The sustainability marketing canvas. Creating order from chaos

Abstract

Paper Title: The Sustainability Marketing Canvas: Creating order from disorder Abstract: Marketing has made questionable impact upon environmental, social and economic sustainability due to a conceptual and level-of-analysis fragmentation. Not only is this a barrier to theoretical development but perhaps, most importantly, for coherent, sustainable action. Considering the challenges our planet is facing because of climate change, resource scarcity and biodiversity to name a few, answers are desperately needed for firms and society to adjust course in production and consumption. Marketing as a discipline is uniquely poised in offering sustainability answers because of its broad reach. One way to do this is to marry notions of marketing sustainability with “normal” marketing in a decision-making tool. A Sustainability Marketing Canvas is introduced where the 7P’s are fused with the two P’s of the Triple Bottom Line to create order in this conceptual disorder. The canvas is explained in detail and a case is briefly presented using VAUDE GmbH & Co , a sustainable outdoor brand in Germany. (Author note: Until the AMA Summer Conference the SMC will be tested on a business unit at Hilti and will be included in this paper as a case instead of VAUDE. VAUDE is only now used as a place-marker and example of what to expect from the paper until summer.)