Conceptualization of green marketing challenges in small and medium businesses

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran.

2 PhD Student in Entrepreneurship, Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran.

Abstract

Objective: Despite the importance of the issue of green marketing challenges in small and medium businesses, little research has been done to summarize and analyze the scattered content of this field. The purpose of this research is to analyze the challenges of green marketing in small and medium businesses.

Method: The upcoming article with a qualitative approach and using the meta-combination method, the seven-stage model of Sandelowski and Barroso examines the issue of what challenges there are for the development of green marketing and what are the solutions to face it. Based on this, the articles published in reliable domestic and foreign scientific databases until 2023 were identified and searched, then they were classified and categorized based on the logic of open coding and coding based on sociological structures.

Findings: The findings of this study led to the identification of 68 concepts, which were categorized into 12 categories. Finally, the results of the analysis were presented in the form of an analytical model.
Conclusion: Green marketing challenges in small and medium-sized enterprises are affected by the nature of activity and activity environment at three levels: Enterprise level challenges (paradigm-informational-communication-standardization-innovation-marketing-functional) industry/market challenges (industry and market balance) And macro-environmental challenges (environmental-legal-consumers) can be divided, which play a role at a level of independent or intertwined effects. Based on the findings, the improvement of the green marketing situation in small and medium businesses depends on the cooperation and coordination of all three levels of the company, industry/market and macro environmental variables.

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