Growing environmental concerns, stakeholder expectations, and institutional pressures have made sustainability and green marketing essential elements of organizational strategies. The body of research on green marketing has expanded significantly worldwide, but insights from developing nations, particularly Ethiopia, remain sparse and shallow. The insights from 37 peer-reviewed studies that were published between 2010 and 2025 are combined in this systematic review, which focuses on how sustainability and green marketing have been perceived, applied, and researched in Ethiopian and international contexts. The review employs a PRISMA-based selection procedure in conjunction with a qualitative synthesis approach, primarily motivated by institutional theory and stakeholder theory. The findings show that due to major legislative, normative, and cognitive effects, green marketing techniques are becoming more institutionalized globally and are linked to business performance, consumer trust, and competitive advantage. Ethiopian study, on the other hand, indicates that the adoption of green marketing is mostly symbolic and is hampered by inadequate institutional backing, low market knowledge, and poor regulatory enforcement. The analysis highlights persistent deficiencies in methodological robustness, context sensitivity, and theory integration, particularly in emerging nations. This review adds to the body of knowledge on sustainability and marketing by recommending future research directions, explaining dominating trends, and highlighting contextual divergences through the integration of global and Ethiopian information.