In 2025, record-breaking temperatures, escalating global political unrest, and a looming economic recession have intensified consumer anxiety, increasing pressure and expectations around their purchasing decisions worldwide. As people face these global challenges, they are more frequently choosing sustainable options, which fundamentally transform the connection between consumption and societal well-being. Sustainability is defined as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Although often linked to environmental issues, sustainability includes three interrelated dimensions: environmental (the natural world), social (people and communities), and economic (long-term prosperity), commonly referred to as the triple bottom line, or the "3Ps": people, planet, and profit.

This growing consumer focus on sustainability is not merely a preference but a powerful market force. Increasingly, consumers are driving the business case for sustainability by signaling their preferences through purchasing decisions. A survey has shown that 68% of consumers in OECD Member countries are concerned about environmental impact when making purchasing choices. Notably, 80% of consumers are willing to pay an average premium of 9.7% for sustainable products, and products with sustainability-related advertising saw 2.0–8.5% higher sales growth compared to those without such messaging. This trend is especially strong among younger consumers, with 79% of Gen Z and 81% of millennials believing that companies should do more to support sustainable purchasing choices.

Given the growing demand from consumers to advancing sustainability goals, a deep understanding of their responses to sustainability initiatives is essential for firms aiming to contribute to a sustainable society. Prior research has effectively demonstrated that consumer attitudes and behaviors are influenced by both individual characteristics and firms' marketing strategies. Additionally, scholars have explored negative consumer responses, such as skepticism and perceptions of greenwashing. Despite these important contributions, much of this work has been conducted within domestic contexts. Consequently, there is a notable and pressing gap in our understanding of how consumer attitudes and behaviors toward sustainability are shaped across diverse markets and cultures.

This gap is particularly concerning because the global marketplace presents a complex frontier for sustainable consumption, offering opportunities to enrich both scholarly understanding of sustainable consumption and practical approaches to sustainable marketing. Sustainable consumption is closely linked to consumers' values and identities, as well as to the regulations and institutions around them, all of which vary greatly across countries and cultures. For instance, a product message deemed environmentally responsible in one country might be viewed as irrelevant or even wasteful in another. Without addressing these cross-national and cross-cultural differences, a comprehensive understanding of sustainable consumption remains incomplete and fragmented.

Analyzing sustainable consumption in the international context offers valuable insights for both multinational corporations (MNCs) with global influence and for small- and medium-sized firms or exporters operating in developed and developing countries. For instance, products from large MNCs may promise global standards but face skepticism about their local impact, while products from smaller exporters might seem more authentic but lack transparent supply chain information. This complexity is intensified by shifting geopolitical and economic forces, making it profoundly difficult for consumers to verify claims, assess trade-offs, and make choices aligned with their sustainable values. As a result, understanding how consumers navigate this environment is a vital and urgent priority for both marketing scholars and business leaders.

To advance sustainability research from a consumer-centric, international perspective, this special issue invites studies that explore the multifaceted nature of the global sustainable consumer. We particularly encourage submissions that approach this topic from two complementary angles: (1) applying established international marketing concepts to the sustainability domain and (2) extending sustainable consumption theories to the international context.

International marketing researchers might address sustainable consumer behavior through the lens of established theories and constructs, exploring questions such as: How do consumer ethnocentrism and animosity influence evaluations of foreign versus domestic sustainable products? How do consumers' global versus local identities affect their responses to standardized versus locally adapted sustainability campaigns? On the other hand, sustainability researchers could extend theories of sustainable consumption to the complex international domain, investigating questions such as: How do pro-environmental behaviors and their motivations differ between consumers in developed and emerging markets? What cultural values drive the adoption of or resistance to circular economy practices, such as purchasing remanufactured products or using reusable bags? We welcome contributions from both research streams, and especially from those working at their intersection, to illuminate how consumers navigate the challenges and opportunities of sustainable consumption in a globalized world.

The guest editors welcome conceptual, review, and empirical papers that are methodologically rigorous. We are open to a wide array of approaches and are particularly interested in research that can illuminate the complexities of consumers and their sustainable choices in an international context. This may include rich qualitative studies (e.g., in-depth interviews, netnography), insightful quantitative analyses (e.g., cross-cultural surveys, experiments), and multi-method designs. We also encourage submissions that draw on diverse theoretical perspectives to advance our understanding of the global sustainable consumer.

