B2B marketing scholarship and the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs): A systematic literature review

Abstract The United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals provide business to business marketing (B2B) scholars with a useful framework to guide research with a societal impact that addresses real-world challenges and is relevant to stakeholders outside academia. Although sustainability research within B2B marketing scholarship has increased in recent years, the B2B literature relating to the Sustainable Development Goals remains fragmented and underexposed. To address this important oversight, a systematic literature review of the B2B marketing literature (n = 58) is undertaken which demonstrates if and how B2B scholarship is currently engaging with the Sustainable Development Goals. The findings and analyses highlight that although the B2B scholarship has varying levels of engagement with some of the goals, there is vast opportunity for B2B Marketing scholars to engage more proactively and strategically with the Sustainable Development Goals. Building on the call for courageous research and employing the ‘Observe, bridge and challenge” model (Lindgreen et al., 2021), we develop broad research approaches as well as specific research questions to catalyse scholarship at the interface of B2B Marketing and the Sustainable Development Goals.