Promoting a Sustainability Culture in the Liquor Industry: Competition or Cooperation?

As sustainability becomes a vital concern for consumers, liquor firms are increasingly integrating sustainable culture into their brand promotion campaigns. This study examines two liquor firms’ competitive and cooperative promotion strategies of a sustainability culture via a game theoretical model. The analytical results are obtained as follows: (1) The correlation coefficient between sustainability culture and liquor products negatively affects the promotion level of sustainability culture under the cooperative promotion strategy, whereas its impact is non-monotonic under the competitive promotion strategy. (2) Under the cooperative promotion strategy, the initial disparity in sustainability cultures always positively affects the promotion level of the common sustainability culture. However, under the competitive promotion strategy, its impact is the opposite for a liquor firm with a weak sustainability culture and a liquor firm with a strong sustainability culture. (3) The necessary conditions for adopting a cooperative strategy for promoting a common sustainability culture are that the initial disparity in sustainability cultures between the two liquor firms is in a moderate range. Therefore, for managers in the liquor industry, careful assessment of the initial disparity in sustainability cultures is essential when formulating cooperative or competitive strategies. It is also crucial to recognize the nuanced role played by the correlation between sustainability culture and liquor products. Moreover, these findings offer a robust theoretical foundation for future research into the influence of sustainability culture on liquor supply chain ecosystems.