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Market-focused sustainability: market orientation plus!

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Abstract

The concept of sustainability is increasingly being addressed theoretically by scholars and practically by managers and policymakers. With this growing focus on sustainability efforts, marketing is in a unique position to elevate its focus from managing relationships with customers to strategically managing a broader set of marketplace issues. Overall, an organization achieves market-based sustainability to the extent that it strategically aligns itself with the market-oriented product needs and wants of customers and the interests of multiple stakeholders concerned about social responsibility issues involving economic, environmental, and social dimensions. To set the stage for marketing’s inquiry into sustainability efforts, I briefly review the concept of sustainability, compare it with corporate social responsibility, bring in stakeholders, argue for the notion of “market orientation plus,” and consider the possibility that the notion of what sustainability encompasses is converging in the marketing literature.

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Acknowledgements

I appreciate the input provided by O.C. Ferrell, David J. Ketchen, Jr., and Jeannette Mena in the process of composing this paper. The Center for International Business Education and Research in the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University provided the resources to engage in this project.

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  1. Marketing and International Business, The Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824-1121, USA

    G. Tomas M. Hult

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  1. G. Tomas M. Hult
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Correspondence to G. Tomas M. Hult.

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Hult, G.T.M. Market-focused sustainability: market orientation plus!. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 39, 1–6 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-010-0223-4

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