B2B marketing for industrial value addition: How do geopolitical tension and economic policy uncertainty affect sustainable development?

Geopolitical and economic uncertainties lead to growing volatility by lowering credit flows (allocations and disbursements), resulting in a sharp plunge in industrial and marketing activities. Despite this, studies on how business to business (B2B) marketing disruptions caused by geopolitical tension and economic policy uncertainty impede industrial value creation and sustainable development, are scarce. We examine the influence of geopolitical tension and economic policy uncertainty on sustainable development through the channel of B2B marketing in the case of group of 20 (G20), group of 7 (G7) and Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) nations over 1990-2019. We utilize the Quantiles via Moments approach to analyze panel time series data due to its potential to deal with country- and region-specific heterogeneity and non-linear relationships. Our findings disclose that geopolitical tensions have a monotonic negative effect on industrial value-added triggered by B2B marketing in the BRICS countries. Contrarily, such tensions have no significant influence on industrial value-added and sustainable development in the G20 and G7 nations. Besides, industrial value-addition (foreign and domestic) augmented by B2B marketing positively affects sustainable development. Also, the effect of economic policy uncertainty on industrial value-added and sustainable development is monotonically favorable. In contrast, economic policy uncertainty-augmented industrial value-added adversely affects sustainable development steadily. Briefly, the empirical outcomes unveil significant economic implications, delineating that B2B firms are confronted with many challenges resulting from the vagaries of geopolitical and economic policy uncertainty soliciting disruption in their sustainable marketing operations.