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Green product innovation is a global industrial concern. This research examines the possible impact of green product innovation on firms' competitive advantage in industrial enterprises operating in qualified industrial zones (QIZs).

This research follows a descriptive analytical methodology, testing two hypotheses formulated based on the reviewed literature among chemical industrial plants of the three Jordanian QIZs (Amman, Zarqa and Irbid) in Jordan. Following a preliminary scoping study of all 219 Jordanian chemical manufacturers, a quantitative five-point Likert scale questionnaire was administered to firms applying green product activities.

In total, 20 firms were found to be utilizing green product innovation, representing only 9.13% of the overall population. The hypothesis testing results indicated that green product innovation has a statistically significant positive impact on competitive advantage. The results also showed that the factor “firm resources” has a statistically significant positive moderation effect on the relationship between green product innovation and competitive advantage.

The vast majority of Jordanian chemical manufacturers were not implementing green innovation or practices; further study is needed to identify barriers. Findings are limited to managers of chemical industrial plants in Jordan, excluding the demand side (e.g. plant customers who purchase final products), which leaves a different research angle to be explored.

This is a pioneering study of green product innovation implications for firm competitive advantage in manufacturing enterprises, especially in QIZs of Jordan (which offer tax exemptions to foreign and local investors and sell products to regional and international markets).

The purpose of this article is to investigate the influences of green product innovation and product process innovation on two constructs of green innovation casual chain: green product competitive advantage and green new product success. The impacts of green product competitive advantage as a partial mediator in the link between green product/process innovations and green new product success are also examined.

A model with four constructs is presented and tested on a sample of 203 R&D project leaders of electronics firms operating in China using quantitative methods.

It is found that green product and process innovations are positively associated with green product competitive advantage and green new product success, and green product competitive advantage partially mediates the relationships between green product/process innovations and green new product success. It is also found that green product innovation exerts a stronger influence on the consequential constructs than green process innovation.

The positive causalities among the constructs suggest that green innovation is more than a branding support. It pays to pursue green innovation. Green product innovation is demonstrated to have a positively stronger influence on both green product competitive advantage and green new product success than green process innovation. The difference in impact signals that when operating under limited resources, green product innovation should be pursued first.

The article addresses the gap in green innovation theory concerning the associations among the key constructs of green innovation causal chain. It is the first green innovation research ever conducted in the e‐industry in China. The causalities identified can be leveraged to improve Chinese e‐industry players’ innovative and competitive capabilities and to encourage them to stay proactive in addressing challenges arising from environmental issues.

Green ambidexterity innovation and green competitive advantage are of great significance to enterprises' sustainable development. From the perspective of upper echelons theory, This paper aims to investigate the role of top managers in gaining green competitive advantage and the intermediary effect of the green ambidexterity innovation between them.

This paper uses empirical data from heavily polluting enterprises in China for constructing a model to infer how enterprises achieve the green competitive advantage.

The paper shows that (a) top managers' environmental awareness and the green ambidexterity innovation are both positively related to the green competitive advantage of enterprises, while there is a difference between the exploitative green innovation and the exploratory green innovation regarding the heterogeneity; the positive effect of the exploratory green innovation on enterprises' green competitive advantage is greater than that of the exploitative green innovation; (b) the green ambidexterity innovation plays a partial intermediary effect between top managers' environmental awareness and enterprises' green competitive advantage and (c) strategic flexibility positively moderates the relation between the green ambidexterity innovation and the green competitive advantage. The study concludes that top managers' environmental awareness has a significantly positive impact on reinforcing green competitive advantages and adopting the green ambidexterity innovation for heavily polluting enterprises in China.

This paper contributes to the green innovation management literature by offering a theoretical framework for examining how top managers' environmental awareness influences enterprises' green competitive advantage.

An important global issue is the harm that businesses are posing to the environment. However, the impact of small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) operations on the environment often goes unnoticed, and their willingness to adopt green innovations is limited. Therefore, this study aims to examine the factors influencing the adoption of green innovation among SMEs in Indonesia.

