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Webology, Volume 18, Special Issue on Computing Technology and Information
Management, September, 2021
Green Marketing Strategy as a Sustainable Solution to Tourism
Development in Vietnam
Hoang Phuong Nguyen*
Academy of Politics Region II, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
E-mail: nghoangphuong11@gmail.com
Viet Duc Bui*
Institute of Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH), Ho Chi Minh
City, Vietnam.
E-mail: bv.duc@hutech.edu.vn
Received March 07, 2021; Accepted June 24, 2021
ISSN: 1735-188X
DOI: 10.14704/WEB/V18SI04/WEB18118
Abstract
The study conducted a theoretical review and review of previous studies shows that the
research gap is the correlation between social responsibility factors, green marketing strategy,
corporate reputation and business performance. The practical context of the tourism service
industry in Vietnam is also necessary and suitable for research. The study's overall objective
is to propose and test a model on the relationship between corporate social responsibility,
green marketing strategy, corporate reputation, and business performance. In the case of the
study, it is a travel service business in Ho Chi Minh City. The research methodology of the
research is a mixed-method, performed sequentially as follows: the first qualitative research
through interviews with 10 experts to consider the necessity of the research problem in
Vietnam, to adjust and supplement the scales for research concepts; Quantitative research
with a questionnaire survey. According to the quota principle (quota), the sample was selected
with a sample size of 218 travel companies to test the proposed theoretical research model. A
second qualitative study was performed to aid the interpretation of the results from
quantitative data analysis. Research results have identified stakeholders in the tourism
industry, including tourists, travel businesses, local authorities and local people. The
relationships between research concepts are confirmed, including corporate social
responsibility, green marketing strategies that have a positive impact on corporation
reputation, corporate social responsibility is found to have a positive impact on green
marketing strategies, corporate social responsibility, green marketing strategies, and corporate
reputation all have positive effects on business results. At the same time, the enterprise's
characteristics in terms of the main type of business and the size of the business are identified
as having differences in the relationship between research concepts.
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Webology, Volume 18, Special Issue on Computing Technology and Information
Management, September, 2021
Keywords
Green Marketing Strategy, Vietnam Tourism, Business Reputation, Social Responsibility,
Business Efficiency.
Introduction
In recent decades, environmental protection is a term that has been mentioned in many
fields, both in theory and practice. This has created a lot of pressure for businesses to
change their operating methods to ensure that they achieve environmental and social
values and still increase business results. According to the argument based on natural
resources (natural-resource-based view), (Von Geibler et al. 2016) argued that, when the
increasing environmental pressure forces businesses to implement new strategies (Nguyen
et al., 2020), they could be a competitive advantage of the business. Since then, the green
marketing strategy is seen as a useful strategy, and it would help businesses adjust their
operating goals and move towards the environment to ensure customer expectations
(Melkonyan, Gottschalk, and Vasanth 2017) (Hoang Phuong, Minh Tuan, and Minh Tuan
2019). Also, under the pressure of the environment and society, businesses realize that the
business operation process is achieving the company's goals and balancing the interests of
stakeholders perform social responsibility. There has opened up the need for research on
social responsibility and green marketing in both theoretical and empirical terms to
respond to the business development process in the volatile environment (Md. Salamun
Rashidin, et. al., 2019).
Over the past 25 years, green marketing has emerged as a growth in awareness and action
for businesses to improve their reputation and performance. Many scholars have
researched green marketing on a variety of topics. Valuable research by (Kumar 2016),
which collected 161 related research papers from 1990 to 2014, demonstrated detailed
research progress in four areas of green marketing, including Green marketing strategy,
The function of green marketing, The results of green marketing and Eco-Direction. The
research results of (Kumar 2016) have shown that the research distribution rate in four
areas of green marketing has 29 studies (18%) on ecological orientation, 46 studies
(28.5%) on green marketing strategy, 127 studies (77.6%) on green marketing function
and 32 studies (19.7%) related to green marketing results. By geographical distribution,
there were 171 authors (48%) of studies for European countries, 107 authors (30%) of
studies for North American countries, and 45 authors (12.5 %) research in Asian
countries, 33 authors (9%) studied countries in Australia and 2 authors (0.5%) studied
countries in Africa. Of the total number of research papers are those of American authors.
In Asia, only Chinese authors do research. From the research results of (Kumar 2016), it
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Webology, Volume 18, Special Issue on Computing Technology and Information
Management, September, 2021
shows that research in the field of green marketing results for developing countries in
Asia is few, and the directions for further research such as green marketing capacity and
its impact on business results, how green products create green brand equity and
economic value, and green marketing strategies on non-financial business results.
