1. INTRODUCTION, GAPS, AND OBJECTIVES Decades of environmental degradation have contributed to transitioning the sustainability discourse from the scientific and technological (Ioannidis and Chalvatzis 2017; Pappas et al. 2018) to the public and corporate domains. Within this context, stakeholders aim to control and mitigate environmental degradation represent wide-ranging institutions and organisations (Goworek et al. 2018; Kumar 2016). Among them, corporate organisations are under pressure to implement strategies that will lead to improved environmental and business performance, which have attracted strong attention in the marketing/management field (Tollin and Christensen 2019). This is particularly true in an international business context, where due to growing globalization trends, firms have to demonstrate responsible citizenship for sustainability not only in their home market, but also in host countries. However, sustainability has been conceptualized in a relatively vague way by researchers, which, coupled with the great diversity of its drivers and outcomes (Chalvatzis et al. 2018) reported by the sizable literature in the field, causes confusion in promoting best practice and advancing theory (Eccles, Ioannou, and Serafeim 2012). In light of these problems, there is a need to systematically review and assess the extant body of research on the antecedents and performance outcomes of international environmental marketing/management strategies. In doing so, our review intents to: (a) identify and analyse the theoretical background of this line of research; (b) assess the research methodologies employed by previous empirical studies; (c) identify and assimilate the key thematic areas and specific topics addressed by prior research; and (d) identify the key variables used in the existing literature (e) develop an agenda for future research on the subject. 2. METHODOLOGY A two-stage process was adopted for the present review: article identification and article analysis. In order to identify the initial pool of articles, we adopted the concept-driven systematic review method approach (Webster and Watson 2002). To accumulate a complete census of relevant literature and build the initial pool of studies, articles with relevant topics were searched in various electronic databases, such as Ebsco, Scopus and Science Direct, which provide a comprehensive coverage with full access. We have used the following keywords to identify relevant articles: environmental marketing; environmental strategy; green marketing; environmentally friendly; sustainable marketing; natural environment; environmental orientation; environmental proactivity; environmental awareness; and environmental management. This was done in conjunction with international-related keywords, namely multinational firms; global corporations; global consumers; international marketing; cross-cultural marketing; and cross-national marketing. These keywords were identified from previous reviews on the subject and were refined by two established scholars in the field. We searched these pre-defined keywords in article title, author supplied keywords, and author supplied abstract. We limited our search to articles published in English in academic peer-reviewed journals, since the inception of this field of research in the early 1960s. This initial search from the various electronic databases yielded 949 articles, of which 498 had to be removed because of being duplicated while another 167 were found irrelevant after carefully screening the title and the abstract. 2.1 Article identification We critically appraised the full text of the remaining 284 potentially relevant articles, by taking into consideration the following four criteria with regard to the studies contained: (1) to be published in an academic journal rather than a book, book chapters or conference proceedings; (2) to focus on environmental marketing/management strategies as an independent concept, rather than as a sub-dimension of Corporate Social Responsibility; (3) to be of an international nature, by examining the sustainability strategies of firms (e.g., exporters, MNEs, etc.) when crossing their national boundaries; and (4) to have empirical nature, with papers having a conceptual, methodological, review, or meta-analytical nature being excluded. Only 68 articles met these pre-defined selection criteria, which were subsequently examined by two academic experts in order to verify their appropriateness. The outcome of this process was to exclude another seven articles. We have carefully reviewed the reference lists of the 61 articles that passed the cross check, revealing another 34 articles fulfilling the eligibility criteria set, thus bringing the final sample of articles useful for the review to 95. 2.2 Article analysis To map research on the antecedents and outcomes of environmental marketing/management strategy within the international marketing context, we proceeded with a content analysis of the selected articles. In doing so, we have designed a coding frame incorporating publication details, theories undertaken located mainly in developed economies with less attention paid on emerging and developing economies. The majority of the reviewed studies had a particular focus on manufacturing industries where there are studies where multiple industries are included which allows for examination of industry type control effects. More recent studies start to examine other industries such as energy, tourism, transportation, and other service industries. The vast majority of the research is undertaken using primary data and few studies used secondary ESG data sourced by national or third-party institutions. The articles were classified into six broad thematic categories and multiple sub-categories such as (1) energy efficiency; (2) water conversation; (3) green supply chain management; (4) waste management; (5) product/ service eco- friendliness; and (6) emissions reduction. 3.2 Study Implications Based on the thematic clustering undertaken, we developed an integrative framework for environmental marketing and management practices and a coherent agenda for future research directions. The systematic review confirms that managers might adopt environmentally friendly marketing/ management strategy as a means of increasing their performance. Competences such knowledge, systems and routines developed within the company are found to stimulate a proactive environmental strategy which research has shown that can enhance different performance outcomes.
