Green Brand For Sustainable Business: Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Systematization and summarization of the scientific researches indicated the absence of the unique and generally acknowledged term to define the essence of the green brand of the companies. Furthermore, companies are in dark about which term is better in order to attract the consumers, while ones perceive and search the green brands by using different adjectives describing the environmentally friendly company policy. Branding and image are concepts related to reputation, and they are also associated with culture and organizational identity. The area of the brand is important for various aspects of the organization such as sustainable development. As a result, the absence of a unique definition prevents the effective promotion of environmentally friendly activity and increases the level of distrust in society. Thuswise, the following definitions such as «green brand», «sustainable brand», «eco-brand», «sustainability brand» could be used to describe the environmental policy of the company. However, the authors have indicated, the better companies understand the consumer perception of green brands and their web-search requests, the more popular and reliable they are for them. In view of this, this study is aimed to provide the bibliometric analysis investigating the scientific research papers related to the green branding issues in order to contribute to the theoretical development in this field and popularize green brands among the academic community and online users. Thereby, the authors have formulated a hypothesis that for promoting green company policy green brands positioning is more effective than sustainable brands, eco-brands or sustainability brands. To develop formulated hypothesis, Google Trends analysis, Google Ngram Viewer overview, Scopus and VOSviewer bibliometric analyses were used. The current study involved data from 214 papers investigating the issues on green brands published in 7 languages conducted from 2001 to 2019. The findings from VOSviewer identified 45 items gathered into 9 clusters of papers with 124 links (the total link strenghts was 178) where green brands were investigated from the different points of views. The first biggest cluster merged the paper which consisted of the following keywords such as: brand credibility, brand equity, brand image, communications, corporate branding, identity, image, strategy. The second one included such items as follows: brand extension, branding, brands, consumer behavior, environmental sustainability, green marketing and trust. The third biggest cluster was formulated with the following keywords: brand loyalty, green brand, green brand loyalty, green perceived risk, green perceived value, social media. Such tendency allowed to make conclusion, that green brand positioning is a part of green marketing and investigated from the different subject areas. Thus, the obtained results of this study have proved the formulated hypothesis that green brand positioning considered to be more popular in the scientific papers provided in the Scopus database. Moreover, according to the trend analysis by Google Trends tool, it justified that green brands’ web-search requests were the most popular when online users look for information to increase their awareness level on environmentally friendly issues. Furthermore, the authors found out the outstanding research interest to green brands was in 2017, while the USA was most of all interested in this issue. Finally, this study provided directions for future researches in order to popularize green brand positioning.