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Sustainable Marketing Strategies provides postgraduate, MBA and upper-level undergraduate students with a clear and applied framework for understanding, critiquing and implementing sustainability within marketing practice. Designed for courses in ethical, responsible and sustainable marketing, this textbook aligns closely with class learning outcomes and contemporary curriculum needs.
This book includes:
• a structured frameworkfor analysing and developing sustainable marketing strategies
• real-world examples from Tony’s Chocolonely, Levi’s and Lego to illustrate sustainable marketing in practice
• learning objectives, discussion questions and applied exercises to support assessment
• a glossary to support accessibility for international and multidisciplinary cohorts
• online resources including lecturer slides and an instructor’s manual
Using an accessible and evidence-based approach, the book helps students evaluate existing strategies and develop credible marketing responses to environmental, social and ethical challenges. It explores topics including consumer behaviour, sustainable branding, brand growth, communication, inclusion and the role marketing plays in shaping markets, culture and consumption. Rather than presenting sustainability as a collection of idealized success stories, the book examines the opportunities, trade-offs, tensions and contradictions that brands face when sustainability becomes part of strategy. Supporting both structured teaching and independent study, Sustainable Marketing Strategies equips students with the analytical tools and practical insight needed to engage critically with sustainability in contemporary marketing.

Gillian Wilson is Professor of Sustainable Marketing at IE University and the author of Sustainable Marketing Strategies. She is also a consultant specialising in sustainable marketing and communications, working at the intersection of sustainability, brand strategy and business practice.
She has more than 25 years of international experience spanning multinational corporations, agencies, consultancy and academia. Her early career included commercial and marketing roles with Kellogg’s, Scottish & Newcastle—now part of Heineken—and NH Hotels. This experience has given her a practical understanding of how marketing decisions are made within organisations, as well as the commercial, cultural and operational challenges involved in embedding sustainability into business strategy.
At IE University, Gillian teaches sustainable marketing. Her teaching connects established marketing principles with contemporary sustainability challenges, encouraging students to examine both the potential of marketing to support positive change and its role in driving unsustainable patterns of production and consumption.
Her work focuses on how organisations can integrate sustainability across marketing strategy, the marketing mix, brand management, innovation and communications. She is particularly interested in the gap between corporate sustainability commitments and marketplace practice; the credibility of environmental and social claims; and the need to move beyond treating sustainability primarily as a communications exercise.
Combining academic insight with extensive practitioner experience, Gillian aims to make complex sustainability issues relevant and actionable for marketers, business leaders and students. Her approach is critical but pragmatic, recognising the tensions between commercial priorities and environmental and social responsibility while exploring how marketing can contribute to more sustainable markets.