Consumer durable goods (CDGs), including large appliances and electronics, substantially contribute to global waste generation. Managing CDGs waste in rural and remote communities encounters challenges like, lack of access to repair services, recycling programs, and sustainable disposal options. This study explores the implementation of circular economy (CE) as a strategy for two remote and rural communities (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) of Newfoundland and Labrador (Canada) and examine the barriers to implementing CE. The study also examined the challenge of implementing CE practices in the communities despite their alignment with sustainability principles, a qualitative approach rooted in traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) that considers the voices of these communities in CDG design with CE principles was explored. Semi-structured interviews were conducted covering areas of waste disposal behaviors, repair and reuse practices, economic and cultural influences on product lifespan decisions, and the role of TEK in sustainable waste management. The study emphasised significant barriers to adopting CE principles in remote and Indigenous communities by incorporating community voices and identified opportunities to incorporate TEK into local-scale waste management practices. Findings from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants highlight the gap between circular intent and systemic feasibility, with high repair costs, a lack of local recycling or waste diversion services, and limited infrastructure being the key barriers to CE engagement. The findings underscored the critical need for targeted infrastructure investments such as those aimed at improving waste management, repair accessibility, and recycling capabilities in remote and Indigenous communities, coupled with policy reforms tailored to the specific requirements.

ABSTRACT Responsible Innovation (RI) has gained increasing attention over the past decade, primarily in the context of publicly funded scientific research. However, in business scholarship, RI remains an emerging and fragmented concept, lacking a consensus on its definition, scope, boundary conditions, and uneven evidence on how firms operationalize RI in practice. To address this oversight, we conduct a systematic review of 100 peer‐reviewed studies in the business discipline. We synthesize how RI is conceptualized, identify dominant theoretical lenses and mechanisms, and map what is known about RI‐related outcomes in corporate settings. Our analysis reveals that while RI is increasingly associated with firms' sustainability strategy and competitive advantages, significant gaps remain in measurement, operationalization, and the conditions under which RI creates value versus imposes costs. We advance a research agenda that highlights specific research directions to deepen the exploration of RI in business contexts.

Purpose Green innovation and green acquisition are key green marketing strategies. This paper aims to explore and compare the drivers of green acquisition and green innovation strategies firms adopt. Moreover, the moderating role of top management team (TMT) sustainability commitment is investigated. Design/methodology/approach The research model used secondary data based on 1,565 firm-year observations in the beverage and food industry in the US. The two-stage control function approach was used for data analysis. Findings Media attention motivates firms to pursue both green innovation and green acquisition. The TMT sustainability commitment plays a pivotal moderating role. It strengthens the link between environmental regulation stringency and green innovation but weakens the impact of media attention on green acquisition. Practical implications Managers can leverage the study’s findings to guide sustainable marketing decisions in response to environmental regulations and media scrutiny. Policymakers and investors can encourage firms to adopt more sustainable practices, helping align corporate strategies with Sustainable Development Goals 9 and 12. Originality/value Though green innovation determinants are extensively studied, most studies rely on surveys or qualitative methods rather than secondary data. Also, as an alternative to developing in-house green technologies or products, the drivers of green acquisition remain unclear despite its growing prevalence. This study addresses both gaps in the sustainable marketing literature.

The importance of product design has been getting attention in the past decade from scholars and practitioners. Design plays a critical role in firms' product development and business strategies. In recent years, scholars began to see design innovation as another vital innovation element of a new product. A new product could encompass at least two innovation elements: technology innovation and design innovation. While technology points to the function of a product, design points to the form of a product. Despite the advocacy of scholarly examination of design innovation, there are few empirical studies of design innovation. This study examines the effect of design innovation (as well as technology and service innovation) on new product performance. Additionally, this study examines the roles of marketing innovation and process innovation in mediating the relationships between these innovation activities and new product performance. Regarding the findings from this study, it shows that design, technology, and service innovation (which, argued by this study, are the three main innovation elements of a new product) all contribute to new product performance. Additionally, marketing innovation and process innovation are found to mediate the relationship between these innovation elements and performance.

