Breaking the Constraint Loop in B2G Environmental Services: Marketing Capabilities, Digital Conversion, and Cash-Cycle conflicts

Environmental services increasingly operate in sustainability-critical B2G and B2B markets shaped by tender competition, high accountability, and long payment cycles. Yet little is known about how procurement rules, legitimacy barriers, and cash-cycle frictions affect marketing capability development in such settings. This study examines a regional environmental service provider in China through a mixed-method single-case design combining interviews, archival records, a client survey, expert validation. The findings reveal a constraint transmission mechanism in which procurement price pressure and delayed payments suppress discretionary investment, weakening digital conversion, customer management, and solution/value articulation capabilities. These deficits reduce differentiation and constrain cross-regional legitimacy transfer. The study contributes a constraint-sensitive marketing capability framework and offers implications for legitimacy transfer, enterprise customer development, and digital conversion.