What is the difference between “Sustainable marketing” and “Sustainability marketing”? Those two terms mean two different concepts.
Sustainable marketing is a marketing activity aimed at creating long-term relationships with customers for the benefit of the company, without any specific reference to sustainability issues.
Sustainability marketing is more specifically and clearly related to sustainable development and involves building and maintaining sustainable relationships with customers, the social environment, and the natural environment. To accomplish this, marketing managers require different and innovative thinking in four key areas: treating socio-ecological problems as a starting point of the marketing process, not as a set of externalities or constraints; understanding consumer behaviour holistically, meaning contributing to educating the customer on sustainable consumption behaviour; reconfiguring the marketing mix (for example considering the cost of recycling into the price variable); and appreciating and utilizing the transformational potential of marketing activities and relationships; from a sustainability perspective, products and services need to address both customer problems and socio-ecological problems.
Source: Peattie, Ken, and Frank-Martin Belz. 2010. “Sustainability Marketing – An Innovative Conception of Marketing.” Marketing Review St. Gallen 27 (5): 8–15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11621-010-0085-7.
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François Colbert is MMIAM Codirector, Remi-Marcoux Chair in Arts Management, author of the book Marketing Culture and the Arts published in 15 langages along its five editions.
For a more complete discussion please see:
Colbert et al. 2018. Marketing Culture and the Arts, 5th edition. Montréal: Carmelle and Rémi-Marcoux Chair in Arts Management, HEC Montréal.
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