Research Landscape of Sustainable Marketing: Thematic Analysis and Future Trends

Abstract

Sustainability has been recognized as an integral business strategy leading to competitive advantage. The aim of the study is to generate a bibliometric blueprint for the sustainable marketing research domain and further identify emerging trends in this area. The data is collected from one of the most prominent bibliographic databases, Scopus. After narrowing our search keywords, a result of 4,889 articles is produced. Following the use of Boolean operators, 1,004 bibliographic resources were found, which were analysed in this study. The data is then visualized using a comparison visualization programme (VOSviewer) to demonstrate the possible outcomes graphically. The research findings are presented in the form of article categorizations into 11 thematic categories. The thematic categories outlined previous studies’ trends and contribution characteristics under the individual category, illustrating their implications. The article sums up the emerging and future themes in the area of sustainability. From the perspective of sustainability, the study demonstrates the importance of a sustainable business environment, green marketing, ecological marketing, sustainable tourism, and sustainability and development. The study brings out the role of multiple stakeholders to prevent the depletion of natural resources, secure waste management, prevent pollution, and cooperate with the nation’s compliance. This will promote economic development, which can be improved if we consider taking wiser steps to prevent the economy from degrading.