Sustainable Luxury Marketing: A Synthesis and Research Agenda

TLDR

Sustainability has become a pervasive issue in the luxury sector, attracting attention from brand managers, scholars, policymakers, media, and academia. The study examines the state of sustainable luxury research in marketing and consumer behaviour, critically reviews and synthesizes the fragmented literature, and proposes future research directions. The authors reviewed peer‑reviewed English‑language literature from 2007 to 2018 on sustainable luxury, identified through keywords such as sustainable, green, eco‑ and organic luxury, and critically assessed the research landscape to pinpoint gaps. The review identifies three core themes—consumer, organizational, and cross‑cultural concerns—reveals that sustainable luxury research is underdeveloped, and calls for a broader, deeper, and more critical research agenda.

Abstract

Abstract Sustainability has become a pervasive issue for the luxury sector, gaining traction with brand managers, scholars, policy‐makers, the media, and academia. The purpose of this paper is to examine the state of sustainable luxury research in marketing and consumer behaviour by critically reviewing and synthesizing the growing but fragmented body of scholarly work on sustainable‐luxury marketing. The paper critically assesses where, how and by whom research on sustainable luxury is being conducted, and it identifies gaps for future investigation. The paper reviews research published between 2007 and 2018 within major peer‐reviewed English‐language scholarly publications in business, marketing, ethics, fashion, food and tourism journals. The research is identified using the keywords sustainable luxury, green luxury, eco‐luxury and organic luxury. Three core themes emerge from this review: (1) consumer concerns and practices; (2) organizational concerns and practices; and (3) international and cross‐cultural issues. The review confirms that research on sustainable luxury is significantly underdeveloped. This paper provides the first critical and comprehensive assessment and categorization of the emergent literature streams on sustainable luxury. The authors argue for a broader, deeper and more critical research agenda on the relationship between sustainability and luxury. Potential avenues for future research on sustainable luxury are proposed, with calls for theoretical and cross‐cultural reflections that tackle broader systemic and institutional issues within the field.