the main designers of the sustainability-oriented relationship marketing approach. However, recent research suggests adopting a network-based perspective and a co-creation approach to sustainability meaning development, involving managers and the different stakeholders. Research aiming to understand the multistakeholder interactional processes that explain how sustainability can contribute to relationship marketing efforts remains scarce and particularly fragmented (Golob and Podnar, 2019).

This Special Issue aims to address this research gap by collecting up-to-date, high-quality research articles that relate to one or more of the following topics on a micro-, meso- or macro-level:

1) At the micro-level, the focus is on intrastakeholder determinants of sustainable behavior which can relate to a group of or individual stakeholders. Selected topics include but are not limited to:

  • The analysis of how individuals (whether managers or other stakeholders) learn or unlearn, both individually and collectively, about sustainability issues and initiatives;
  • The effects of sustainability-oriented relationship marketing activities throughout the different phases of the customer life-cycle;
  • The synergetic and rival dependencies of social, ecological, or economic sustainability issues in consumer behavior and procurement;
  • The gap between expressed or desired sustainable behavior and the actually realized sustainable behavior on the part of consumers and suppliers;

2) At the meso-level, the interstakeholder relationships are considered such as between consumers, firms, and other stakeholders. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

  • The analysis of the ways in which companies and multiple stakeholders can implement strategies for stimulating co-creation processes of sustainability-oriented relationship marketing approach;
  • The analysis of the sources of information and the type of stimuli that diverse stakeholders use to make sense of sustainability issues and initiatives;
  • Studies on the nature, intensity, and channels of customers’ inward and outward sensegiving efforts and of the mechanisms by which different social actors across the stakeholder network interactively interpret and react to sustainability campaigns;
  • The analysis of the dynamic relationships between sustainability drivers, sustainability evaluations, and multistakeholder interpretations and reactions to sustainability initiatives and messages;

3) On a macro-level, the institutional, cross-cultural, global framework and sustainability “mega-trends” relevant for stakeholders living and coexisting in a globalized marketplace are the focus. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

  • Sustainable Development Goals’ impacts on inter- and intrastakeholder relations;
  • (Multinational) companies as (co-) designers of sustainability-related governance in global value chains;
  • Analysis of the effects of legally binding due diligence on adjustment processes in the value chain;
  • Influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on stakeholder relationships, e.g., in sustainability project partnerships.

We invite you to contribute to this issue by submitting comprehensive reviews, conceptual, theoretical, and empirical research articles. Papers selected for this Special Issue are subject to a rigorous peer review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

References:

Berry, L. L. (1983): Relationship Marketing. In: Berry, L. L./Shostack, G. L./Upah, G. D. (Eds.): Emerging Perspectives on Services Marketing. Chicago: American Marketing Association, 25–28.

Golob, U., & Podnar, K. (2019). Researching CSR and brands in the here and now: An integrative perspective. Journal of Brand Management, 26(1), 1-8.

Prof. Dr. Valérie Swaen
Prof. Dr. Guido Grunwald
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainability-oriented relationship marketing
  • sustainability marketing
  • relationship marketing
  • customer relationship management
  • stakeholder reactions
  • stakeholder management
  • sensemaking
  • sense-giving
  • sustainability meanings development
  • cooperative value creation
  • customer life-cycle
  • corporate social responsibility (CSR)
  • CSR communication
  • sustainability campaigns
  • value chain sustainability governance
  • sustainability project partnerships

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission, see below for planned papers.

Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

Title: From Negative Publicity to CSR-crises: A dynamic Multi-stakeholder Co-creation Framework
Authors: Guido Grunwald; Valérie Swaen
Affiliation: 1. Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Management, Culture, and Technology, Lingen/Ems (Germany) 2. UCLouvain (Belgium) and IESEG School of Management, Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 9221 - LEM - Lille Economie Management (France)
Abstract: Companies can be exposed to public accusations from relevant stakeholders relating to an allegedly insufficient or inappropriate commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Such negative publicity can escalate into a CSR-crisis which poses a threat to the company’s existence. For crisis management it is crucial to determine how negative publicity can develop over time and what marks the transition point to a CSR-crisis. As stakeholders‘ interpretations of crisis information may vary and stakeholders engage in co-creating meaning of CSR crisis information for themselves and for others, a relationship-oriented multi-stakeholder approach is needed to understand and predict stakeholder interrelations and reactions along different crisis phases. As both aspects have been widely neglected in CSR-crisis research, in this paper, a conceptual framework of CSR-crisis development is proposed that adopts a dynamic, multi-stakeholder co-creation perspective. The framework which is based on stakeholder theory and CSR-sensemaking research integrates various forms of CSR-related negative publicity and crises. It shall support managers in the early detection of CSR-crises and selecting appropriate strategies and measures of crisis management. Based on the framework proposed, ideas for future research in the still underdeveloped research field of CSR-crises are provided.

