Abstract
By focusing on the capacity of marketing to contribute to climate change, biodiversity loss, and strains on natural resources, this article addresses a fundamental concern. Despite the urgency and significance of these issues, the discipline, indeed, lags in recognizing that human activities have geological-scale consequences, to the extent that a new era, the Anthropocene, is being evoked. This reluctance can be attributed, at least in part, to the implicit assumptions of sustainable marketing, which tend to downplay the extent of the crisis and the necessary paradigm shifts. Hence, dominant approaches in “sustainable marketing” struggle to challenge the fundamental principles and ideological foundations of the market system. That is why we are advocating for radical changes in marketing research to envision a truly sustainable future. We put forth five research proposals with the aim of instigating profound transformations in the field.
Are we sufficiently aware of the catastrophic trajectory and the future state of the planet? Does our work incorporate the recognition that through our human actions, we have entered the Anthropocene and become a “geological force?” Even if geologists are still debating the validity of the term, its ecological, geographical, and sociological validity cannot be contested. We are altering the climate and on the verge of undermining the future livability of the Earth, affecting billions of people, and countless animal and plant species, the extinction of which we are gradually orchestrating. We have very little time left to act and prevent reaching tipping points that could trigger runaway effects (Cassou and Masson-Delmotte, 2022). The scale and scope of this self-inflicted disaster are difficult to perceive and envision, which likely explains, in part, the difficulty of visualizing the scale of the solutions needed and the significant shifts required in our production and consumption patterns (Bourg, 2019a). Like the threat of nuclear holocaust, the threat of environmental holocaust is “unthinkable, unspeakable, and unsayable.” It escapes symbolization and reveals “the fundamental inability of language to fully capture the universe beyond human reality” (Matheson, 2015: 6). The “Promethean gap” defined by Anders (2001) underscores the increasing disparity between humanity’s vast technological outputs and its limited ability to grasp their profound implications (Semal, 2019).
The motivation behind this article stems from these issues and the urgent need for marketing researchers and teachers to address them (Rémy and Roux, 2022a). It is not of enjoyment that we play the role of doom-prophesying Cassandras – the harbinger of disasters linked to numerous painful observations and anticipations (IPCC, 2022; Rémy and Roux, 2022b). Marketing is an essential tool in the toolkit of economic growth, and we thus feel that our discipline bears a share of responsibility for the current situation (Arnould, 2022). Despite evident challenges and growing awareness of climate change – and even the greening efforts of some industries – we remain entrenched in the paradigm of “Auxiliary Sustainability Marketing,” which involves minor adjustments to business and marketing practices, as described by Kemper and Ballantine (2019). While it occasionally aligns with “reformist sustainable marketing,” it remains, in any case, far too distant from the much-needed “Transformative Sustainability Marketing” which appears to be the only viable solution (Kemper and Ballantine, 2019).
To adequately address the magnitude of climate challenges and issues, the discipline must undergo a genuine “aggiornamento” and adopt a more critical stance toward the economic activities it supports and accompanies, aiming to integrate its actions within the framework of planetary limits. To achieve this, we first outline the environmental challenges and issues facing humanity. We then review five core postulates and related assumptions currently developed in “sustainable,” “green,” and “responsible” marketing. This offers food for thought based on five proposals we sketch for future marketing research. It is evident that current marketing falls short of the requisite scale of research direction and initiatives. Specifically, confining marketing research to merely sustainable or responsible marketing approaches is not only inadequate but may also be detrimental to its future. Our aim is to delve into more profound transformations, ensuring that marketing research aligns with the pursuit of a habitable world.
