Alviri, Hajar2025-09-172025-09-172025-09-172025-09-05https://hdl.handle.net/10012/22454The cosmetics industry is a rapidly growing global sector, valued at over $650 billion, with continued expansion driven by lifestyle changes, novel marketing strategies, and digital marketing. However, this growth has raised serious environmental and social sustainability concerns. Amid these challenges, sustainability communication has become a critical arena through which brands position themselves as sustainable and responsible. Understanding how brands frame and integrate sustainability is essential for evaluating the holistic nature, credibility, inclusiveness, and transparency of their marketing practices. This dissertation explores how sustainability—both environmental and social—is communicated by cosmetic brands through product-level marketing. Situated within the field of sustainability management, the research applies message framing theory as its core theoretical framework to examine how sustainability is defined, constructed, and communicated across different brand categories. Through four interrelated studies, the dissertation provides a multi-dimensional analysis of sustainability communication in the cosmetics industry, with a particular focus on the growing influence of fast beauty, the rise of sustainability-positioned brands, and the evolving expectations around sustainable practices, equity, inclusion, and transparency. The first manuscript presents a systematic literature review of academic research on sustainability in the cosmetics industry between 1992 and 2022, revealing a strong disciplinary bias toward science and engineering, with limited contributions from the social sciences—particularly in areas such as marketing communication and stakeholder behaviour, as well as a notable lack of research focused on the Canadian context. The second manuscript examines how sustainability is framed in colour cosmetic marketing, specifically lipsticks, using message framing theory and the social construction framework to assess differences in sustainability-related claims, transparency, and greenwashing across leading, fast beauty, and sustainable brands. The third manuscript extends this investigation to skincare products, specifically moisturizers, again guided by message framing theory and the social construction framework. It highlights continued reliance on vague and unverified sustainability-related claims, limited transparency, and the selective construction of sustainable skincare. Both studies draw on mystery shopping and content analysis to explore how sustainability is constructed in brand communication. The fourth manuscript shifts to the social dimension of sustainability by analyzing how brands integrate inclusion and diversity in lipstick and facial moisturizer marketing. This study also used mystery shopping and content analysis, drawing on message framing and social identity framing lenses, it finds narrow and inconsistent presence of inclusive beauty, with most brands aligning representation with marketable ideals. Together, these studies demonstrate that sustainability communication in the cosmetics industry is often selective, emotionally driven, and shaped by brand positioning and market pressures. Claims such as "natural," "vegan," and "cruelty-free" are commonly emphasized, while complex or controversial topics—such as labour rights, environmental impacts beyond packaging, or accessible design—are frequently omitted. The prevalence of vague and unverified claims points to widespread greenwashing, which risks undermining consumer trust. By integrating content analysis and mystery shopping methods across two product categories and three brand category types, this research reveals how communication practices both reflect and shape the evolving meaning of sustainability in the marketplace. This dissertation contributes to scholarship in sustainability marketing and management by offering critical insight into the framing strategies that brands use to communicate sustainability. It highlights the need for more transparent, comprehensive, and socially responsible narratives if the cosmetic industry is to align with the broader goals of sustainable development. Communication, as shown here, is not merely a promotional tool—it is a central mechanism through which sustainability is defined, enacted, and contested. In addition, this work develops a conceptual framework for assessing the integration of sustainability into marketing communication at the product level. This framework is adaptable and can be applied to different types of products or services across various brand categories, offering a structured approach for future research and practical evaluation.enDoctoral Thesis