Unveiling the Collaborative Dynamics of Clusters in Enhancing Cooperation for Green Marketing Initiatives: A Conceptual Model

In the current business landscape, where prioritizing sustainability has become imperative, cooperation in developing green marketing takes center stage. Companies are urged to adopt innovative approaches, transcending individual interests in favor of a collective commitment to the greater good. In this transformative journey, cluster organizations emerge as facilitators, leveraging their inherent advantages to propel and support such innovative endeavors. However, despite the growing scholarly attention toward green marketing and the diminishing significance of geographical proximity in communication, there remains a need for further investigation into the effectiveness of clusters for green marketing initiatives. Accordingly, this paper aims to conceptualize how clusters, leveraging their non-spatial proximity advantages, can foster cooperation for green marketing initiatives. Clusters are influenced by firm relationships such as affiliation, coordination, collaboration, and strategic networks. These relationships influence the degree of non-spatial proximities such as social, cognitive, institutional, and organizational dimensions. Moreover, each facet of non-spatial proximity serves as a foundation for distinct forms of cooperation in green marketing. This framework posits that social proximity fosters research collaboration and knowledge sharing, cognitive proximity facilitates the exchange of resources and expertise, institutional proximity supports advocacy for policy initiatives, and at the apex of cooperative endeavors, organizational proximity drives joint marketing initiatives and innovation. This conceptual model offers practical guidance and paves the way for more in-depth examinations in subsequent studies.