Special Issue "Sustainability in Marketing"

Dear Colleagues,

The most recent report of the Science Advisory Group to the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit, and coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization, United in Science, further highlights the urgent need for the development of concrete actions that halt global warming and the worst effects of climate change. The report underlines the glaring, and growing, gap between agreed targets to tackle global warming. In short, we must accelerate the use of non-carbon energy sources and reduce the global share of fossil fuels in our energy mix. This dual requirement illustrates the scale of the challenge facing communities, governments, and business. While governments might create overarching policy and regulatory frameworks to pursue the change required, business is capable of driving transformative change both on the supply side, through more responsible processes of production, and the demand side, by bringing about more resopnsible levels and modes of consumption.

In line with an understanding of marketing’s role as a (co)creator and deliverer of value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large, this Special Issue aims to explore how for- and not-for-profit organisations are pursuing this role, including the challenges and organisational changes needed to do so, the results, and how this broader sense of value is being measured. This purpose links contemporary marketing’s role and its outcomes with sustainability and sustainable development, which cover environmental, social, and economic dimensions, commonly summed up in the concept of the triple bottom line. Pursuing this role will typically require a multi-disciplinary approach to achieving value (co)creation and delivery, which may require collaborations beyond organisational walls with novel, non-traditional partners.

This Special Issue welcomes papers addressing relationships between marketing and sustainability along the entire value/harm chain, and eoncompassing value networks, but seeks to focus on the processes by which organisations scope strategic goals and objectives, and adjust strategy formulation and operational performance for achieving more sustainability-oriented results. Of particular interest are studies that report evidentiary triple bottom line results. The Special Issue welcomes qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methodology studies, especially those that draw on novel theories, or build on relevant theory, including case study approaches. Interdisciplinary papers are also welcome, especially from social, economic, and environmental psychology, the natural sciences, management, economics, etc., as they relate to marketing.

Dr. Alan Pomering
Assoc. Prof. Gary Noble
Dr. Elias Kyriazis
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.

• environmental sustainability
• economical sustainability
• social sustainability
• (co)creation of value
• evidentiary outcomes
• marketing