Degrowth and the future of marketing

Degrowth is not a blueprint that needs to be followed. Rather, it is an invitation, a broad set of principles and ideas, a path whose twists and turns have yet to be taken.

– Schmelzer, Vetter, and Vansintjan, The future is degrowth (2022, 283)

Marketing researchers and practitioners alike have demonstrated skepticism towards “reconciling the growth imperative of capitalism with the pursuit of sustainability” and have instead turned to degrowth as an alternative (Lloveras et al., 2018, 189). Proponents of degrowth claim that drastically reducing consumption is the only way to make it sustainable, that is, to allow it to endure while preserving the capacity for Earth’s biosphere and human civilization to co-exist (e.g., Belmonte-Ureña et al., 2021; Hobson, 2013; Kallis et al., 2020; Vandeventer et al., 2019). Accordingly, degrowth proponents warn us that this will require countervailing the logics of growth and the emergence and legitimation of values and institutions that produce different kinds of persons and different types of relations between persons and things (Chatzidakis et al., 2014). Marketing researchers and practitioners have an important role in that regard.

The call for papers behind this special issue was inspired by discussions that took place during the workshop Theorising Consumer Culture V: Doing Consumption Differently. The workshop was held in Chile in November 2021, and was organized by the three editors of this issue and supported by The University of Queensland and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In those discussions, workshop participants manifested their discomfort with the fact that most marketing theories and models have been deployed to foster the development of consumer culture over the past decades based on the premise that consumption means growth, and growth is good. So we asked ourselves: Can we find solutions within marketing, or does marketing become irrelevant (or an oxymoron) when the focus is to reduce consumption and stop catastrophic environmental change? The conclusion was that adopting a degrowth perspective would require rethinking how we theorize consumption and markets, and developing new insights that may challenge those that have come to dominate the field.

Although the origins of the Degrowth movement go back three decades (or earlier when considering the publication of “The Limits to Growth” by the Club of Rome in 1972 [Meadows et al., 1972]), this critical approach to the global capitalist system is still largely unknown among marketing scholars outside the critical marketing sphere. Compared to mainstream economic thinking, degrowth is still very much a niche idea, as the small number of submissions we received in response to our call for papers attests. It is, however, a very important idea, and it is gaining traction in academic and political circles alike – along with the loss of strength of green growth as a viable alternative to just plain growth, see Savin and King (2023), also gaining popularity among citizens (Taylor, 2024) and starting to enter practitioners’ field of concerns (Gil, 2023). When we launched the call for papers in 2023, the first International Degrowth Network (https://degrowth.net/members/) was being launched, and in May of that year, the Beyond Growth conference took place in the European Parliament (https://www.beyond-growth-2023.eu/). Marketing scholars have recently invited more scholarship on the topic, noting that degrowth should ground “future marketing responses to the climate and wider ecological emergency” (Lloveras et al., 2022, 2056), and media reports indicate a wider social shift among young consumers in the direction of degrowth (Bartholomew 2023).

As degrowth enters conversations, it is common to hear that it has a marketing or branding problem. This comes from the understanding that the term degrowth (from the French décroissance), which signals loss or reduction, is perceived negatively in loss-aversion, consumerist societies. Judged by its prefix, degrowth would imply austerity, sacrifice, and even poverty (Liegey, Nelson, and Hickel 2020) when, in fact, its proposal is one of “radical abundance” (Hickel 2019); of using “less of the world’s energy and resources and put wellbeing ahead of profit” (Masterson 2022). Moreover, in contrast to more positively evocative terms such as “green growth” and “sustainable economies/markets/societies,” a term like degrowth does not lend itself to cooptation or “washing” by those with vested interests in preserving the status quo centered on growth. In fact, the word intentionally leads people to question the naturalized reality that growth is the best and only possibility to drive nations forward (Lloveras 2025, this issue). We ask, then, is it that degrowth needs better marketing, or is it that growth needs less of it?

Marketing scholars who support a degrowth approach to addressing the urgent climate change problem are faced with the confronting possibility that marketing, as it currently stands, does not seem to be what degrowth needs, “for the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Lorde 2023). That sobering thought leads us to invite marketing practitioners to do less of what marketing seems meant to do, and marketing scholars (through our research choices, editorial activities, and institutional roles) to drive understanding of what is valuable outside the growth paradigm. While marketing scholars and practitioners have been called to mitigate the harm produced by their activity (Gupta et al., 2024), our call goes beyond harm mitigation, and offers space for marketing scholars to imagine post-marketing futures (Arnould and Helkkula 2024). Thinking beyond a reality centered on capitalist economies is a hard thing to do, as it goes against most extant literature and challenges what we learn and teach inside business schools, where “growth is a perpetual business priority” (Brodherson et al., 2024). The scholars who contributed to this special issue have risen to the challenge excellently, and their contributions offer positive alternatives to consider in what is only the beginning, a stepping stone in the journey towards degrowth.