Besides, (Roy and Barua 2016) synthesized research on green marketing from 1994 to
January 2016, concluding that research on this topic is in great demand. (Eneizan and
Obaid 2016) have compiled 23 studies on green marketing from 2009 to 2015, the results
show that there are very few studies on green marketing strategies and business results.
Most of the research focuses on customers with factors such as customer satisfaction,
intention to buy green products, the actual behaviour of buying green products. The
aggregate results also show that most research on green marketing is conducted in
developed countries. Only a few studies are conducted in developing countries and need
research in enterprises. Especially focusing on business results (Jalil, N.A. et. al., 2019).
(Pomering and Johnson 2018) said that the green marketing concept has focused only on
tangible products over the past years, not to mention the service aspect. Therefore,
research on green marketing in services is very important, and there is also a gap in
theoretical and experimental research. Green marketing strategy is considered a dynamic
and flexible business strategy to promote internal strengths, focusing on corporate
responsibility to the environment, society, and stakeholders (Dahlstrom 2010) (Nguyen
2019). (Dotzel and Shankar 2019) Green marketing strategy is not only about product
improvement, customer service innovation, but it is all the decisions that reflect
environmental responsibility to stakeholders (Jalil, N.A. et. al., 2019). A business's
never-changing goal is to increase business results and implement a green marketing
strategy or social responsibility (S. Suman Rajest, et. al., 2021). In recent years, many
authors have conducted exploratory and experimental studies to determine the relationship
between social responsibility and business performance, the relationship between green
marketing strategy and business performance. (Feng, Wang, and Kreuze 2017) studied
1877 largest U.S. enterprises from 1991 to 2011. The results show that social
responsibility has positive implications for most companies in the industry. Experimental
results show that different types of social responsibility have different effects on
companies' financial performance from different industries. (Sial et al. 2018) surveyed
3481 enterprises in the Chinese stock market. The results show that social responsibility
has a positive relationship with company performance. (Bustaman 2019) surveyed 386
"green" car dealers in Jordan, the study found size, education, experience, product,
distribution, physical evidence, and process influence, the overall performance of the
company and the influence of age, product and promotion on the company's financial
performance is very significant and positive. Analysis has found that government policy
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Webology, Volume 18, Special Issue on Computing Technology and Information
Management, September, 2021
has a censorship effect on education and green marketing strategies on corporate
operations. (Eneizan, Abd-Wahab, and S. 2016) conducted a study that evaluated previous
studies of firms implementing green marketing strategies (7Ps) that were expected to be
more profitable than those that did not. Besides, some authors propose to study the
relationship between social responsibility and green marketing strategy (Hewett and
Lemon 2019). Some studies mention that corporate reputation is a concept influenced by
green marketing strategy (Sun, Hall, and Cegielski 2020), by social responsibility
(Gras-Gil, Palacios Manzano, and Hernández Fernández 2016), (Hazirah et al. 2019), and
corporate reputation also increases business performance (Taghian, D'Souza, and
Polonsky 2015).
Thus, the above studies show that there have been studies approaching the relationship
between these pairs of concepts. Still, it is very rare to put these problems together in
correlation (Hewett and Lemon 2019), (Athirah, Musa, and Keng 2019) specifically
research for a developing country was not found. This is the theoretical gap that the
research determines to research in Vietnam. As mentioned above, social responsibility
and green marketing are concepts that many researchers have implemented, but they often
focus on goods rather than services. Because the environmental and social impacts of the
production of tangible goods seem to be more noticeable (D Datta, et. al., 2020). Service
is inherently seen as an intangible process. However, it still has a huge impact on the
environment (Dangelico and Vocalelli, 2017). According to (Keckes and Tomicic 2017)
(Lundberg, Ziakas, and Morgan, 2018), tourism is an interdisciplinary, inter-regional
integrated economic sector with proven socio-economic importance (R. Regin, et. al.,
2021). Tourism and travel are important economic activity in most countries worldwide,
having direct and indirect economic effects. Therefore, this study considers social
responsibility, green marketing and business performance in the service sector,
particularly travel and tourism services (D.K. Sharma and D.S. Hooda, 2010).
The article focuses on quantitative research with questionnaire surveys. The sample is
selected according to the quota principle, with a sample size of 218 travel agencies.
Subjects are middle-level managers or higher, in charge of tourism businesses' travel
service business in Ho Chi Minh City (A.J. Obaid, 2021). Then, the data was performed
with SPSS 20 software to evaluate the reliability of the scale (Cronbach's Alpha),
exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA - Exploratory Factor Analysis) to determine
convergence value and the discriminant value of the scale (Jalil, N. A. et. al., 2019)
To consider the satisfactory ability of the measurement model and the suitability of
factors with market data, the study continues to conduct the method of Confirmatory
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