Prelims

Half Title Page

Sustainability and Social Marketing Issues in Asia

Title Page

Sustainability and Social Marketing Issues in Asia

Edited by

Farzana Quoquab

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia

And

Jihad Mohammad

UCSI University, Malaysia

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2023

Editorial matter and selection © 2023 Farzana Quoquab and Jihad Mohammad. Published under exclusive license.

Individual chapters © 2023 Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80071-846-3 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80071-845-6 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80071-847-0 (Epub)

Contents

About the Editors

Farzana Quoquab, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Azman Hashim International Business School, UTM. Since 2014, she has been actively working on the issues related to green and sustainability marketing. Her works have appeared in high-impact publications such as Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, Internet Research, Employee Relations: The International Journal, SAGE Open, Personnel Review, Cross Cultural & Strategic Management, Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, and Journal of Product & Brand Management. She is also a prolific case writer. She is one of the Associate Editors of Emerald Emerging Market Case Studies, and the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Innovation and Business Strategies. She has successfully served as a guest editor for the reputed journals like Young Consumers (Emerald) and Journal of Global Marketing (Routledge Publishing). She is also a member of Editorial Advisory/Review Board of several internationally reputed journals.

Jihad Mohammad, PhD, Dr. Jihad is an assistant professor at Graduate Business School, UCSI University, Kuala Lumpur, Malalysia. He has received his DBA degree from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. He has presented papers at various international and national conferences and published cases as well as articles in peer-reviewed international journals. He has versatile career exposure. His area of research interest includes organizational psychology, green and sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and Islamic work ethics.

About the Contributors

Preface

Sustainability is regarded as the key to a better future. It ameliorates the quality of our lives, safeguards our ecosystem, and preserves natural resources for current and future generations. We depend on natural resources for our business activities and day-to-day survival. Thus, overlooking sustainability can lead to the depletion of these resources from our planet. The emergence of global factors such as economic growth, technological advancement, and overconsumption have resulted in negative consequences on the environment in terms of radical changes in climate, damage of flora and fauna, deforestation, ozone layer depletion, acid rain, and air and water pollution. This critical situation made people more conscious about the sustainability of the planet earth in recent years. As a result, individuals started to be more environmentally friendly and embracing values and concepts like “less is more,” “3R principle,” “go green,” “ethical consumption,” “green consumerism,” etc.

Sustainability cannot be attained without paying attention to the social aspects. In this regard, social marketers as well as entrepreneurs seek to encourage changes in behavior that benefit individuals, community, and society at large. This can be achieved by encouraging desirable activities like corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR has become a global phenomenon that helps solve social, environmental, and economic problems to increase benefits for individuals, organizations, and society. However, the required change is not moving in the expected direction in many parts of the world, which calls for more exploration of the issue. In addition, many organizations worldwide have not yet undertaken initiatives related to CSR due to the lack of knowledge and reluctant attitude. For many cultures, discussion on bringing issues such as sustainability, social marketing and CSR are relatively new and requires more discussions in the academic platforms based on different contexts and cultures.

The global environment is always subject to change and development, which is a fundamental part of growth and progress. Therefore, individuals, groups, organizations, marketers, and the whole society need to change their behavior to respond to these global changes, challenges, and issues. Like other emerging economies, research on sustainability, social marketing, and SCR issues in Asian culture is still at an early stage. While developed nations are more advanced in adopting sustainability metrics, less examples can be found in the developing country perspectives. This edited book “Sustainability and Social Marketing Issues in Asia” is an attempt to fill this gap in the existing literature. This book showcases 13 cases that portray different aspects of sustainability, CSR, and social marketing of 10 Asian countries – Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Iran, China, India, Brunei, Pakistan, Syria, Philippine, and Indonesia. In addition, this edited book seeks to widen the understanding of the latest trend on “sustainability” and “social marketing” issues such as “sustainable energy,” “sustainable agriculture,” “sustainable ecosystems,” “social development,” “green marketing,” “traditional Chinese medicine,” “CSR initiative,” “waste management problem,” “refugee crisis,” “care for animals,” and the like. To provide a systematic understanding on the issues, this book is divided into three sections as follows:

• Green and Sustainability

• Corporate Social Responsibility

• Social Marketing

This book is unique in two main aspects: (i) it focuses on sustainability, social marketing and CSR and (ii) it provides understanding and insights from the Asian cultural perspective. This book is relevant to different disciplines such as marketing, organization behavior, waste management, sustainability, and corporate social responsibilities which can serve as a guide for students, academicians, marketers, managers, and policymakers.

In addition, the topics that are covered in the “Sustainability and Social Marketing Issues in Asia” highlight the latest and relevant issues such as care for the environment, care for animals, refugee crisis, and CSR. The readers of this book will advance their understanding by gaining new knowledge from different Asian contexts.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, all praises be to the Creator Almighty, the most merciful the most benevolent for His guidance and blessings for giving us the inspiration and opportunity to embark on this project and to make this dream a reality.

There are significant changes happening on our planet that can impact the existence of all species and threaten their sustainability. Thus, dealing with the consequences of environmental issues and resource depletion has become a crucial matter. Organizations and individuals are trying to cope with these changes by adopting more sustainable activities and practices. Therefore, researchers from different fields have been increasingly making effort to understand what can be done to create positive changes among organizations and individuals in different contexts. Driven by this thought, this book is an attempt to explore the issue more and came up with the idea of this edited book concerning sustainability and green behavior, social marketing and corporate social responsibility from the Asian perspective. Many people were directly and indirectly involved with the completion of this book. Therefore, we would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation for their support, guidance, encouragement, and contribution to the completion of this work.

We would especially like to thank all chapter contributors who have diligently addressed reviewers’ feedback and amended the chapters several times. We also express our appreciation to the companies for providing valuable information to write cases about their company issues. Finally, we are grateful to those who provided us with their support and feedback to enhance the quality of this book.

Indeed, it has been a great pleasure to work with the Emerald Publishing team. Thank you very much for your continuous support and cooperation. The special appreciation goes to our beloved families for their love, support, and sacrifices in allowing us to devote a lot of time to complete this book.

Finally, we hope that our audience will enjoy reading this book and find it interesting, thought-provoking, relevant, and insightful.

Farzana Quoquab

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia

Jihad Mohammad

UCSI University, Malaysia