This study evaluated the economic prospects of biocarbon and biocomposite in the automotive industry and bioeconomy. The production cost of biocarbon produced from Miscanthus (a perennial grass), biocarbon-reinforced polypropylene (PP) composite (hereafter referred to as biocomposite), and automotive components are determined. The production cost of biocomposite was compared with inorganic filler-reinforced polymer composite (a conventional composite, i.e., talc reinforced PP composite). The production cost of biocarbon and biocomposite is estimated to be $513.1/ton and between $3536.7–$3647.3/ton, respectively (all dollar figures are in Canadian dollars). On the other hand, the cost of the conventional composite is likely to be $3544.8/ton. However, the production cost of an automotive component can be reduced by 9–11% compared with the conventional component if the components are produced from biocomposite. Further, this study determined the net present values (NPV) of a biocarbon plant and a composite manufacturing plant. The NPV of a biocarbon plant ($42.9 million) and a composite manufacturing plant ($34.0–$34.8 million for biocomposite and $34.7 million for conventional composite) showed that both the biocarbon and composite manufacturing phases are economically attractive. We concluded that by taking an industrial symbiosis approach, the biocomposite industry can be financially more attractive and contribute more to the bioeconomy.

As sustainability trends gain momentum, more businesses seek to expand their green business portfolios by acquiring firms with green technologies or green brands. However, the financial impact of this green marketing strategy is unclear. Utilizing event study methodology and the two-stage Heckman selection model, this study investigates stock market valuations of 182 announcements about green acquisitions from US public firms between 2000 and 2018. We report several interesting findings. First, we find that green acquisitions are accompanied by positive stock market reactions. Second, the stock market reacts more favorably to acquirers with a higher level of marketing capability and a lower level of innovation capability when green acquisitions are announced. Third, industry sensitivity moderates the effects of the two aforementioned organizational capabilities on the stock market return−green acquisition relationship. We gain insight into investor responses in the context of green acquisitions through the lens of marketing and innovation capabilities. The findings enrich research in the domain of marketing−finance interface and sustainability marketing by shedding light on the short-term green acquisition–firm value relationship.

Launching crowdfunding campaigns for new products and ideas is popular, and quality signals, such as endorsement and past success, can indicate the likelihood of the success of future projects. However, as these signals are not always available, creators, especially new ones, must rely on other signals, such as narrative quality. Building on the emerging literature on rhetorical signaling, we investigate the moderating effect of narrative quality on the relationship between risk/reward rhetoric and crowdfunding success. We show that risk (reward) rhetoric negatively (positively) affects campaign success. Thereafter, we introduce two new signals (narrative structural quality and narrative wording quality). Using a sample of 331,060 Kickstarter campaigns from 2009 to 2018, we empirically show that the use of punctuation positively moderates the relationship between risk/reward rhetoric and success, whereas the use of informal language negatively moderates this relationship. Interestingly, this moderating effect is similar to that of traditional signals such as endorsement and past success.

This article investigates the moderating effect of geographic distance on the importance of traditional and rhetorical quality signals (i.e., language-based signals communicated through the narrative) for the success of crowdfunding campaigns over the Internet. We argue that the information gap between backers and innovators rises with the increases in the geographic distance between them, even for transactions that occur over the Internet. Drawing on signaling theory, we argue that since distant backers face higher levels of information asymmetry compared to nearby backers, the value of traditional and rhetorical quality signals are amplified for them. Interestingly, we show that the interaction of spatial distance and less costly rhetorical signals, such as positive psychological capital, is the same as the interaction of spatial distance and traditional costly signals such as past success experience and endorsement. An analysis of 114,276 Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns, launched during 2009–2018 in more than 150 countries, confirms our propositions regarding the interaction of geographic distance and quality signals. Our results remain consistent in multiple robustness tests.

