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Manveer Mann is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Montclair State University. She has over eight years of experience in higher education teaching in areas including marketing, retailing, and international business. Before joining Montclair State University, she was an assistant professor at Old Dominion University, Virginia. She received her Ph.D. from Auburn University, Alabama, in 2012. Her research interests span a number of topics in marketing including consumer behavior, social responsibility, sustainability, and retailing. Her research has appeared in several academic journals including Journal of Business Ethics, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, and the International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management. She has presented her research in numerous international and national conferences including Society of Consumer Psychology, Transformative Consumer Research, Academy of Marketing Science, and American Collegiate Retailing Association.
The COVID-19 pandemic and rising demand for transparency has heightened the importance of sustainability communications on social media to generate deeper stakeholder engagement. Although B Corporations (B Corps), businesses committed to the triple bottom line (TBL), could serve as a catalyst for sustainable development, little is known about how they communicate on social media during a crisis. Therefore, we examined social media communications of B Corps to (1) identify salient topics and themes, (2) analyze how these themes align with the TBL, and (3) evaluate social media performance against industry benchmarks. We focused on the apparel, footwear, and accessories (AFA) sectors in the U.S. and chose Twitter, a platform known for crisis communication. Using a qualitative method, we found four topics and 21 underlying themes. Topics related to social/environmental issues and COVID-19 were most dominant, followed by product/brand promotions. Further classification of specific themes and cases from a TBL perspective demonstrated that, overall, B Corps in the AFA sectors leveraged various approaches to promote balance between each TBL dimension. Lastly, although collectively B Corps exceeded some of the Twitter industry benchmarks, at an individual level, most brands had room for improvement to build a stronger community and promote synergy among the three pillars of the TBL.
Manveer Mann; Sang-Eun Byun; Whitney Ginder. B Corps’ Social Media Communications during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Through the Lens of the Triple Bottom Line. Sustainability 2021, 13, 9634 .
AMA StyleManveer Mann, Sang-Eun Byun, Whitney Ginder. B Corps’ Social Media Communications during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Through the Lens of the Triple Bottom Line. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (17):9634.
Chicago/Turabian StyleManveer Mann; Sang-Eun Byun; Whitney Ginder. 2021. "B Corps’ Social Media Communications during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Through the Lens of the Triple Bottom Line." Sustainability 13, no. 17: 9634.