Title: How to Co-create Sustainable Value through Partnerships? Insights from Relationship Marketing-, CSR-, and Sponsorship-Research
Authors: Guido Grunwald; Jürgen Schwill; Anne-Marie Sassenberg; Cindy Sassenberg
Affiliation: 1. Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Management, Culture, and Technology, Lingen/Ems (Germany) 2. Brandenburg Technical University of Applied Sciences, Brandenburg an der Havel (Germany) 3. University of Southern Queensland, Springfield Central (Australia)
Abstract: Sustainable value arises from integrating the economic, environmental and social dimension of sustainability. By co-creating sustainable value through partnerships, the specific sustainability-related knowledge and resources of various stakeholders will be combined to more effectively achieve macro-level sustainability goals, while at the same time better targeting micro-level individual goals. This is essentially facilitated by strengthening stakeholder commitment and trust, ultimately enhancing relationship quality at the meso level of the partnership. Based on a systematic literature review that integrates relationship marketing-, CSR- and sponsorship research, success factors for the co-creation of sustainable value through partnerships are derived. These are grouped according to the macro, meso and micro level and combined to form a conceptual framework for sustainable value co-creation. Previous approaches to stakeholder integration in relationship marketing research, such as in open innovation and service management research, largely neglect the sustainability context but offer comprehensive concepts for stakeholder integration. In CSR- and sponsorship research, comprehensive approaches to stakeholder integration including the relational perspective tend to be underrepresented. By integrating current empirical and theoretical insights from these research streams, this study contributes to existing approaches by complementing a broader relationship marketing perspective to sustainable value co-creation. It derives relevant avenues for further research as well as useful insights for practitioners to evaluate, manage and control relationships in sustainability project partnerships and to derive strategies and measures to improve relationship quality.

Title: Stakeholder Integration in the light of Sustainability Governance: Requirements and Implications for Sustainability-oriented Relationship Marketing
Authors: Klaus Fischer
Affiliation: Wilhelm Büchner Hochschule, Darmstadt (Germany)
Abstract: Sustainability challenges as climate change, biodiversity loss or global social inequalities are of cross-boundary nature and cannot be dealt with by national states alone. Thus, new forms of governance beyond the state, comprising the role of companies, civil society and scientific institutions are necessary for achieving global sustainability goals as they were formulated by the UN in 2015. Consequently, in our globalized economy, actors of non-state governance as corporations and their stakeholders are increasingly gaining importance and directly called for action in the sustainability discourse. However, relevant concepts of sustainability governance and stakeholder governance largely remain unintegrated in management science and practice so far. Concepts of stakeholder integration in relationship marketing are often focused on consumer concerns thus responding to a single stakeholder group's requirements merely. On the one hand, that is too one-sided to launch long-term successful sustainability strategies that provide shared value for various stakeholders. Moreover, on the other hand, reacting to consumer needs is not doing justice to the increasingly discussed proactive role corporations take as actors of sustainability governance. However, integrating further stakeholders and sustainability issues comes with some practical and theoretical requirements. From a management practice point of view, such integration requires an approach consistent with the company's overall stakeholder and sustainability management, avoiding inconsistency. Additionally, and from a theoretical perspective, current research in the fields of corporate sustainability and sustainability governance suggests that identifying the "right" issues and stakeholders to be integrated is not a negligible task. The same is true concerning the design of the integration process itself, offering different steps and methods of integration. This paper aims at discussing requirements for stakeholder integration in the light of sustainability governance and deriving implications for sustainability-oriented relationship marketing. It thereby focuses on approaches of stakeholder integration as the bridging element between corporate sustainability management, sustainability governance, and relationship marketing. For example, materiality analysis and matrices as commonly used instruments of stakeholder integration in sustainability reporting and management cannot be seen isolated from the design and processes of stakeholder integration in relationship marketing. Additionally, and considering the interplay of corporations and their stakeholders as processes of sustainability governance, such integration also needs to consider governance criteria as legitimacy and effectiveness. In a nutshell: relationship marketing managers and scientists need to ask: which group should be integrated with which objectives and which impacts on the sustainability performance of the company? Stakeholder integration majorly triggered by consumers and Western societies falls short here. This paper addresses the meso- and the macro-level of sustainability-oriented relationship marketing. In doing so, both levels are discussed in their interrelations: The global sustainability framework (macro-level) influences inter-stakeholder relationships (meso-level), e.g. when sustainability requirements are directed to the company. The resulting processes of stakeholder governance (e.g. through blaming campaigns, lobbying, or long-term changes of consumer behavior) finally influence the achievement of global sustainability goals in turn.

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