Though concern for environmental issues dates back to the 1960s, research and practice in the field of sustainability innovation gained significant attention from academia, practitioners, and NGOs in the early 1990s, and has evolved rapidly to become mainstream. Organizations are changing their business practices so as to become more sustainable, in response to pressure from internal and external stakeholders. Sustainability innovation broadly relates to the creation of products, processes, technologies, capabilities, or even whole business models that require fewer resources to produce and consume, and also support the environment and communities, while simultaneously providing value to consumers and being financially rewarding for businesses. Sustainability innovation is a way of thinking about how to sustain a firm’s growth while sustainably managing depleting natural resources like raw materials, water, and energy, as well as preventing pollution and unethical business practices wherever the firm operates. Sustainability innovation represents a very diverse and dynamic area of scholarship contributing to a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to general management, strategy, marketing, supply chain and operations management, accounting, and financial disciplines. As addressing sustainability is a complex undertaking, sustainability innovation strategies can be varied in nature and scope depending upon the firm’s capabilities. They may range from incremental green product introductions to radical innovations leading to changes in the way business is conducted while balancing all three pillars of sustainability—economic, environmental, and social outcomes. Sustainability innovation strategies often require deep structural transformations in organizations, supply chains, industry networks, and communities. Such transformations can be hard to implement and are sometimes resisted by those affected. Importantly, as sustainability concerns continue to increase globally, innovation provides a significant approach to managing the human, social, and economic dimensions of this profound society-wide transformation. Therefore, a thorough assessment of the current state of thinking in sustainability innovation research is a necessary starting point from which to improve society’s ability to achieve triple bottom line for current and future generations.

Despite environmental sustainability being identified as one of the key drivers of innovation, extant literature lacks a theoretically sound and empirically testable framework that can provide specific insights into green product innovation from a capability perspective. This study develops a theoretical framework from a sustainability-oriented dynamic capability (SODC) perspective. We conceive SODCs as consisting of three underlying processes (external resource integration, internal resource integration, and resource building and reconfiguration) that influence the change/renewal of sustainability-oriented ordinary capabilities (SOOCs) (green innovation capability and eco-design capability). This study answers two key questions: which SODCs are needed to develop green innovation and eco-design capabilities? Which of these capabilities lead to better market performance of green products? We test a structural model linking SODCs to market performance in 189 Italian manufacturing firms. First, we find that the nature of the SODC-performance link (direct or indirect) depends on the SODC type. Specifically, resource building and reconfiguration is the only SODC with a direct effect on market performance. Second, all three types of SODC affect the eco-design capability, which mediates the link between SODCs and market performance. Third, we find that external resource integration is the only SODC affecting the green innovation capability, which mediates the link between external resource integration and market performance. Resource building and reconfiguration is the SODC with the overall (direct and indirect) highest impact on market performance. This study, among the first to consider capabilities for green product innovation under a dynamic capability perspective, provides implications for scholars, managers and policymakers. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Acceleration of the search for environmental excellence is done by managing a 'holy trinity of challenges': Public credibility, money making and new product development. New products are an important part of environmental marketing, and the focus of environmental new product development (NPD) must be in improving the primary and environmental performance of a product rather than merely introducing cosmetic changes. Companies should regard the introduction of environmental NPD as a process-oriented change in the mental attitude of a business and in the way things are done in that business, embedded in the process of product innovation. W. Coddington explains that, in developing environmental new product concepts, three sets of issues must be addressed. They are concept issues; pipeline issues; and strategic issues. Management must adopt a broader perspective of a product's characteristics when addressing environmental issues, and examining the complete life-cycle impact.

The development and marketing of green products represent a way for firms to both contribute to the achievement of environmental sustainability and be successful. However, developing green products while being successful require development of unique dynamic capabilities that enable the integration of sustainability issues into product development. Dynamic capabilities for environmental sustainability are defined here as the firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external resources to address environmental sustainability challenges for developing green products. This study proposes a dynamic capabilities perspective of green product development, identifying dynamic capabilities for environmental sustainability and suggesting that both firm’s internal motivation and external forces drive the deployment of these dynamic capabilities. Based on literature and interviews with several companies, we identify three types of dynamic capabilities for environmental sustainability, develop multi-item scales and empirically test our research hypotheses. We completed a survey of Italian manufacturing firms and used Structural Equation Models for hypotheses testing. Our results from a sample of 189 firms support the dynamic capabilities theory providing empirical evidences that dynamic capabilities are driven by both firm’s internal motivation (specifically, environmental orientation plays a more relevant role than top management commitment, as the latter leads only to the integration of external environmental resources) and external forces (turbulence in green markets leads to the building and reconfiguring of environmental resources). The present study provides several theoretical and managerial implications. This research contributes in providing empirical evidence to the dynamic capabilities theory by studying the antecedents of dynamic capabilities, and by developing and validating measures for dynamic capabilities for environmental sustainability. This study also provides directions to managers on how to integrate environmental sustainability into product development.

