Thus, it is that customers can actively participate in all supply chain processes of tourism firms, and research aiming to explore the customers’ role in service sustainability should adopt a supply chain management approach. Based on this insight, this paper adapted the Sarkis (2003) green supply chain management model for exploring the customers’ role in achieving sustainability at all supply chain processes. I chose Sarkis’s model, because it uses an operational life cycle approach for identifying ways to manage environmental impacts for all supply chain processes, including service design, procurement, production, distribution, marketing, and consumption. The framework that I outline here expands the Sarkis model from its initial focus on environmental issues to a broader approach to sustainability. I also
include the feedback loop process of supply chain management that involves reverse logistics, meaning recycling, reusing, or discarding waste products in a sustainable way.
Hence, this paper provides a literature review of sustainable supply chain management that expands the Sarkis model by considering three customer-related aspects: the sustainability
impact of customers, the role of customer involvement in all three dimensions of sustainability, and customers’ influence on supply chain processes, including the recycling activities that close the supply chain loop