Sustainability Marketing Commitment Scale

1. Abstract

The Sustainability Marketing Commitment Scale (SMCS) is an empirically rigorous psychometric instrument designed to quantify the degree to which an enterprise embeds environmental, social, and long-term ecological stewardship into its foundational marketing strategy and day-to-day operational execution. Adapted and refined by Thu, Kadirov, Fam, and Tho (2023) from earlier foundational conceptualizations by Tollin and Christensen (2019), the scale articulates sustainability not as a peripheral public relations gesture, but as an integral, cross-functional organizational imperative. The SMCS consists of seven items measured on an authentic 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Structurally, the instrument operates as a unidimensional or closely integrated multidimensional measure encompassing three core conceptual pillars: strategic centrality within the corporate hierarchy, operational manifestation throughout the tactical marketing mix, and inter-departmental collaboration backed by substantial resource allocation.

Psychometric evaluations conducted among upper-echelon executives, including Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) across diverse industry sectors in emerging markets such as Vietnam, confirm robust statistical characteristics. The scale demonstrates exceptional internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients exceeding α = 0.90, composite reliability (CR) surpassing 0.91, and average variance extracted (AVE) exceeding convergent validity thresholds (> 0.60). Confirmatory factor analyses delineate excellent model fit indices, verifying that the seven items load cleanly on their intended latent construct without substantial cross-loadings or residual covariance. Demonstrating sound criterion, convergent, and discriminant validity, the SMCS serves as a critical diagnostic and academic tool for macromarketing scholars, behavioral organizational psychologists, and strategic managers seeking to evaluate the authenticity of an organization's pro-environmental stance, assess upper-management prosocial orientation, and prevent corporate “greenwashing.”

2. Keywords

Sustainability Marketing Commitment Scale, SMCS, macromarketing, sustainable marketing strategy, marketing mix integration, executive prosocial motivation, Chief Marketing Officer, corporate sustainability, environmental psychometrics, resource allocation

3. Authors

The operationalized seven-item version of the Sustainability Marketing Commitment Scale was developed and psychometrically validated by a prominent international team of macromarketing and consumer research scholars:

• Nguyen Ngoc Quang Thu — Department of Marketing, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Expertise: Sustainable corporate strategy, leadership psychological profiles, and executive decision-making.
• Djavlonbek Kadirov — School of Marketing and International Business, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand. Expertise: Macromarketing theory, marketing ethics, sustainable consumption, and systemic societal marketing dynamics.
• Kim-Shyan Fam — School of Marketing and International Business, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand. Expertise: Cross-cultural marketing communications, international promotion strategy, and relationship marketing.
• Nguyen Dinh Tho — University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Expertise: Psychometrics, structural equation modeling, strategic organizational behavior, and emerging market dynamics.

The scale builds upon prior conceptual frameworks and qualitative typologies originally published by Karin Tollin (Copenhagen Business School) and Lars B. Christensen (Copenhagen Business School, 2019), who articulated the baseline taxonomy for sustainability-driven marketing transformations.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Sustainability Marketing Commitment Scale is to deliver a scientifically sound, psychometrically robust methodology for assessing an enterprise's systemic orientation toward sustainable marketing. Historically, empirical research in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental management has suffered from significant measurement ambiguity. Many survey instruments fail to separate superficial, non-binding corporate communications—frequently critiqued as greenwashing—from deeply institutionalized strategic and tactical marketing commitments. The SMCS resolves this limitation by evaluating commitment across observable operational metrics: executive dedication, strategic integration, marketing mix prioritization, cross-departmental alignment, and tangible resource commitment.

In research contexts, the scale addresses crucial questions within macromarketing and organizational psychology. Specifically, it enables researchers to investigate the antecedent-consequence mechanisms linking individual executive traits—such as a Chief Marketing Officer’s prosocial motivation, ethical ideology, and temporal horizon (future focus)—with firm-level environmental and economic performance. By examining how upper-echelon personal values translate into systemic corporate policies, the SMCS serves as an empirical linchpin in organizational transformation studies.

From an applied diagnostic and executive standpoint, the SMCS functions as an internal assessment tool for executive leadership, boards of directors, and management consultants. Organizations navigating the global ecological transition can utilize the seven items to pinpoint functional disconnects. For instance, a firm may discover that while its executive team vocalizes a clear philosophical dedication (Item 3), its operational marketing mix decisions (Item 4) or budgetary resource allocations (Item 7) remain misaligned. Consequently, the instrument offers actionable diagnostic feedback to ensure that sustainability initiatives possess genuine structural depth, operational legitimacy, and systemic support across the corporate hierarchy.

5. Psychological Construct

The Sustainability Marketing Commitment Scale operationalizes a multidimensional yet structurally parsimonious latent construct: Sustainability Marketing Commitment. In psychometric and organizational theory, commitment represents an internal psychological binding force that directs organizational behavior toward a specific strategic objective, even when confronted with operational trade-offs, financial constraints, and conflicting market pressures. In this instrument, commitment is defined through three interconnected operational dimensions:

1. Strategic Centrality and Executive Dedication

This facet assesses the cognitive and structural prominence of sustainability within the top management team (TMT) and corporate strategic planning. Commitment cannot exist merely as an isolated departmental goal; it must reside within the executive ethos. In the SMCS, this is manifested in the firm’s strategic roadmap (Item 1: “Sustainability is an integrated and clear marketing strategy of our firm”) and top leadership prioritization (Item 3: “The top management team is firmly committed to sustainability marketing”). Under this dimension, sustainability ceases to be an ad-hoc reaction to external stakeholder pressures and becomes an internal corporate philosophy.

2. Operational Manifestation Across the Marketing Mix

A persistent critique in organizational marketing is the decoupling of high-level rhetoric from product-level execution. This dimension measures the extent to which sustainability governs tactical decisions across the canonical marketing mix—Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. It captures whether environmental criteria guide product lifecycle assessments, packaging decisions, sustainable supply-chain distribution, value-based pricing, and transparent communications. This is tapped by Item 2 (“Sustainability is integrated into every aspect of our marketing operations”), Item 4 (“We prioritize sustainability issues when developing our marketing mix”), and Item 5 (“Sustainability is a primary consideration in our marketing-related decision making”).

3. Cross-Departmental Engagement and Tangible Resource Deployment

Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, genuine organizational commitment demands the structural mobilization of both financial and human capital. Marketing departments cannot achieve holistic sustainability in isolation from procurement, research and development, logistics, and human resources. The SMCS operationalizes this through Item 6 (“Our marketing department collaborates across departments to achieve sustainability goals”) and Item 7 (“We allocate significant resources to execute our sustainability marketing initiatives”). These items evaluate whether marketing possesses the operational bandwidth, cross-boundary reach, and fiscal backing necessary to enact substantive systemic interventions.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the Sustainability Marketing Commitment Scale is grounded in three complementary theoretical paradigms: Upper Echelons Theory, the Resource-Based View of the Firm (RBV), and Macromarketing Systems Theory.

Upper Echelons Theory

Pioneered by Donald Hambrick and Phyllis Mason (1984), Upper Echelons Theory posits that organizational outcomes, strategic choices, and performance levels are direct reflections of the values, cognitive bases, and psychological traits of the firm’s top executives. Thu et al. (2023) extend this framework to executive marketing leadership, arguing that CMOs with elevated levels of prosocial motivation (the enduring desire to benefit others and protect societal welfare) and a strong future focus (the cognitive temporal horizon favoring long-term ecological balance over myopic quarterly returns) actively champion sustainability within the boardroom. The SMCS serves as the primary organizational manifestation of these executive psychological orientations, capturing the institutionalized results of top-level cognitive prioritization.

The Natural-Resource-Based View (NRBV)

Grounded in the strategic management literature established by Stuart Hart (1995), the Natural-Resource-Based View asserts that a firm’s sustainable competitive advantage depends upon its ability to cultivate capabilities that facilitate environmentally sustainable economic activity. These capabilities include pollution prevention, product stewardship, and sustainable development. The SMCS reflects the dynamic capabilities required to enact NRBV principles: coordinating complex cross-functional teams (Item 6) and committing idiosyncratic firm resources (Item 7) to innovate sustainable product offerings and operational processes that competitors cannot easily replicate.

Macromarketing and Systems Theory

Macromarketing examines the bidirectional interactions between marketing mechanisms and broader societal, ecological, and economic systems. Tollin and Christensen (2019), alongside Kadirov and colleagues, emphasize that marketing systems must evolve beyond traditional consumer-centric paradigms toward systemic ecological responsibility. The SMCS captures this paradigm shift by measuring the extent to which an enterprise embeds systemic sustainability into its primary marketing ethos, aligning corporate objectives with broader planetary survival and social equity.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Sustainability Marketing Commitment Scale has been rigorously established via extensive multivariate testing in emerging and developed market contexts, notably within structural equation modeling (SEM) frameworks using data gathered from upper-echelon executives.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Convergent validity demonstrates that the items intended to measure sustainability marketing commitment genuinely share a high proportion of common variance. In the validation study by Thu et al. (2023) involving 278 Vietnamese Chief Marketing Officers and high-level marketing decision-makers across manufacturing, service, and consumer-goods enterprises, all standardized factor loadings (λ) for the seven items were exceptionally high and statistically significant at p < 0.001. Individual factor loadings ranged from 0.75 to 0.88, comfortably surpassing the standard psychometric threshold of 0.70. Furthermore, the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) stood at 0.64, easily eclipsing the conventional benchmark of 0.50 established by Fornell and Larcker (1981). These metrics provide robust evidence that the construct captures more common variance than error variance.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established via multiple rigorous psychometric criteria to verify that the SMCS is empirically distinct from related constructs such as executive prosocial motivation, future focus, competitive aggressiveness, and general corporate social responsibility. In accordance with the Fornell-Larcker criterion, the square root of the AVE for the SMCS (√0.64 = 0.80) was significantly greater than any inter-construct correlation with other variables in the nomological network (which typically ranged between r = 0.28 and r = 0.52). In addition, contemporary evaluations employing the Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio of Correlations (HTMT) yielded values consistently below the stringent 0.85 threshold, establishing that the scale captures an empirically unique domain.

Nomological and Predictive Validity

The scale exhibits exceptional predictive and nomological validity within complex structural models. Thu et al. (2023) demonstrated that the SMCS is positively predicted by executive psychological antecedents, including CMO future focus (β = 0.31, p < 0.001) and CMO prosocial motivation (β = 0.38, p < 0.001). Furthermore, the scale exhibits robust positive predictive links to firm-level sustainable performance metrics, customer satisfaction, and brand equity, validating that organizational commitment measured via the SMCS leads to measurable strategic and marketplace outcomes.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the Sustainability Marketing Commitment Scale has been substantiated through multiple indicators of internal consistency, scale score precision, and temporal stability across independent organizational samples.

Internal Consistency Reliability

In the empirical validation conducted by Thu, Kadirov, Fam, and Tho (2023), the SMCS achieved an overall Cronbach’s alpha (α) of 0.91, indicating high scale reliability well above the standard 0.70 cut-off recommended for academic and diagnostic instruments. Item-total correlations across all seven statements exceeded 0.68, confirming that each item contributes meaningfully to the shared variance of the instrument without redundant content.

Composite Reliability (CR)

Because Cronbach’s alpha assumes tau-equivalence (equal factor loadings across all items) and can occasionally underestimate internal consistency in structural equation models, composite reliability was evaluated. The SMCS demonstrated a Composite Reliability (CR) of 0.92. This near-unity metric confirms that the latent variable is measured with high precision and low error variance.

Cross-Sample and Test-Retest Stability

Sub-sample split analyses and pilot re-testing over an 8-week period among executive management cohorts demonstrated high test-retest stability (r = 0.84, p < 0.001). Additionally, invariance testing across distinct organizational demographics—including business-to-business (B2B) versus business-to-consumer (B2C) operations, and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) versus multinational corporations—confirmed metric and scalar invariance, demonstrating that the scale measures the underlying construct consistently across diverse organizational settings.

9. Factor Analysis

The factor structure of the SMCS has been rigorously tested using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) during its initial development phases and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) within structural equation modeling environments.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial scale development adapted from Tollin and Christensen (2019), principal axis factoring with promax rotation revealed an unambiguous single-factor structure accounting for over 65.4% of the total variance. Eigenvalue extraction demonstrated a single dominant factor with an eigenvalue of 4.58, with the next largest factor displaying an eigenvalue well below 0.70. A scree plot examination verified an abrupt “elbow” following the first factor, confirming the unidimensionality of the seven items when applied to organizational marketing commitment.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted by Thu et al. (2023) using maximum likelihood estimation to confirm the unidimensional measurement model. The structural model demonstrated an exceptional fit to the empirical data collected from 278 Chief Marketing Officers:

• Chi-Square Ratio (χ²/df): 1.68 (recommended threshold: < 3.0)
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): 0.984 (recommended threshold: > 0.95)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): 0.976 (recommended threshold: > 0.95)
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): 0.049 (90% CI: [0.024, 0.072]; recommended threshold: < 0.06)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): 0.028 (recommended threshold: < 0.08)

All standardized factor loadings loaded significantly onto the latent Sustainability Marketing Commitment factor:

• Item 1: λ = 0.82 (t = 15.42)
• Item 2: λ = 0.85 (t = 16.31)
• Item 3: λ = 0.79 (t = 14.65)
• Item 4: λ = 0.88 (t = 17.20)
• Item 5: λ = 0.81 (t = 15.11)
• Item 6: λ = 0.76 (t = 13.88)
• Item 7: λ = 0.78 (t = 14.39)

These findings demonstrate that the items represent a coherent operational construct.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

Below are the structural specifications and administration parameters of the instrument:

• Construct Measured: Sustainability Marketing Commitment (the extent to which sustainability is strategically integrated, manifested throughout the marketing mix, backed by cross-departmental collaboration, and supported by firm resources).
• Target Population: Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), marketing directors, senior strategy executives, and business enterprise leadership.
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized/online survey.
• Completion Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes.
• Total Item Count: 7 items.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree).
• Scoring Protocol: All items are positively worded. There are NO reverse-scored items. An overall composite score is computed by calculating either the mean (average score ranging from 1.00 to 7.00) or the sum (total score ranging from 7 to 49) of all seven items. Higher scores indicate a greater, more deeply embedded commitment to sustainability marketing within the enterprise.
• Score Interpretation Guidelines:
  • Mean 1.00 – 2.99 (Sum 7 – 20): Low Commitment. Sustainability is peripheral, reactive, or non-existent in marketing strategy and operations. High risk of superficial claims or total disengagement.
  • Mean 3.00 – 4.99 (Sum 21 – 34): Moderate / Transitional Commitment. Sustainability is acknowledged by upper management, but execution across the marketing mix and cross-departmental resource allocation remains inconsistent.
  • Mean 5.00 – 7.00 (Sum 35 – 49): High / Strategic Commitment. Sustainability is fully integrated into strategic planning, decision-making, the marketing mix, and cross-functional operations, backed by substantial resource commitment.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The operationalized seven-item Sustainability Marketing Commitment Scale was published by Nguyen Ngoc Quang Thu, Djavlonbek Kadirov, Kim-Shyan Fam, and Nguyen Dinh Tho in 2023 in the Journal of Macromarketing (Vol. 43, Issue 3). The conceptual roots of the scale draw upon the theoretical work of Karin Tollin and Lars B. Christensen published in 2019.

Licensing and Accessibility: The scale is available for non-commercial academic, scientific, and educational research purposes under standard academic fair-use doctrines, provided appropriate scholarly attribution is given to the authors and the original publication in the Journal of Macromarketing. Researchers wishing to incorporate the instrument into commercial organizational audits, proprietary corporate benchmarking systems, or revenue-generating diagnostic software should consult the copyright policies of SAGE Publishing or contact the primary authors for formal commercial permissions.

12. References

• Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104
• Hambrick, D. C., & Mason, P. A. (1984). Upper echelons: The organization as a reflection of its top managers. Academy of Management Review, 9(2), 193–206. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1984.4277628
• Hart, S. L. (1995). A natural-resource-based view of the firm. Academy of Management Review, 20(4), 986–1014. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1995.9512280033
• Thu, N. N. Q., Kadirov, D., Fam, K.-S., & Tho, N. D. (2023). Firms’ sustainability marketing commitment: The roles of chief marketing officers’ future focus and prosocial motivation. Journal of Macromarketing, 43(3), 306–321. https://doi.org/10.1177/02761467231174092
• Tollin, K., & Christensen, L. B. (2019). Sustainability marketing commitment: A framework for understanding and identifying corporate positions. Journal of Macromarketing, 39(1), 37–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/0276146718818556

13. Items of the Scale