Environmental sustainability has become one of the key issues for strategy, marketing, and innovation. In particular, significant attention is being paid by companies, customers, media, and regulators to development and consumption of green products. It is argued that through the efficient use of resources, low carbon impacts, and risks to the environment, green products can be essential to help society toward the environmental sustainability targets. The number of green product introductions is rapidly increasing, as demonstrated by the growing number of companies obtaining eco‐labels or third party certifications for their environmentally friendly products. Hundreds of companies representing most of the industries, such as Intel, SC Johnson, Clorox, Wal‐Mart, and Hewlett–Packard, have recently introduced new green products, underlining the need to develop products that create both economic and environmental values for the firm and customers. A review of the literature shows that academic research on green product development has grown in interest. However, to date, only a few empirical studies have addressed the challenge of integrating environmental issues into new product development (NPD). Previous empirical works have mainly focused on a set of activities for the green product development process at the project level. After years of paying no or marginal attention to environmental sustainability issues, most of the companies now generally realize that it would require knowledge and competencies to develop green products on a regular basis. These knowledge and competencies can be varied, such as R&D, environmental know‐how, clean technology/manufacturing process, building knowledge on measuring environmental performance of products, etc., that may be developed internally or can be integrated through external networks. Adopting a resource‐based view of the firm, this article aims at (1) investigating the role of capabilities useful for companies to integrate knowledge and competencies from outside of the firm on green product development in terms of both manufacturing process and product design and (2) understanding whether green product development opens new product, market, and technology opportunities, as well as leads to better financial performance of NPD programs. To this end, a survey was conducted in two Italian manufacturing industries in which environmental issues are becoming increasingly important, namely textiles and upholstered furniture. A questionnaire was sent to 700 firms, and 102 useable questionnaires were returned. Results show that (1) companies engage in developing external integrative capabilities through the creation of collaborative networks with actors along the supply chain, the acquisition of technical know‐how, and the creation of external knowledge links with actors outside the supply chain; (2) external knowledge links play a key role in the integration of environmental sustainability issues into the manufacturing process, whereas capabilities such as the acquisition of technical know‐how and the creation of collaborative networks prove to be more important for integrating environmental issues into product design; and (3) the integration of environmental sustainability issues into NPD programs in terms of product design leads to the creation of new opportunities for firms, such as opening new markets, technologies, and product arenas, though not necessarily leading to improved financial performance of the NPD programs.

Purpose - Customer involvement has been recognized as a key factor for successful service development. One important aspect affecting the outcome of new service development (NSD) projects in whose development customers are involved is the choice of the appropriate participating customer. This study aims to examine the effect of two customer characteristics (relational closeness and lead-userness) on four indicators of new service performance.Design/methodology/approach - The paper uses data from 102 NSD projects. Covariance-based path analysis is used to test the model.Findings - The results reveal that involving close customers in the NSD process has a positive direct effect on service advantage and speed to market and a positive indirect effect on market performance. The involvement of lead users, on the other hand, has a positive effect on service newness and service advantage, and a negative effect on market performance.Research limitations/implications - The focus on Spanish companies puts constraints on the generalizability of the results to other national contexts. Future research should replicate this study in different countries. Also, future research could explore more deeply the performance impact of close customers and lead users by collecting data on the roles that customers can play in NSD.Practical implications - The findings from this study suggest that firms need to make conscious choices about the types of customers to involve in service innovation as different types of customers affect new service performance differently.Originality/value - This study makes an original contribution by investigating the effect of customer's relational closeness and customer's lead userness on four indicators of NSD performance.

Green product innovation has been recognized as one of the key factors to achieve growth, environmental sustainability, and a better quality of life. Understanding green product innovation as a result of interaction between innovation and sustainability has become a strategic priority for theory and practice. This article investigates green product innovation by means of a multiple case study analysis of 12 small to medium size manufacturing companies based in Italy and Canada. First, we propose a conceptual framework that presents three key environmental dimensions of green product innovation such as energy minimization, materials reduction, and pollution prevention as identified in the life cycle phases of products. Based on insights gained from in-depth interviews, we discuss firms’ motivations to develop green products, environmental policies and targets for products, different dimensions of green product innovation, and challenges faced during developing and marketing of green products. Results from the study are then synthesized and integrated in a toolbox that sheds light on various aspects of green product innovation and provides solutions to challenges and risks that are faced by firms. Finally, implications for managers, academia and public policy makers are discussed.