Stakes: To survive on an (un)inhabitable planet
The publication of the sixth report from Working Group III of the IPCC (2022) underscores several alarming findings: the now-confirmed influence of human activities on global warming, which currently stands at 1.2°C higher than at the end of the 19th century (1.7°C for France) and could potentially increase to 2° and possibly 2.2° to 3.5° by 2100; the increasing frequency of extreme weather events (droughts, floods, fires) across the globe; the estimate of 3–3.6 billion people living in contexts highly vulnerable to climate change; irreversible phenomena such as the retreat of glaciers, the melting of sea ice; and the massive extinction of many species, with 25% of species under threat of extinction (IPBES, 2019). The climate crisis is, however, not an isolated phenomenon, but in its causes and consequences, deeply intertwined with environmental degradation crises and biodiversity loss. Extreme weather events, combined with “losses in biodiversity and ecosystem integrity, global disruptions in the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, land use changes, ocean acidification, ozone layer depletion, atmospheric aerosols, freshwater use, and chemical pollution” (Bourg, 2019: 46), render the Earth progressively uninhabitable. Under various labels – Anthropocene, Thermocene, Capitalocene, Phagocene, and so on (Fressoz and Bonneuil, 2016) – production and consumption based on fossil fuels are heavily implicated in these phenomena (Kallis et al., 2018). Regarding energy consumption induced by the current market-mediated consumption system, households are the most significant contributors, accounting for approximately three-quarters of the global total (IPCC, 2022: 520). For the first time, IPCC report has addressed the issue of “Demand, services, and social aspects of mitigation.” It raises questions about the behavioral changes needed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and identifies five interdependent drivers of the crisis in the extant literature: individuals and their consumption choices, culture (i.e. social norms and values), businesses and investments, institutions and their capacity for political action, and infrastructure changes. While pointing at the consumer as only one of several players in mitigation strategies, the report notes that, to date, moderation efforts have only had limited mitigating potential and have not focused on high-impact areas (IPCC, 2022: 547). Four other key takeaways emerge from the first: decoupling well-being from CO2 emissions would involve prioritizing the former and the environment over economic growth (Kasser, 2002). Second, because the required changes are system-wide, it is crucial to combine supply and demand transformations around the Avoid-Substitute-Improve triad in three areas: sociocultural, infrastructural, and technological (Creutzig et al., 2018). Third, the report introduces the concept of “Decent Living Standards,” positing that human well-being should not be defined in terms of consumption but rather in relation to a set of services that meet a series of essential requirements (nutrition, housing, basic living conditions, clothing, healthcare, education, and mobility), metaphorically expressed by Raworth (2017) and her “doughnut economics.” These services can be satisfied in various ways and must account for local contexts, cultures, geography, available technologies, and social preferences (Rao and Baer, 2012). More significantly, for marketing research and practice, the IPCC report suggests that services could be provided through the market or collaborative local systems, which is not currently the case. Finally, due to rising energy consumption levels, correlating with income across countries and geographic disparities in and inequalities of access to essential services (Hickel, 2019; Piketty, 2014), the report introduces the idea of “establishing minimum and maximum consumption standards, or sustainable consumption corridors” (Wiedmann et al., 2020), “to collectively remain within planetary boundaries” (IPCC, 2022: 514). Even though defining universal consumption norms may be hard to achieve, marketing still can envision systems that convey a sense of plenitude (Schor and Thompson, 2014) and provide well-being to both human and non-human planetary stakeholders. Despite these facts, marketing continues operating on mythical standard assumptions incompatible with planetary limits. We examine these next.
Myths: Responsible consumers, infinite growth, and sustainable marketing
The evolving marketing narrative toward responsibility and sustainability can be compared to a mythical story. According to Barthes (1957: 230–231), a myth is a depoliticized speech that evacuates the contingent, historical, and socially constructed quality of what it seeks to signify, rendering it under the clarity of an inherently indisputable nature. Myths transform history into facts, where intentions are not necessarily concealed, but naturalized. Similarly, the political and economic systems that marketing serves align with the Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) (Kilbourne et al., 1997), which obscures the magnitude of the systemic changes required (Villalba, 2023). In doing so, prevailing approaches challenge the relevance of a “New environmental paradigm” (Dunlap, 2008) or shift the responsibility for behavioral change to consumers, willingly leaving the problem of economic growth and continuous exploitation of resources in the shadows.
For example, while 2,000 billion tons of CO2 have already been released in the atmosphere, the Paris Agreement’s objective of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5° above pre-industrial levels necessitates that total CO2 emissions do not exceed 2,350 billion tons (IPCC, 2014). However, Jackson (2021) indicated that at the current emissions rate (approximately 40 Gt CO2 per year), the remaining 350 billion will be exhausted in less than 10 years, highlighting not only the magnitude but also the urgency to act. Hence, promoting minor interventions like recycling, waste reduction, or forgoing plastic bags among consumers (Cherrier and Türe, 2022; Gonzalez-Arcos et al., 2021) fosters the misconception that isolated individual efforts can sufficiently tackle climate change (IPCC, 2022). While consumers are encouraged to assess and curtail their carbon emissions, the average footprint for a French citizen is roughly 10 tons, 5 times the ideal target of 2 tons per year. However, this target itself is nearly unattainable, given that public services consumption is close to this threshold.
At another level of the mythic narrative presently propagated by marketing, emerging technologies pledge sustainable growth without additional resource consumption. However, many of these technologies are neither truly carbon-neutral nor devoid of socio-environmental implications. Some of these encompass deforestation, human population displacement, habitat degradation, elevated CO2 and methane emissions, and the exhaustion of “rare earths” essential in technological products, some of which are at risk of disappearing within a few decades (Ganguli and Cook, 2018; Pitron, 2018; Saint-Aubin, 2019). In essence, Villalba (2023: 373) notes that these are “strategies of obfuscation, invisibility, or at best, minimizing the necessary transformations to undertake,” as banking on innovative technological products does not necessarily ensure a decoupling between growth and resource throughput (Hickel, 2019).
