The traditional relationship marketing approach that goes back to Berry (1983) focuses on the existing customer relationships that need to be designed. Since the 2010s, in the course of globalization and the growing importance of information and communication technologies, there has been a tendency to consider further stakeholders that can also be relevant for the company’s success.

Since stakeholder behavior is increasingly shaped by the values of sustainable development, the basic idea of sustainability-oriented relationship marketing is to integrate economic, ecological, and social issues into the design of the company’s relationships with its external and internal stakeholders, with the aim of generating mutual and lasting benefits by initiating, stabilizing, intensifying, resuming, and if necessary ending relationships.

Managers still often consider themselves the main designers of the sustainability-oriented relationship marketing approach. However, recent research suggests adopting a network-based perspective and a co-creation approach to sustainability meaning development, involving managers and the different stakeholders. Research aiming to understand the multistakeholder interactional processes that explain how sustainability can contribute to relationship marketing efforts remains scarce and particularly fragmented (Golob and Podnar, 2019).

This Special Issue aims to address this research gap by collecting up-to-date, high-quality research articles that relate to one or more of the following topics on a micro-, meso- or macro-level:

1) At the micro-level, the focus is on intrastakeholder determinants of sustainable behavior which can relate to a group of or individual stakeholders. Selected topics include but are not limited to:

• The analysis of how individuals (whether managers or other stakeholders) learn or unlearn, both individually and collectively, about sustainability issues and initiatives;
• The effects of sustainability-oriented relationship marketing activities throughout the different phases of the customer life-cycle;
• The synergetic and rival dependencies of social, ecological, or economic sustainability issues in consumer behavior and procurement;
• The gap between expressed or desired sustainable behavior and the actually realized sustainable behavior on the part of consumers and suppliers;

2) At the meso-level, the interstakeholder relationships are considered such as between consumers, firms, and other stakeholders. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• The analysis of the ways in which companies and multiple stakeholders can implement strategies for stimulating co-creation processes of sustainability-oriented relationship marketing approach;
• The analysis of the sources of information and the type of stimuli that diverse stakeholders use to make sense of sustainability issues and initiatives;
• Studies on the nature, intensity, and channels of customers’ inward and outward sensegiving efforts and of the mechanisms by which different social actors across the stakeholder network interactively interpret and react to sustainability campaigns;
• The analysis of the dynamic relationships between sustainability drivers, sustainability evaluations, and multistakeholder interpretations and reactions to sustainability initiatives and messages;

3) On a macro-level, the institutional, cross-cultural, global framework and sustainability “mega-trends” relevant for stakeholders living and coexisting in a globalized marketplace are the focus. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• Sustainable Development Goals’ impacts on inter- and intrastakeholder relations;
• (Multinational) companies as (co-) designers of sustainability-related governance in global value chains;
• Analysis of the effects of legally binding due diligence on adjustment processes in the value chain;
• Influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on stakeholder relationships, e.g., in sustainability project partnerships.

We invite you to contribute to this issue by submitting comprehensive reviews, conceptual, theoretical, and empirical research articles. Papers selected for this Special Issue are subject to a rigorous peer review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

References:

Berry, L. L. (1983): Relationship Marketing. In: Berry, L. L./Shostack, G. L./Upah, G. D. (Eds.): Emerging Perspectives on Services Marketing. Chicago: American Marketing Association, 25–28.

Golob, U., & Podnar, K. (2019). Researching CSR and brands in the here and now: An integrative perspective. Journal of Brand Management, 26(1), 1-8.

Prof. Dr. Valérie Swaen
Prof. Dr. Guido Grunwald
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• sustainability-oriented relationship marketing
• sustainability marketing
• relationship marketing
• customer relationship management
• stakeholder reactions
• stakeholder management
• sensemaking
• sense-giving
• sustainability meanings development
• cooperative value creation
• customer life-cycle
• corporate social responsibility (CSR)
• CSR communication
• sustainability campaigns
• value chain sustainability governance
• sustainability project partnerships