The papers in this issue consider marketing in multiple forms. Benmecheddal, Özçağlar-Toulouse, and Türe’s (2025) analysis of the evolution of the degrowth movement in Lille, France, is a contribution situated in the domain of macromarketing. Based on an 8-year ethnographic study, their findings link political consumerism and political participation, showing how degrowth activists use markets to gain political influence and position themselves as adversaries to existing policymakers. Vicdan et al. (2025) connect the political domain to corporate marketing, exploring conviviality in the practices of fashion designers, manufacturers, and brands. The authors argue for the manifestation of degrowth conviviality in more-than-human forms that include materials and technologies. Zavalla and Arias (2025) also forefront the role of objects and materials, but center their empirical analysis on practices of rasquachismo – a degrowth-aligned approach to consumption. In contrast, the two conceptual papers included in this special issue challenge existing perspectives in marketing practice and scholarship. Elgaaied-Gambier et al. (2025) counterpose degrowth to demarketing, arguing that the latter can be redefined from a perspective of sufficiency (rather than efficiency). Bertilsson and Egan-Wyer (2025) offer an alternative approach to marketing scholarship in the current scenario, arguing for dystopian-optimism and a gradual approach to degrowth.

In addition to these articles, this special issue also includes three invited commentaries that further expand on the role of marketing in degrowth, one by Phillip Kotler (2025), who, being a leading thinker and educator in the field has opened, for the past seven decades, multiple avenues for scholars and practitioners to rethink the role of marketing in a changing planet and society. The second commentary, by Javier Lloveras (2025), a scholar uniquely situated at the intersection of marketing and degrowth scholarship, considers the problematic normalization of growth: growth realism. The third commentary, by Dominique Roux (2025), whose research focuses on alternative forms of consumption and on advancing post-growth alternatives for markets, outlines several realistic perspectives for marketing engagement with degrowth across multiple levels.

Although these contributions open up a valuable discussion about the intersection of marketing and degrowth, some of the questions we raised in our call for papers that led to this special issue remain unaddressed. Hence, we offer these questions as an agenda for future research. Addressing them would increase understanding of degrowth among marketing scholars and practitioners, and perhaps lead to the development of theories that can facilitate our transition to degrowth societies.

For scholarship

- How do the principles of degrowth challenge specific marketing tenets and create opportunities for the transformation of marketing theory and practice?

- In what ways can new consumer subjects be shaped to decouple consumption from social categories and structures (e.g., status, identity work) that sustain its power?

- How can the performativity of marketing theories and devices be leveraged and influence the way a degrowth approach might or might not be successfully adopted?

- How can efforts to establish networks and support consumers in developing waste-less, tailored solutions to specific needs at the local or individual level be theorized? What roles can multiple market actors play in supporting such collectives?

- What are the nature and characteristics of emerging market movements such as consumer-driven degrowth and consumer shaming?

For teaching

- How can marketing education be restructured to include degrowth principles as a viable economic paradigm?

- What learning tools and approaches (e.g., case studies) can be used to teach degrowth principles?

- What role can degrowth principles play in shaping future marketing curricula?

- What alternative learning approaches can facilitate teaching discussions around degrowth?

For practice

- What are the pitfalls and challenges of a degrowth approach for particular groups, markets, fields, or geographic contexts?

- What other types of collective engagement (e.g., neo-localism, interdependence) can be envisioned among market actors from a degrowth perspective?

- What are the underlying assumptions in marketing practice (e.g., strategies, tools, managerial frameworks) that challenge the adoption of a degrowth perspective?

- How can marketing practitioners support individuals in finding solutions to their needs and desires elsewhere, when they should no longer shop?

- How do marketing activities contribute to reducing consumption and stopping catastrophic environmental change?

We hope that this editorial, the commentaries, and the papers in this issue will support those already taking up the challenge of researching in this area, and further pave the way for those interested in advancing scholarly and practical understandings of degrowth. This special issue would not have been possible without the great work of the contributors, nor would it be possible without the reviewers. We would like to conclude by offering our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who made this special issue happen.