THE ROLE OF BUSINESS ANALYTICS IN ESG-ORIENTED BRAND COMMUNICATION: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF DATA-DRIVEN STRATEGIES

Abstract

This study addresses the persistent gap between what firms say about sustainability and what stakeholders trust, by examining how business analytics (BA) capabilities shape ESG-oriented brand communication effectiveness. Drawing on a systematic review of 112 peer-reviewed papers to ground constructs and measures, and a quantitative, cross-sectional, case-based design across cloud and enterprise platform contexts, we analyze firm-level cases (n = 238) sampled from multiple industries and roles. Key variables include BA capability (data governance, skills, tooling, integration, experimentation), advanced analytics use (predictive modeling, causal testing, automation), message transparency/quality (specificity, balance, verifiability, clarity), ESG performance, and ESG communication effectiveness (clarity, credibility, trust impact, engagement intent). The preregistered analysis plan comprises scale reliability checks, descriptives, zero-order correlations, and hierarchical OLS with robust errors, including moderation tests for BA capability × ESG performance and robustness specifications (fixed effects, clustered SEs, rank-based models). Headline findings indicate that BA capability is positively associated with communication effectiveness, advanced analytics adds incremental explanatory power, transparency/quality shows a strong, independent association, and the BA payoff is steeper when underlying ESG performance is higher, implying analytics amplifies credible performance rather than substituting for it. Managerially, results recommend sequencing investments from governed data pipelines and experiment infrastructure to a transparency checklist and assurance linkages, so that what is measured, modeled, and messaged remains verifiable across channels and markets. Collectively, the evidence positions analytics-enabled transparency as an institutional capability that reliably improves the clarity, credibility, and stakeholder impact of ESG communication in cloud and enterprise settings.