The Intersection of Sustainability, Marketing, and Public Policy: Introduction to the Special Section on Sustainability

In this introduction to the special section on sustainability, the authors propose two primary factors that can help characterize past research in marketing on sustainability. The first of these factors, the research objective, has two dimensions: mitigate versus create and short-term versus long-term focus. To mitigate (vs. create) implies that the objective of the research is to understand factors whose reduction (enhancement) would have a positive impact on sustainability. Short-versus long-term focus describes the fact that the research objective can be to impact an immediate behavior related to sustainability or can be focused on longer-term drivers or consequences of such behaviors. The second factor, research context, can have multiple dimensions, although much of the past and current research on sustainability has been conducted in four contexts: environmental, nonenvironmental, business-to-consumer, and business-to-business. The authors first review past literature in light of this framework and then discuss the articles in the special section. They close with a discussion of where researchers interested in studying the intersection of sustainability, marketing, and public policy can go from here.