This prevailing technotopian paradigm (Kozinets, 2008; Thompson, 2019) is similarly reflected in the “green,” “sustainable,” and “responsible” marketing literature (Kilbourne and Beckmann, 1998) and the underlying moral framework of “Auxiliary Sustainability Marketing” (Kemper and Ballantine, 2019). Such literature promotes micro-managerial perspectives that view ecological harm as a concern of the responsible consumer, which can be addressed without challenging the system’s fundamental tenets (Crane, 2000; Taylor, 2002). As a result, sustainable marketing functions as a mythological narrative that perpetuates the notion of limitless growth – the cornerstone of well-being – on which marketing management has thrived since the 1950s (Tadajewski, 2006). In the aftermath of World War II, France’s “Trente Glorieuses” period was lauded for its drive toward modernization. Marketing rhetoric merged with the DSP and the “zeitgeist” (“air du temps”) of the 1960s business world when infinite economic growth seemed possible.
Although more recent research (Pessis et al., 2013) has challenged this optimistic discourse, sustainable marketing nonetheless persists in promoting “techno-fix solutions” (Huesemann and Huesemann, 2011), suggesting, for example, that by heavily investing in renewable energies and implementing carbon capture solutions, we could sustain our consumerist tendencies with few alterations. Sustainable marketing thus emerges as a new reconciliation between the “commercial” and “green” worlds (Plumecocq, 2016), representing the system’s effort to assimilate and co-opt criticism (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005). The discourse of sustainability or responsibility suggests that a new form of marketing could reform the old, despite the negative externalities it often contributes to. This new narrative evolves frictionlessly by sequentially integrating new stakeholders, signifying not only a continual expansion of its roles and responsibilities (Dekhili et al., 2021; Volle and Schouten, 2022), but also its broader societal impacts (Belz and Peattie, 2010). This perspective also embraces various utopian reformist proposals, such as the circular economy, which can obscure challenges in production and remanufacturing, as well as the additional burdens (in time or other resources) that could be imposed on consumers. Crane (2002: 147) thus opposes such “managerialist” perspectives to “reconstructionist” approaches in which marketing would “undergo moral transformation” and play “a role in changing institutional values.”
In the same spirit of reconceptualization, a new stream of research is advocating for a shift toward an ecocentric (rather than anthropocentric) paradigm shift and advocates for an ontological, axiological, and epistemological re-foundation of marketing (Arnould, 2022; Helkkula and Arnould, 2022). Despite these advancements, the most radical critiques of marketing are voiced outside the discipline. They call for renunciation of the myth of growth, limitless consumer desire, competition, market self-regulation, and techno-utopian fantasy, all intrinsic to capitalism (Bookchin, 2004; Elliott, 2016; Ellul, 1964; Foster, 2022; Gorz, 1980; Illich, 1973; Moati, 2016; Saito, 2017). We next delve into several tenets of green, sustainable, and responsible marketing to highlight their inadequacy in the face of urgent climate action.
Aporias: The impossible sustainability of marketing
Postulate 1: Markets can reconcile growth and environmental issues
Proponents of sustainable marketing argue that market models at the macrolevel are compatible, if not aligned with environmental and social challenges (Dekhili et al., 2021: 21). By incorporating these challenges into their strategies, businesses would thus be able to “simultaneously create a triple value, for the consumer, the company, and society at large (including the environment)” (Dekhili et al., 2021: 22). However, despite advances in energy efficiency and the adoption of renewable energy sources (Wright and Nyberg, 2016), technological, industrial, and organizational innovations have not led to a decrease in the consumption of natural resources (IPCC, 2022; Jackson, 2021) still less to an ecologically regenerative economy, and for several reasons. First, energy sources have accumulated to meet accelerated global demand, not replaced each other, suggesting a reevaluation of the term “transition” (Fressoz, 2014). In addition, Jevon’s paradox and rebound effects (Alcott, 2005) show that improvements in energy efficiency have led to decreased energy prices, but simultaneously increased consumption of energy resources (Hickel and Kallis, 2020; Sorrell et al., 2009). Therefore, even though large companies have committed to reducing CO2 emissions, there has not been a significant positive impact on the climate because they collectively continue to pursue growth and economic expansion. As Hickel’s (2019: 1) analysis shows, a “global growth of 3% per year renders it empirically infeasible to achieve any reductions in aggregate global resource use and reductions in CO2 emissions rapid enough to stay within the carbon budget for 2°C.” The fight against climate change compatible with this increase would require efficiency gains six times higher than those achieved to date, a prospect deemed “highly improbable” by Hickel and Kallis (2020: 1). Hence, the challenge of reconciling perpetual economic growth with ecological limits is likened to “squaring the circle” (Lloveras et al., 2022). Moreover, because of the overall adherence of the business world to the general paradigm of infinite growth, a