The State of Research in Green Marketing: A Bibliometric Review from 2005 to 2022

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Theoretical and practical contributions are scarce, regardless of being only a bibliometric paper, I suggest addressing in more depth the lines of research in green marketing found.

 

1. What is the main question addressed by the research?
Analyze the published literature related to green marketing.
  2. Do you consider the topic original or relevant in the field? Does it
address a specific gap in the field?
 The research topic is interesting and relevant.  

3. What does it add to the subject area compared with other published
material?
An update of the trends of the research line.
  4. What specific improvements should the authors consider regarding the
methodology? What further controls should be considered?
Analyze in depth the groupings of research trends that were generated in the analysis.

5. Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented
and do they address the main question posed?
Yes they are, but they are limited.
  6. Are the references appropriate?
Yes, references are appopriate.  

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors use the SCOPUS data base to include a wide variety of journals to identify articles with the key terms of "Green marketing" OR "eco* marketing" OR "sustainable marketing" OR "Enviro* Marketing" OR "Ethical marketing.”  I presume that “eco” and “Envior” capture the full-term environmental marketing.  

Ethical marketing however is not necessary a synonym for green marketing although green marketing would be considered ethical. The authors should know that there are many more ethical issues in marketing that “green” ethical issues. 

 

There appear to be significant issues in the evaluation of the works considered by the authors. It is unclear how the citation numbers for the articles reviewed were generated but they do not match current number of citations indicated in Google Scholar. For example the most cited article in the study - Paul, J., Modi, A., & Patel, J. (2016). Predicting green product consumption using theory of planned behavior and reasoned action. Journal of retailing and consumer services, 29, 123-134. has the key word “green products” not green marketing.  Google Scholar indicates 1665 cites while the authors indicate only 691. Number 2 The drivers of green washing is cited by1984 papers by Google Scholar but 584 by the authors. Number 3 Peloza, J., & Shang, J. (2011). How can corporate social responsibility activities create value for stakeholders? A systematic review. Journal of the academy of Marketing Science, 39(1), 117-135. has 1246 cites in Google Scholar – the authors report only 524. Why is there such a vast difference in the author’s reported citations and those in Google Scholar. Does this inconsistency carry over into other counts - metrics reported in the manuscript. 

 

If this could be clarified or the data reanalyzed there are other issues requiring a complete rewrite

 

This manuscript is overly long for the topic and information conveyed. An extensive rewrite should shorten the work to convey the state of research via key words - topics in the area in a much more concise and accessible form and format. 

 

This submission needed extensive editing before it was submitted – it has basic syntax and formatting issues such as skipping between spacing and fonts that detract from any serious work.

 

The color visualization figures used in the presentation of results are extremely difficult to read. Black and white figures and tables are much more useful. The multicolor figures are unusable in this format. 

 

   

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

A significant improvement 

Thank you for clarifying the citation number issue - Scopus v Google Scholar. You may wish to address this issue directly in the manuscript as most academics have more direct access to Google Scholar and an unexplained difference does influence your finding's credibility. 

My original statement about the readability of the color figures stands and I  use a large high-definition monitor. But I will leave that issue up to the editors of the journal.

Author Response

Thank you for addressing our topic as important. Thank you for highlighting the concerns that need to be addressed. We have clearly mentioned this issue in the manuscript regarding the difference between the number of citations. Our study used data from SCOPUS, which abstracts scientific databases, provides accurate indexing, and contains high-quality articles. There might be a possibility that Google scholar may show the difference in the number of citations. Google Scholar is a search engine and hence has much broader coverage than Scopus, including thesis, conference papers, reviews, books, book chapters, letters, data papers and even unpublished materials. Since Scopus does not index these types of content, it does not contribute to the number of citations; therefore, when compared with Google Scholar, the number of citations for articles indexed in Scopus will always be lower. This difference does not influence the finding’s credibility.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx