Multi-stakeholder market shaping for sustainability: effort types and enactment pathways in B2B markets

Marketing scholarship has primarily focused on influencing consumer behavior towards sustainability, yet many sustainability challenges require market-level changes across multiple stakeholders. Addressing this gap, we examine how heterogeneous stakeholders collectively shape markets for sustainability. We conduct a multi-case study of B2B markets whose impact on climate change and biodiversity is actively contested. Drawing on institutional field theory, we conceptualize market shaping for sustainability as linked to issue fields where diverse stakeholders engage to influence market trajectories. Our abductive analysis identifies four types of multi-stakeholder market-shaping efforts pursuing markedly different—at times opposing—market-level outcomes: status quo maintenance, targeted reform, infrastructure reform, and market contraction. To explain this variation, we delineate four pathways through which stakeholders enact sustainability-related issues—two for challengers and two for incumbents. By linking these pathways to intended market-level outcomes, we advance theory on market-based sustainability interventions and offer actionable insights for navigating multi-stakeholder market-shaping processes.