The research used a survey to investigate SMEs operating in the pineapple-based food sector, which is a leading commodity in Riau Province, Sumatera, Indonesia. Specifically, the research focused on the districts of Kampar, Siak and Dumai, with data collecting taking place from April to August 2022. SMEs were selected purposively based on a minimum operational tenure of 10 years. A total of 225 respondents met the selection criteria and participated in this study. The research data were collected through a questionnaire. To analyse the data, the study used structured equation modelling with partial least squares.

There are three categories of factors influencing SMEs to adopt green innovations: technological, environmental and organizational. Of these factors, organizational factors emerge as the primary determinant of green innovation adoption among SMEs in the country.

The generalizability of the findings in this study is limited due to the specific focus on food sector SMEs in Riau Province. To obtain more generalized results, it is recommended that future research be conducted on SMEs across different sectors in other cities and countries.

This study provides a deeper understanding of the specific dimensions of organizational factors that play a crucial role in driving green innovation adoption, especially within the context of SMEs in the food sector in Indonesia.

Currently, environmental and social concerns have made green innovation more popular among researchers and practitioners around the globe. Developed countries tend to focus more on this issue, compared to developing countries. However, the reality shows that small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are considered as high contributors to environmental pollution. This study is designed for, and conducted on, SMEs in a developing country, Pakistan. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the main determinants of green innovation adoption in SMEs in Pakistan.

A data sample of 288 SMEs from five different sectors was collected and analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique.

The results of the study indicate that organizational and human resource factors, market and customer factors, and government support and technological factors have a positive and significant impact, whereas external partnership and cooperation, and rules and regulatory factors have an insignificant impact on green innovation adoption in SMEs in Pakistan.

The outcomes of the study have important implications for managers as well as for government policy makers regarding framing better policies to promote green practices in SMEs.

Despite research studies indicating strong support for labelling information, uncertainty remains with respect to how labels influence consumers. This paper attempts to empirically investigate how consumers who differ in terms of environmentalism respond to labels.

The data were collected on an Australian sample using a structured questionnaire administered on the phone using quantum research (CATI) data collection services. A total of 155 questionnaires were completed and used for data analysis. The data were analysed using both descriptive measures and correlations between variables.

There appears to be a proportion of consumers that find product labels hard to understand. The research found that there are consumers who will buy green products even if they are lower in quality in comparison to alternative products, but would look for environmental information on labels. With respect to price sensitive green consumers, there appears to be a relationship between price sensitivity and “always” reading labels as well as indicating that there is “sufficient” information on product labels to make informed purchase decisions.

It was beyond the scope of the research to account for some of the utilitarian approaches to interpretation or in‐depth comprehension of label information. The sample size of 155, although selected using a probability method, may, to some extent, limit the overall accuracy of the results.

The research offers some important information on different green consumer segments that would alert managers on how best to position environmental labels. Findings such as “Satisfied with labels” correlates with “Labels are accurate”, which suggests that businesses need to provide a clear, accurate and easily legible label design to encourage satisfaction with the accuracy of content and the communication aspects of a label.

The paper contributes to better understanding of green customers purchase intentions and the usefulness of ecological product labels. It offers some insights and assistance to businesses in planning their green product/labelling strategies.

Drawing on the “Resource- Capability – Competitive advantage” framework within Natural Resource-Based View, this study is purposed to address problems of manufacturing companies “turning into the green” issues, providing references for manufacturing companies to achieve green competitive advantage via internal motivation and identity perspectives.

This study collected survey data from 112 Chinese manufacturing listed enterprises from the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and obtained 418 questionnaires. Following an empirical design, hierarchical regression analysis and Bootstrapping analysis were applied to examine these hypotheses.

Results show that green innovation behaviors positively mediate the positive relationship between organizational environmental identity and green competitive advantage. Furthermore, slack resource not only positively moderates the interaction effect between organizational environmental identity and green product innovation behaviors, but also moderates the mediation role of green product innovation behavior in the main effect.

The study is limited to the data samples and dynamic evolution between variables. More longitudinal designs and diverse enterprise fields will be considered in future.

The findings provide guidance for manufacturing enterprises to gain green competitive advantage in green manufacturing era from identity value origins. Moreover, the results provide practical suggestions for manufacturing enterprises to enhance green innovation behaviors and integrate useful but slack resources.

The findings provide implications for manufacturing industry to increase both the awareness of organizational environmental identity and green innovation behaviors, all of which helps promote the corporate environmental responsibility.

The study breaks the limitation of the existing literature which focuses on the influence of external push factors (e.g. environmental regulation), and bring new visions in constructing green competitive advantage in green manufacturing era, not only extending the identity theory and upper echelon theory, but also enriching the current studies on green management. Also, these findings provide deeper and new insights into risks and uncertain features of green manufacturing era, analyzing how polluted manufacturing enterprises obtain green competitive advantages through the mediating role of green innovation behaviors and the moderating role of slack resource.

In these economically and ecologically challenging times, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how innovation theory can be used to design more effective, proactive B2B green marketing strategies in order to meet the triple bottom line of economic, social, and ecological sustainability.

This conceptual paper provides a literature review of green marketing strategies and competitive advantage, and relates it to diffusion of innovation theory in a new way. First, a brief overview is described of corporate social responsibility (CSR) theories related to green marketing, with this paper providing value by adding innovation theory to address the gap in the literature. Next, a discussion is provided on reactive and proactive B2B green marketing strategies, degrees of innovation, and diffusion theory research, and propositions are developed. Then, a new model is presented on B2B green marketing innovation strategies and competitive advantage. Next, a conceptual analysis is presented using a diffusion of innovation characteristics framework to show relationships of the innovation characteristics with proactive B2B green marketing strategies and competitive advantage.

Five propositions are developed to reflect the relationship of B2B green marketing strategies with types of innovations and competitive advantage. In addition, a conceptual analysis found seven areas of B2B proactive green marketing strategies related to the diffusion of innovation characteristics. Findings also showed diffusion characteristics are associated with 11 key benefits of sustainable B2B green marketing competitive advantage.

Limitations and managerial implications are discussed. Also, this paper suggests recommendations related to diffusion of innovation characteristics in future research.

This paper provides a diffusion of innovation characteristics framework to test the effectiveness of B2B green marketing strategies and to help generate competitive advantages in an ecologically‐sustainable way. Managerial implications are discussed on how organisations can achieve successful competitive advantage while contributing to environmental sustainability for the common good of society.

This study addresses a gap in the literature on environmental/green marketing by being the first study to expand the CSR category of instrumental theories to include diffusion of innovation theory. Diffusion of innovation theory is applicable to green marketing because it includes new innovations (products, services, processes, etc.). An application of diffusion of innovation characteristics and their relationship to proactive B2B green marketing strategies can help shed light on how to increase the rate of adoption for green products, services, and processes to create a competitive advantage, and at the same time, help move the world toward greater ecological sustainability.

The post-pandemic emerging market is competitive and green, which has contributed to the growing pressure on firms to adopt into their business models green strategies with competitive outcomes. Therefore, this paper aims to draw from the natural resource-based view (NRBV) theory to examine how green intellectual capital (IC) can influence green competitive advantage of manufacturing firms in Ghana, by elucidating the mediating role of eco-innovation speed and quality in the relationship.

Cross-sectional survey data were obtained from 212 manufacturing firms in Ghana, using purposive sampling techniques. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to determine the factor structure of the measurement models. Structural equation modelling technique was used to analyse the hypothesized relationships.

The study found that green IC has a positively significant effect on green competitive advantage of manufacturing firms. However, while eco-innovation speed positively mediates the relationship, eco-innovation quality plays a negative mediating role in the effect of green IC on green competitive advantage of manufacturing firms in Ghana.

The framework of this study provides to managers of manufacturing firms, a superior green strategy that is unique, valuable and non-substitutable with the capable to provide green competitive edge to firms in a turbulent sustainability-driven market.

Through the lens of the NRBV theory, this study provided a firstly knowledge on the crucial role of eco-innovation speed and quality in driving firms’ green competitive advantage within a post-covid emerging market.