Customer involvement has been recognized as an important factor for successful service development. Despite its acknowledged importance, a review of the literature suggests that there is little empirical evidence about the effectiveness and outcomes of interacting with customers while developing new services. Similarly, the extant literature shows mixed views about the effect of technological uncertainty on customer involvement and the effectiveness of customer involvement at different stages of the new service development process. Against this backdrop, the present study has three objectives: (1) to investigate the effects of customer involvement on operational dimensions (i.e., innovation speed and technical quality) and market dimensions (i.e., competitive superiority and sales performance) of new service performance; (2) to examine the effect of technological novelty and technological turbulence on customer involvement; and (3) to explore the moderating effect of the stage of the development process on the relationships among technological novelty, technological turbulence and customer involvement, and customer involvement and new service performance. A total of 807 firms with 75 or more employees in a varied set of industries were selected from the Dun & Bradstreet's 2004 listing of Spanish service firms. A questionnaire was mailed to the person in charge of new service development at each company. A total of 102 complete questionnaires were returned. Findings reveal that whereas customer involvement has a positive direct effect on technical quality and innovation speed, it has an indirect effect on competitive superiority and sales performance through both technical quality and innovation speed. The study also finds a positive effect of technological novelty as well as technological turbulence on customer involvement. Contrary to expectations, the study does not find any moderating effects of the stage of the development process. This study has several theoretical and managerial implications. In terms of theoretical implications, the study supports the role of technological uncertainty (novelty and turbulence) as an antecedent to customer involvement. It also provides empirical evidence of the impact of customer involvement on operational and market dimensions of new service performance. In terms of managerial implications, the study offers critical insights on how customer involvement in new service development translates into improved new service performance. Furthermore, it reveals that the importance of customer involvement in technologically uncertain contexts and its impact on new service performance are independent of the stage of the development process, suggesting that managers should involve customers throughout the entire development process.

Customer involvement has been recognized as an important factor for successful service development. Despite its acknowledged importance, a review of the literature suggests that there is little empirical evidence about the effectiveness and outcomes of interacting with customers while developing new services. Against this backdrop, the present study investigates the effects of customer involvement on operational dimensions (i.e. innovation speed and technical quality) and market dimensions (i.e. competitive superiority and sales performance) of new service performance. Findings reveal that whereas customer involvement has a positive direct effect on technical quality and innovation speed, it has an indirect effect on competitive superiority and sales performance. In terms of managerial implications, the study offers critical insights on how customer involvement in new service development gets translated into improved new service performance.

Customer involvement has been recognized as an important factor for successful service development. Despite its acknowledged importance, a review of the literature suggests that there is little empirical evidence about the effectiveness and outcomes of interacting with customers while developing new services. Against this backdrop, the present study investigates the effects of customer involvement on operational dimensions (i.e. innovation speed and technical quality) and market dimensions (i.e. competitive superiority and sales performance) of new service performance. Findings reveal that whereas customer involvement has a positive direct effect on technical quality and innovation speed, it has an indirect effect on competitive superiority and sales performance. In terms of managerial implications, the study offers critical insights on how customer involvement in new service development gets translated into improved new service performance.

The greening of product innovation process has been under study by researchers, but mostly it is at an anecdotal level. Extant literature asks for empirical study to explore how to make greener products more successful at the market place. This paper reports on a survey of environmental new product development (ENPD) projects in North America wherein influences on the market performance are investigated. New activities such as design for environment/life cycle analysis and supplier involvement for environmental responsiveness are identified in the ENPD process. The paper uses hierarchical regression method to find relative and incremental impact of eco-innovation activities in ENPD projects on market performance. Factors that influence market performance of greener products are found to be cross-functional co-ordination between new product development professionals and environmental specialists, supplier involvement, market focus and life cycle analysis.

This paper investigates self-service technology (SST) encounters among Canadian B2B (business-to-business) customers. It provides an understanding of key determinants of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This research also explores issues relating to service recovery in case of SST failure and effects of favorable/ unfavorable SST encounters on business relationships. The study finds that B2B customers experience satisfaction from different sources as compared to B2C customers. These sources include speed, process efficiency and cost savings. Service recovery has been found to be a critical problem with regards to SST