Ethical Marketing in the Blockchain-Based Sharing Economy: Theoretical Integration and Guiding Insights

TLDR

Since Ethereum’s launch in 2015, blockchain technology has evolved and become associated with the sharing economy, yet its connection to ethical marketing remains unclear. The authors conducted a systematic literature review of 163 articles and a co‑citation analysis to identify blockchain capabilities, attributes, and the economic theories that underpin them. They propose a shift toward stakeholder‑capitalism ethics in blockchain‑based sharing economies, outlining future research across descriptive, instrumental, and normative stakeholder theory to guide scholars on how blockchain fosters institutionally embedded ethical marketing, collaborative marketing, and sustainable value‑chain innovation, including the metaverse.

Abstract

Abstract Since the introduction of Ethereum in 2015, blockchain technology (BT) has been evolving, and BT has been associated with the concept of the sharing economy by business academics. Despite the marketing research on the sharing economy that has been extensively conducted in the last decade, the linkage between BT and ethical marketing in the sharing economy remains unclear. Through a systematic literature review of 163 articles and a co-citation analysis, this study identifies the key elements of blockchain capabilities, blockchain attributes, and the underlying economic theories of blockchain. It also synthesizes and proposes a shift of ethical marketing logic in the blockchain-based sharing economy that delineates the principles of stakeholder capitalism. The article concludes with a list of future research directions that underline three approaches of stakeholder theory (i.e., the descriptive, instrument, and normative approaches). These directions aim to guide marketing scholars concerning how BT enables an institutionally embedded view of ethical marketing activities and practices that enhance collaborative marketing and subsequently innovate value chains and create sustainable business models in the sharing economy, as well as to the metaverse.