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This chapter aims to shed light on the role that a sustainable orientation plays in strengthening the relationships between global consumers and online brands. Despite many previous studies about the importance of sustainability considerations for national consumers’ brand commitments and purchase intentions, there is a lack of empirical studies focussing on this relationship from a global consumer perspective. A pre-study (consisting of focus group discussions) and a widely distributed international survey with responses from 74 countries show mixed results. Whereas the results from the focus groups imply that a sustainable orientation influences both global consumers’ purchase intentions and brand commitments towards online brands, the survey results imply that global consumers’ sustainable orientations do not affect purchase intentions directly, even though they influence brand commitments. An implication of these results is that an international online brand’s possibility to portray a sustainable orientation plays an important role in strengthening the relationship with global consumers, especially regarding brand commitment.

This chapter is based on the findings of the empirical material gathered in Finland and Sweden through interviews with education and audiovisual (AV) media actors and policymakers in 2017–2018. The aim of the chapter is to discuss the innovation systems of the education sector and Finland and Sweden in general, compare the sectoral innovation models of the two sectors, and conclude with discussing the resulting challenges for policymakers. Our results show that a new EdTech sector employing the competences of the education, information and communication technology, and AV media sectors has begun to emerge and actors in the both countries have eagerly taken actions to boost its development as a business and export field. We discuss the reasons and consequences of this development.

This book chapter takes an institutional perspective on competing logics in global markets concerned with sustainability values and how market actors in the form of buyers and sellers attempt to solve these conflicting situations. We do this by identifying competing institutional logics in global market contexts aiming for sustainability values, together with techniques for navigating these competing institutional logics in the organizational field studied. As an empirical illustration, we use a case study of buyers and sellers in two different markets where sustainability has come into focus for their market relationships. This viewpoint allows us to better understand how global market actors deal with the competing institutional logics in their market context. We make three contributions with this research: firstly, we identify the institutional logics in global markets towards sustainability; secondly, we demonstrate how global market actors prioritize among the competing logics and their market relationships and thirdly, we outline what this means for the relationship between buyers and sellers in global markets towards sustainability.

This chapter explores the concept of authenticity in the context of today’s highly competitive hospitality industry. Drawing on the multi-sited ethnographic case study of Ziferblat, the world’s first pay-per-minute cafe franchise, the author examines how the imperative of authenticity is addressed by small international enterprises falling in between the categories of chain and independent. By tracing how Ziferblat’s original concept, shaped by the personal and socioeconomic background of its founder, was subsequently transformed by the local teams and adapted to different cultural-geographical contexts, this chapter adds new empirical evidence to the dynamic and pluralistic notion of multiple authenticities.

This chapter highlights how implementing circular economy principles can help companies working with sustainability to move from a reductionist and waste management approach to marketing competitive circular value propositions that intentionally design out waste (e.g. emissions and pollution) by rethinking, reinventing and redesigning the value chain. Schijvens, a Dutch family-owned corporate fashion textile company, acts as a case for exemplifying successful implementation of circular economy principles as a marketing strategy in a sector that struggles with finding solutions to the ethical challenges of producing and marketing textile fashion. The textile industry has, for many years, been accused of production that is based on environmentally harmful processes and conditions that are not socially fair. Circular economy principles provide a range of suggestions to address the ethical challenges occurring from covering the human needs of having clothes to wear. Yet, implementing circular economy principles is not a panacea. It is not only a question of delivering a technological quick fix but also a question of managing the new processes and human mindset guiding the actions in the value chain. This chapter, therefore, outlines reasons for a different perspective on the traditional linear value chain and related implications managers face when undertaking a journey from sustainability based on a reductionist approach to a closed-loop approach. It is argued that implementing circular economy principles by pro-actively managing the value chain processes based on eco-centric dynamic capabilities can provide even more radical changes than the incremental reductionist approach often associated with being a green sustainable company.