Insights of Green Marketing Information from Sustainability Reports of Food Companies: A Cross-Country Analysis

This study examines the green marketing strategies employed by food companies in Poland and Sweden, with a specific focus on how these strategies align with the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) sustainability framework, which encompasses environmental, social, and economic dimensions. Using content analysis of publicly available sustainability reports, we identified key themes and concepts reflecting the companies' approaches to sustainable marketing across the three regions. Data collection involved a combination of web scraping (via Python) and manual verification. Company lists were obtained from lusha.com, a platform that ranks top companies by country. Out of 187 Polish food companies, 19 had accessible sustainability reports; in Sweden, 26 reports were obtained from a total of 244 companies. We excluded the remaining companies because we could not find sustainability reports for them, and some belonged to other product categories, such as cosmetics and food innovation technology. Additionally, we excluded food companies that mentioned their sustainability goals on their webpage but did not provide sustainability reports. This study used supervised Bag-of-Words (BOW) technique for text analysis using R studio. We developed custom dictionaries to identify key themes related to green marketing strategies and their linkage to the triple bottom-line framework of sustainability. The findings reveal both commonalities and regional differences in the emphasis placed on environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability. Notably, the social dimension was the most emphasized across both regions. This research contributes to the understanding of regional variations in green marketing communication strategies and offers insights into how food companies integrate sustainability into their public communications and reporting practices.