“Walk the Talk!” Building Corporate Sustainable Brand Strength through a Sustainable Supply Chain

Accusations made against green-washing within the corporate branding context have steadily increased. Few studies have investigated the integration of social and environmental aspects in the corporate brand substance, yet. Based on a qualitative pre-study as well as a quantitative business survey, this paper investigates the extent in which the supply chain and its contribution leads to a coporate sustainable brand strength (CSBS). We show that transparency within the supply chain, as well as cooperations with supply chain members are able to enhance sustainable performance, and finally lead to higher CSBS. We further demonstrate that the form of organisation significantly influences the factors which were examinded in our model.