Potential topics

• Consumer Identity and Orientation: How do consumer identities—such as global, local, or cosmopolitan—influence the choice between global sustainable brands and local eco-friendly alternatives?
• Country-of-Origin Effects: How does a product's country of origin interact with its sustainability claims? How do consumers evaluate a "green" product from a country perceived to have a poor environmental or labor record?
• Consumer Ethnocentrism and Animosity: Beyond general product evaluations, how do ethnocentric or animosity-driven tendencies specifically affect consumer receptivity to foreign sustainable innovations or environmental campaigns?
• Global vs. Local Brands: Do consumers place more trust in the sustainability promises of global brands or local brands? How do consumers perceive and respond to local brands that use sustainability as a point of differentiation against multinational competitors?
• Psychic Distance: How does the perceived psychic or cultural distance to a foreign country influence a consumer's engagement with sustainability issues originating from that country (e.g., concern for distant labor practices or environmental disasters)?
• Pro-Environmental Behavior: What are the key cross-cultural drivers of and barriers to pro-environmental behaviors? How do cultural values such as individualism/collectivism, long-term orientation, or uncertainty avoidance explain variations in consumer engagement?
• Circular Economy Practices: What cultural factors facilitate or hinder consumer participation in the circular economy as a customer, user, or end-of-life product holder? How do perceptions of hygiene, ownership, and waste influence the adoption of practices like renting, repairing, or buying secondhand or refurbished/reconditioned products across markets?
• Sustainable Communication and Persuasion: What is the cross-cultural effectiveness of different sustainability appeals (e.g., guilt, hope, social norms) in global advertising? How do consumers in high-context versus low-context cultures interpret green messaging?
• Perceptions of Greenwashing: Are consumers in some cultures more skeptical or adept at detecting corporate greenwashing? How does the level of institutional trust in a country affect consumer perceptions of the credibility of corporate sustainability claims?
• Ethical Consumption Trade-offs: How do consumers in different parts of the world prioritize and navigate trade-offs between different dimensions of sustainability (e.g., choosing between a locally produced product with more packaging versus an imported fair-trade product with a higher carbon footprint)?

Timeline

• January 15, 2026: Special session at 2026 Global Fashion Management Conference submission deadline
• May 15, 2026: Virtual paper workshop registration deadline
• November 1, 2026: Opening date for manuscript submissions
• January 31, 2027: Closing date for manuscript submissions

Family businesses are a dominant organisational form worldwide and play a critical role in shaping employment, investment and long-term regional development. They are also key participants in cross-border activity. Recent studies show that internationalisation by family-controlled businesses is pervasive enough to affect aggregate patterns of global competition, rather than being a marginal exception. Existing research has paid great attention to examining whether and to what extent family involvement alters the degree, speed, and performance of internationalisation. In contrast, the marketing dimension of family businesses' international activity, in terms of how the family imprint travels to foreign customers and channels, remains comparatively underdeveloped in the literature.

International marketing can be the arena where family-specific goals, resources, and constraints can directly shape how the firm presents its brand, selects channels, and serves customers abroad. Family socioemotional wealth concerns around control, reputation, social ties, and harmony through generations shape how firms frame and deliver value abroad. These concerns are salient in international settings that often entail shared control, external scrutiny and new governance demands. As a result, family businesses frequently favour incremental, low-commitment paths that rely on trusted networks before undertaking international investments, with implications for market selection, positioning and channel configuration. Also, when they do commit, families prefer to screen partners and locations for reputational fit and legal quality, and are willing to pay premia to secure brand safety. Stewardship norms further influence employment and CSR communications across borders, shaping how businesses cultivate legitimacy with foreign stakeholders. At the same time, family businesses navigating new markets face a liability of outsidership; effective signalling can help convert domestic reputation into host-market acceptance.

Building on these insights and the emerging call to study family multinationals from an international marketing vantage point, this special issue invites research that places international marketing at the centre of the conversation on family-business internationalisation by connecting socioemotional wealth-driven choices, institutional contexts and customer-facing outcomes in foreign markets.

Research on family business branding shows that communicating the family nature of the business can generate perceptions of authenticity and trust, enhancing purchase intentions and customer loyalty. Consumers often infer that family business brands are more honest, responsible, and long-term oriented than non-family rivals, especially when the family narrative is integrated into the brand identity and communication. At the same time, scholarly work warns that mere family ownership is insufficient, and the performance effects of family involvement depend heavily on whether and how firms adopt explicit family-based branding strategies, including in international markets.

