Green Credentials, Gray Reality: The Business-to-Business (B2B) Sustainability Value Paradox

Small entrepreneurial suppliers face a fundamental contradiction in B2B sustainability relationships: powerful buyers demand sustainability credentials as market access prerequisites, yet their purchasing behaviours systematically devalue suppliers’ sustainability investments. This study examines how small entrepreneurial suppliers navigate these value perception paradoxes in B2B relationships where buyers simultaneously demand and devalue sustainable practices. We adopted an exploratory qualitative multi-case approach (Eisenhardt, 1989; Gioia et al., 2013) examining craft food and drinks firms across Ireland and Scotland. This sector provides an ideal context because small enterprises dominate (Rudawska, 2019), these firms operate in B2B networks with significant power asymmetries with retail buyers, and they face mounting sustainability pressures from regulatory requirements, retailer demands, and consumer expectations. Our analysis reveals a fundamental value perception paradox in B2B sustainability relationships. We found that the value perception paradox where sustainability simultaneously becomes essential for market access yet systematically devalued in purchasing decisions. We demonstrate how power asymmetries enable systematic value extraction where buyers leverage sustainability rhetoric to impose requirements without corresponding behavior changes. We identify collaborative marketing strategies as responses to value perception paradoxes, revealing constraints as catalysts for collective action. For practitioners, suppliers must strategically choose buyer engagement and develop alternative revenue streams.