Eternalizing the Promethean Flame of Sustainability: Holistic, Multi-Stakeholder Insights from Marketing

This dissertation explores how to keep sustainability relevant, engaging, and actionable in marketing, addressing researchers, practitioners, consumers, and organizations through diverse theoretical and methodological approaches. The first project presents a novel meta-framework that integrates Actors, Value Orientations, and the Scope of Sustainability. Through a scoping review of 48 conceptual articles and a content analysis of 191 empirical articles to produce an evidence map, this chapter reveals three misalignments between conceptual and empirical efforts: i) an overemphasis on consumer-level research, ii) a gap in societally-oriented research, and iii) a continuing focus on a Peripheral Scope of Sustainability. The second project is a large-scale, cross-cultural survey and experiment (N > 2,000) examining consumer responses to corporate human rights violations (CHRVs). Contrary to expectations, consumers perceive CHRVs committed to undocumented migrant workers more severely than CHRVs committed to locals or documented workers. These findings underscore that companies not only have legal obligations to treat all workers ethically, but that failing to do so creates backlash amongst consumers across cultural contexts. The third project applies complex systems theory to develop a grounded framework of Gen Z’s shifting commitment to sustainable consumption. Drawing on qualitative analysis of 210 reflective diaries and four focus groups collected over 12 weeks, this chapter identifies two core drivers of sustainable consumption behavior, four key dilemmas, and four consumer profiles. The fourth project draws on the Job Demands-Resources framework to examine mechanisms related to employee sustainability fatigue. Two surveys of pro-environmental salespeople show that pro-environmental leadership and climate are key job resources that foster employee resilience as a personal resource. These enhance job engagement and sales performance. We also identify customer bottom-line mentality as a job demand that disrupts the positive relationship between leadership and climate. These findings offer concrete paths for organizations to sustain pro-environmental salespeople’s engagement in their unique roles. Show more