Communicating sustainability: large companies and their web-based approach

Sustainability is becoming an increasingly popular concept and also an impelling necessity. The world of business is not excluded from the responsibility of acting sustainably. The authors employ content analysis to analyse six different sectors (food, fashion, furnishings, oil and its derivatives, fuel and electricity, production and trade of metallurgic products, and production and trade of chemical products), for a total of 30 large companies (both b2c and b2b), in order to highlight how they communicate sustainability and employ it as a marketing tool. The results highlight that large companies show are interested in divulging their sustainable initiatives, Moreover, the energy and metallurgic sectors publish their information more fully, while fashion firms communicate sustainability less.