Dynamic marketing capabilities, innovation strategy and sustainable business performance: A systematic review

The digital transformation era and increasing environmental awareness have created new paradigms in marketing management, where organizations must develop dynamic capabilities that integrate innovation strategies with sustainable business performance objectives. Despite extensive research on dynamic marketing capabilities and sustainable performance, the specific mediating mechanisms through which innovation strategy connects these constructs remain fragmented, with limited systematic synthesis of empirical evidence. Therefore, this study aims to systematically synthesize empirical evidence regarding the mediating role of innovation strategy in the relationship between dynamic marketing capabilities and sustainable business performance, while identifying contextual factors that moderate this effectiveness. A systematic review following PRISMA 2020 guidelines was conducted, analyzing 26 empirical studies (13 good, 10 poor, and 3 fair) from the Scopus database (2019–2025). However, traditional meta-analysis methods cannot be used in this study; thus, CASP quality assessment criteria were adapted. The analysis revealed that innovation strategy significantly mediates the dynamic marketing capabilities-sustainable performance relationship, with an 83.3% consistency rate across studies. The analysis indicates that innovation strategy represents a consistently supported mechanism linking dynamic marketing capabilities with sustainable business performance across the reviewed studies. The evidence synthesis shows a high level of convergence in the reported relationships, although the magnitude of effects could not be statistically pooled because of substantial differences in construct operationalization, measurement approaches, and analytical techniques. Technology-related factors, particularly big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms, emerged as recurring contextual enablers of capability development and innovation implementation. These findings suggest that dynamic marketing capabilities contribute to sustainability outcomes most effectively when they are translated into innovation-oriented actions and supported by appropriate technological resources.