Aron O'CAss

Academic Summary: This special issue advances an actionable understanding of how firms set up new product development (NPD) to deliver environmentally sustainable innovation. To organize this challenge, we introduce the CORE framework, which conceptualizes environmentally sustainable NPD along four interdependent domains: Conceptualization, Orchestration, Realization, and Environment. The CORE framework contributes by recasting environmentally sustainable innovation as a cross‐phase product innovation management problem, showing how front‐end opportunity formation, development‐stage coordination, market realization, and contextual contingencies jointly shape sustainable innovation outcomes. Using this process‐oriented lens, we synthesize prior research and show how the seven articles in this special issue extend understanding across these four domains. Specifically, the articles provide new evidence on customer co‐creation in the front end of NPD, agile control and sustainability tensions in innovation portfolios, supplier concentration and substantive versus symbolic green innovation, the CSR–firm value link and the role of NPD versus marketing, the orchestration of innovation ecosystems to transform latent use contexts into manifest ones, and the cross‐context contingencies of environmentally sustainable product innovation success. Building on this foundation, we identify key knowledge gaps and develop a CORE‐based future research agenda that highlights promising questions across the four domains and the linkages between them. Managerial Summary: Firms face growing pressure to develop products that are not only commercially successful but also environmentally sustainable. This special issue shows that success does not depend on isolated green initiatives, but on how firms set up their new product development (NPD) process from the start. We propose the CORE framework to help managers think about four connected areas: Conceptualization, Orchestration, Realization, and Environment. In practice, this means identifying sustainable opportunities early, coordinating functions and partners effectively during development, turning sustainability efforts into credible customer value, and adapting decisions to the regulatory, competitive, and institutional context. The articles in this special issue offer several practical lessons. They show that sustainability can encourage customer co‐creation in the front end of NPD, that portfolio controls must balance agility and sustainability goals, and that supplier dependence can limit substantive green innovation. The findings also suggest that firms can scale growth and sustainability by orchestrating innovation ecosystems that turn latent opportunities into markets. In addition, markets respond more positively when firms embed sustainability in NPD rather than relying mainly on marketing claims. Overall, environmentally sustainable innovation requires aligned governance, cross‐functional collaboration, stakeholder integration, ecosystem orchestration, and credible execution across the full NPD process.

We conceptualize consumer bricolage in fashion as everyday practices of assembling, adapting, and personalizing garments to express identity within resource‐constrained contexts, and develop a validated, multidimensional scale to capture it. Across five studies, we specify the construct via qualitative inquiry, generate and screen items, and then use survey‐based analyses to establish a reliable three‐dimensional structure, along with convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity. The resulting scale is theoretically distinct from adjacent constructs (e.g., customization, need for uniqueness, co‐creation, innovativeness) and exhibits the expected associations with fashion consciousness, as well as incremental links to fashion consciousness, identity distinctiveness, fashion innovativeness, and consumers' social media engagement. By clarifying the dimensions of consumer bricolage and providing a robust instrument, we advance research on consumer bricolage and self‐expressive consumption, particularly in contexts where resourcefulness and identity signaling are intertwined. For managers, the scale supports segmentation and the design of personalization pathways (e.g., modular assortments, upcycling kits, community challenges) that cultivate brand‐community engagement.

With a wide array of services touting their luxury and status appeal, consumers must make choices in an increasingly contested marketspace. The choice of luxury services can be complex and entail uncertainty and risk. In an attempt to understand factors that influence consumers’ choices regarding luxury services, this study explores consumers’ consideration set size, the role of self‐identification with the service brand, positive anticipated emotions about using the service brand, and perception of the brand's status. We draw on data collected from 448 white‐collar professionals who had stayed at hotels. The findings reveal that the effect of self‐identification on consideration set size is mediated by the positive anticipated emotions consumers expect to experience when using the service. Furthermore, the path from self‐identification through positive anticipated emotions to consideration set size is moderated by the service brand's status. The findings contribute to the evolving luxury services literature and self‐congruity theory to explain the mechanisms by which self‐identification drives the development of consumers’ consideration sets in the context of luxury service brands. This study further contributes to the luxury literature by accounting for the role of positive anticipated emotions and perceived brand status. Our findings suggest managers should portray customers experiencing positive emotions when using their luxury services to ensure that the alignment of brand and self is correctly translated to their brand being placed in consumers consideration set. Furthermore, we recommend managers to maximise the power of their brand's status which can increase the likelihood of consumers considering their brand.

Many guiding articles on literature reviews exist, but few have delivered an authoritative protocol that researchers can rely upon with clarity and confidence. To commemorate the inaugural annual special issue on systematic literature reviews in the International Journal of Consumer Studies, the editors have pooled their expertize and experience of authoring, editing, and reviewing literature reviews to develop a rigorous review protocol—that is, the Scientific Procedures and Rationales for Systematic Literature Reviews (SPAR‐4‐SLR) protocol—that researchers can rely upon to guide and justify decisions in systematic literature reviews. Using an interrogative approach, the editors begin with a discussion of the “what,” “why,” “when,” “where,” “who,” and “how” of systematic literature reviews. The editors conclude with systematic literature review exemplars in the inaugural special issue.

Purpose: While extant research highlights the importance of both market orientation and brand orientation in brand success, it is still unclear how they actually combine to contribute to brand performance. Grounded in the theoretical perspectives of the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities, this study unpacks how, and when, brand orientation and market orientation link systematically to influence brand performance.Design/methodology/approach: In testing the research hypotheses involving mediation and moderation effects, survey data were gathered from a sample of business firms in the manufacturing sector and analyzed through regression analysis.Findings: The results suggest brand orientation manifests through market orientation to influence brand performance via the intervening mechanism of brand management capability. The results also suggest at high levels of competitive intensity, the systematic combination of market orientation and brand orientation is critical in facilitating brand management capability enhancement and subsequent brand performance.Originality/value: This study extends current literature by providing a more detailed account of how brand orientation and market orientation systematically combine to yield superior brand performance via the mediating role of brand management capability. This study also provides further insights into how, in response to different levels of competitive intensity, the systematic combination of brand orientation and market orientation is managed to facilitate brand management capability enhancement and subsequent brand performance.