The ecologicalization issue boosts much more innovative marketing approaches (e.g., ecological marketing, green marketing) for sustainable development in the last decades (Katrandjiev, 2016; Garg & Sharma, 2017). More and more firms are engaging in innovative marketing practices for sustainable development and personalized preferences of customers to establish their reputation and to generate positive impacts on natural environments (Gerstlberger et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2017, 2018; White et al., 2019). The innovative marketing practice here refers to “the continuous innovations of planning, organizing, coordinating, implementing and controlling the development, pricing, promotion, and distribution of products or services to meet the new challenges of the future ecosystem in a manner that satisfies the following three criteria: (1) customer needs are met, (2) organizational goals are attained, and (3) the innovation is compatible with the ecosystem”. Therefore, it is highly associated with “cleaner production and corporate sustainability” (Dangelico and Vocalelli 2017, p. 1264). In practice, in order to improve sustainable development for the future ecosystem, the engagements of various stakeholders from multiple levels are urgently needed in the processes mentioned above (Cronin et al., 2011), and innovative marketing practices do matter across different levels. For example, at the macro level, government regulatory policy for environmental protection is becoming increasingly important for the sustainable development (Groening et al., 2018). At the firm level, firms’ green marketing strategy is even much more significant for building business competitive advantage than ever (Papadas et al., 2017; Papadas et al., 2019). At the individual level, customers’ green product purchase and sustainable consumption behaviours are fostering sustainable lifestyle and consumerism as well (White et al. 2019). So it is obvious that marketing innovations for sustainability is the key to sustainable development for the future ecosystem (Dangelico and Vocalelli 2017; Gerstlberger et al., 2014).

However, most prior studies tend to examine either marketing innovations or sustainable development separately (Fiore et al., 2018), so it is urgently needed to link the two research streams together and further explore marketing innovations and sustainable development for the future ecosystem. For instance, more research is called for on how to utilize marketing innovations to improve the performance of sustainable production and consumption in general from the perspectives of governments, firms and customers respectively. In particular, given the current Covid-19 crisis backdrop, firms are calling for further studies on innovative marketing practices for the future ecosystem, and some new marketing practices are emerging (Hudecheck et al., 2020; Reeves et al., 2020), which boosts sustainable development renovation (Pirouz et al., 2020) and sustainable consumption transition (Cohen, 2020). As such, new challenges and opportunities for the future ecosystem might co-exist in practices of marketing innovations and sustainable development. This SI focuses on the “green” aspects of marketing innovations, which can be taken into consideration for sustainable development from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders (governments, communities, firms, customers, etc.). Furthermore, this SI also examines how to improve the sustainable development through these marketing innovation practices for the future ecosystem.

The topics relevant to this special issue include but are not limited to:

·New marketing innovation approaches associated with sustainable production and consumption.

·The criteria for evaluating marketing innovations regarding sustainability performance

· Regulatory policy making and adoption for sustainable development for the future ecosystem.

·Explore and compare the effectiveness of various marketing innovation strategies for the future ecosystem.

·Customer sustainable consumption and marketing innovations for the future ecosystem.

·Multilevel perspectives on how to facilitate sustainable production and consumption for the future ecosystem.

·The development process of ecological products or services in the perspective of ecosystem.

·Value co-creation and customization strategies for sustainable production and consumption.

·Country difference of marketing innovation and sustainability for the future ecosystem.

·Marketing innovations and customization for future ecosystem in sharing economy.

·Marketing innovations and sustainability in a post era of Covid-19 crisis.

All authors must follow the editorial guidelines provided in the Guide for Authors of the Journal of Cleaner Production, which can be accessed via the website (https://www./journals/journal-ofcleaner-production/0959-6526/guide-for-authors). Authors should submit their manuscripts via the Elsevier Editorial System (https://ees./jclepro/default.asp). Authors should select “VSI: Green Marketing” as the article type for this VSI when they wish to submit their manuscript to the EES.

Full papers are invited for potential publication in this VSI of the Journal of Cleaner Production. Submissions should be between 9 000 and 13 000 words for comprehensive, integrative reviews, and between 7 000 and 8 500 words for full research/theoretical papers with broad empirical studies.

All authors must follow the 'Guide for Authors' which can be accessed via the following link: https://www./journals/journal-of-cleaner-production/0959-6526/guide-for-authors, and follow the standard submission procedures of Elsevier's Editorial System (EES). All submissions will be subjected to thorough peer review, revision, and re-submission processes.

Papers must be written in good English. Authors with limitations in the command of written English are recommended to have their papers edited by a 'Professional English Scientific Editor', before the first submission because poorly written pieces can compromise the decisions during the review process. Similarly, they should have their final document edited by a 'Professional English Scientific Editor', before they submit their final document for the final review and for publication. All submissions will be checked for similarity and those manuscripts showing too high levels of similarity will be rejected.