Family businesses' distinct goals and time horizons further differentiate their marketing strategies. Building on behavioural agency theory, family owners place particular weight on family control, identity, and legacy, which shape risk preferences in ways that spill over into marketing. In an international marketing context, this can lead family businesses to prioritize reputation preservation, relational stability, and intergenerational trust over short-term sales maximization, resulting in more patient investments in customer relationships, cautious product diversification, or conservative communication styles. Such strategic orientation can provide resilience by maintaining or deepening customer-facing activities during downturns to protect the firm's legacy and stakeholder ties, but it may also make them slower to adjust their marketing strategies in rapidly changing foreign markets.

Resource endowments and governance structures also shape family businesses' marketing behaviour. Smaller and mid-sized family businesses often rely on lean management teams and informal decision-making, which can foster agility and close customer contact but may limit the adoption of advanced marketing analytics, professional brand management, or sophisticated digital tools. However, when family businesses successfully combine their relational strengths and local legitimacy with a strong market orientation and knowledge management capabilities, they can match or outperform non-family competitors.

Internationally active family businesses should decide how prominently to signal their familiness in foreign markets, how to adapt their brand stories to unfamiliar cultural contexts, and how to leverage family and diaspora networks for market development. Recent work on family business branding and consumer behaviour shows that perceptions of family business brands, including trust and social responsibility, are contextually contingent and may vary across countries and cultures. At the same time, internationalisation research reveals that family businesses can follow distinctive internationalisation paths, as sometimes more cautious and stepwise, sometimes surprisingly aggressive, depending on how families balance socioemotional wealth preservation and growth aspirations. Yet, we still lack fine-grained empirical analyses of how these strategic trade-offs appear in concrete international marketing decisions and integrative frameworks that explain when and why family influence leads to particular marketing configurations and with what consequences for international competitiveness and societal outcomes.

Theoretically, there is considerable scope to bring together concepts from family business with core constructs in international marketing such as global brand architecture, standardization-adaptation strategies, international market orientation, and cross-cultural consumer response. Socioemotional wealth motives may influence whether family businesses choose to foreground or downplay their family identity in different markets, yet we have limited theory on how this choice interacts with country-level culture or category norms to shape brand authenticity and trust. Likewise, family business scandals and crises suggest that the same family-based brand that generates goodwill can become a liability when reputational shocks occur, but we lack in-depth research on how families manage such risks in international settings.

Empirically, there is a pressing need for rigorous, multi-method, and time-lagged cross-national studies that unpack how family involvement shapes international marketing decisions and performance. Existing work shows that family business brands can enjoy a trust premium among consumers and that the communication of family involvement can be strategically calibrated across channels and audiences. Yet, robust empirical evidence linking specific international marketing configurations to market-based outcomes remains scarce. Rich empirical work and case-study research can complement these efforts by illuminating the micro-processes through which families debate, negotiate, and implement marketing strategies, including intergenerational tensions and the role of non-family managers.

There is also a strong case for implication-driven research with clear managerial and policy relevance. Family business owners and leaders should decide, often with limited guidance, how to position their businesses in global markets. Evidence-based answers to questions about brand positioning, professionalisation of marketing capabilities, and management of social media and corporate social responsibility communication are valuable both for practitioners and policymakers, and support organizations designing programs for internationally oriented family small and medium enterprises.

This special issue seeks empirical papers that rigorously examine international and cross-cultural contexts. We welcome quantitative studies including large-scale surveys, experiments, archival and panel data, and qualitative and process studies including case studies, ethnographies, and historical analyses that develop new theoretical perspectives. Contributions should clearly articulate how family-specific characteristics shape international marketing phenomena and also should provide actionable implications for family business leaders and policymakers.

Potential topics

• Branding and identity strategies of international family businesses
• Consumer perceptions and behaviour toward family vs. non-family businesses across cultures
• International market orientation, innovation, and digital marketing in family businesses
• Reputation management and communication in family multinationals
• International operational mode choices, channels, and international marketing configuration in family businesses
• Governance, professionalisation, and the role of non-family managers and boards in shaping international marketing of family business
• Cultural, institutional, and regional contingencies in family business international marketing effectiveness
• Global crisis, scandals, and responses in family-branded international marketing operation
• Methodological advancement for studying international marketing in family businesses

Timeline

• January 3, 2027: Opening date for manuscripts submissions
• September 30, 2027: Closing date for manuscripts submission