Sustainable marketing: an exploratory study of a sustain‐centric, versus profit‐centric, approach

• Published date: 01 June 2023
• Author: Bruno Dyck,Rajesh V. Manchanda,Savanna Vagianos,Michèle Bernardin
• Date: 01 June 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12314

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Sustainable marketing: an exploratory study of

a sustain-centric, versus profit-centric,

approach

Bruno Dyck

1

| Rajesh V. Manchanda

2

| Savanna Vagianos

3

|

Michèle Bernardin

3

1

Norman Frohlich Professor in Business Sustainability, I.H. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba,

Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 5V4, Canada

2

F. Ross Johnson Professor of Marketing, I.H. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba,

R3T 5V4, Canada

3

I.H. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 5V4, Canada

Correspondence

Rajesh V. Manchanda, F. Ross Johnson

Professor of Marketing, I.H. Asper School

of Business, University of Manitoba,

480 Drake Centre, 181 Freedman

Crescent, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 5V4,

Canada.

Email: raj.manchanda@umanitoba.ca

Funding information

F. Ross Johnson Professorship in

Marketing; Norman Frohlich

Professorship in Business Sustainability;

University of Manitoba; Social Sciences

and Humanities Research Council of

Canada, Grant/Award Number:

435-2022-0281

Abstract

As the need for business to address pressing social and

ecological issues intensifies, so does the importance of

enhancing the development of sustainable marketing.

The current dominant approach to sustainable market-

ing is based on a Triple Bottom Line (TBL) profit-

centric worldview, which suggests that firms can simul-

taneously improve their financial well-being as they

reduce negative social and ecological externalities.

However, whereas the scope of TBL marketing is lim-

ited to sustainability initiatives that enhance profits,

there is a growing need for—and interest in—

developing a sustain-centric approach to marketing that

relaxes the need to maximize financial well-being in

order to optimize social and ecological well-being. Even

*The study was approved by the Psychology/Sociology Research Ethics Board at the University of Manitoba, and used

funding from the Norman Frohlich Professorship in Business Sustainability and the F. Ross Johnson Professorship in

Marketing.

Received: 23 March 2022 Accepted: 23 May 2023

DOI: 10.1111/basr.12314

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

© 2023 The Authors. Business and Society Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of W. Michael Hoffman Center for Busi-

ness Ethics at Bentley University.

Bus Soc Rev. 2023;128:195–216. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/basr 195

so, because of the dominance of the profit-centric

worldview, hallmarks of sustain-centric marketing

practices remain under-developed and may even lend

themselves to becoming inauthentically mimicked on a

piecemeal basis by greenwashing profit-centric firms.

We provide an exploratory empirical study of market-

ing practices evident in two sustain-centric firms and

draw implications to advance theory for both sustain-

centric and profit-centric marketing.

KEYWORDS

cases, marketing 4 Ps, profit-centric, sustainability, sustain-

centric

1|INTRODUCTION

Business theory and practice are in transition. For many years, it was taken for granted that the

purpose of business revolved around maximizing profits and/or shareholder wealth

(e.g., Friedman, 1970; Smith, 1776)—a view deeply embedded in the ethos of business theory

and practice (Ferraro et al., 2005; Waddock, 2011)—and that it was up to other stakeholders to

care for social and ecological concerns (e.g., government). However, in the 1990s researchers

began finding increasing evidence that this approach was unsustainable because it was associ-

ated with all manner of environmental and social crises.

The shortcomings of the Friedmanian profit-centric view prompted business scholars and

practitioners to develop revised theory and practice, which showed that negative social and eco-

logical externalities could be reduced in ways that simultaneously enhance profits, and thus

safeguard the profit-centric worldview. Much of this more sustainable profit-centric approach

can be placed under the broad umbrella of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach—which

argues that businesses can improve their profits by addressing people and planet

(e.g., Elkington, 1997; see also Gelles & Yaffe-Bellany, 2019; Hart, 1995; Porter &

Kramer, 2011)—and has been adopted by the vast majority of the world's largest corporations

(e.g., by 2018, 86% of S&P 500 firms published sustainability reports; Makower et al., 2020).

Despite this, profit-centric TBL business practices continue to create significant negative exter-

nalities. For example, the negative ecological externalities of the world's 1200 largest corpora-

tions were estimated to be $5 trillion in 2018, an increase of 50% from 5 years earlier and an

amount greater than their total profits (Makower et al., 2020). Moreover, even if they were to

meet their aspirational carbon targets this would represent only 25% of what is required of them

to meet Paris Agreement goals (Makower et al., 2020).

In response to persistent shortcomings of variations of profit-first business, there is now a

small but growing chorus of business practitioners and scholars who are challenging the TBL

profit-centric view of business, and in its place are developing a sustain-centric view of business

where profit plays a necessary but subservient role to social and ecological well-being

(e.g., Dyllick & Muff, 2016; Freeman, 2017; Gladwin et al., 1995; Heikkurinen et al., 2016; Her-

n

andez & Muñoz, 2022; Milne & Gray, 2013; Purser et al., 1995). Adopting a sustain-centric

196 DYCK ET AL.