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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. 116 http://www.webology.org 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 117 http://www.webology.org 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 118 http://www.webology.org 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 119 http://www.webology.org
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