characteristic of the capitalist economy (Foster, 2022; Saito, 2017), sustainability-championing companies cannot alleviate the climate crisis. Similarly, current perspectives of sustainable marketing align with capitalist accumulation, suggesting that it is essential to support a “green transition.” Ultimately, markets cannot reconcile growth and the environment because their imperfect functioning tend to foster oligopolistic situations at the core of unequal power dynamics between private and collective interests. A Global Trends report published in 2013 assessed that among the world’s 100 largest economic entities, 40% were corporations, and that in 2012, Royal Dutch Shell recorded revenues surpassing the GDP of 171 countries, ranking it as the 26th largest economic entity globally, ahead of Argentina and Taiwan (Keys et al., 2013). More recently, Cadestin et al. (2019: 4) assert that multinational corporations (MNCs) account for approximately half of international trade, a third of production and GDP, and a quarter of employment in the global economy (United Nations, 2023). While there are no regulatory bodies capable of influencing the strategies of MNCs, their activities could lead to the creative self-destruction of capitalism itself if a radical change in direction is not undertaken. Not only does relentless production boost GHG emissions and depletes finite resources (Elliott, 2016; Foster, 2022; Saito, 2017), but environmental degradation ironically jeopardizes the foundational conditions required for the future of capitalist production.
Postulate 2: Companies’ sustainable practices will save the planet
At the microlevel, sustainable marketing encourages companies to engage in green innovation and more virtuous environmental practices. Examples include Jaguar Land Rover incorporating recycled materials (Volle and Schouten, 2002: 92) and Decathlon using recycled polyester (Dekhili et al., 2021: 115). However, these initiatives tend to obscure the major issues.
First, many companies establish their own sustainability objectives, frequently overlooking the magnitude of GHG reduction targets crucial for the implementation of effective mitigation policies. Second, when confronted with strict science-based criteria, very few companies follow the guidelines regarding the level of GHG emission reduction or genuinely address issues related to biodiversity erosion (Rekker et al., 2022). The 2022 Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor, for example, analyzes 24 major companies self-identifying as climate leaders (representing 4% of global GHG emissions) and finds that their goals are vague or ambiguous. Furthermore, despite their declared commitments, they are not on track for a reduction of over 40% in GHG emissions by 2030 (only five of them align with this trajectory, while the others range between 15% and 22%). Third, when discussing the initiatives many corporations embrace, there is a noticeable absence of a systemic viewpoint that contextualizes sustainable marketing actions within the broader scope of companies’ brand portfolios and/or activities. For instance, touting Danone’s brand “Les deux vaches” or Total’s renewable energy production produces a “siloed reading” effect, corresponding to one of the greenwashing techniques identified by Berlan et al. (2022). The high environmental impacts of these companies at a global and worldwide level are thus neglected in favor of targeted and widely communicated actions. This is how some companies establish mechanisms that allow them to appear more environmentally virtuous than they truly are. For example, British Petroleum popularized the carbon footprint concept in the early 2000s, claiming a shift from fossil fuels (BP, beyond petroleum) (Ferns and Amaeshi, 2019). Promoting such branding efforts renders sustainable marketing complicit, if not an outright accomplice to greenwashing, insofar as important externalities are not taken into account (Press and Arnould, 2014). Large corporations also usually minimize their responsibility for significant damages they have created, such as pollution and resource depletion, fighting responsibility in court, and relabeling these effects as neutral sounding “negative externalities.” When financial and societal goals conflict, companies generally favor the former (Van der Byl and Slawinski, 2015), and the environmental costs are omitted from financial statements, thus preserving dominant business models.
Fourth, numerous examples even indicate that companies can knowingly act detrimentally toward both the climate and biodiversity (Humphreys and Thompson, 2014; Meiners, 2019). According to critical criminology (Tombs and Whyte, 2015), acts of appropriation, exploitation, and devastation of natural resources by large corporations are not merely incidental occurrences or regrettable anomalies (Elliott, 2016; Foster, 2022). One might even consider them as conditions for the functioning of a part of the system (Bonnet et al., 2021). From destruction of rainforests in Indonesia to support oil palms, destruction of Amazon rainforests to produce soy or cattle, or indiscriminate industrial fishing in African or South American waters, the examples are legion. Banerjee (2008) articulates a phenomenon that he terms “necrocapitalism” to describe modern organizational accumulations that rely on dispossession and the suppression of life.
Fifth and finally, recent studies on the “manufacturing of doubt” or agnotology (Proctor and Schiebinger, 2008) have highlighted systematic methods to exacerbate uncertainties, particularly when scientific insights threaten business profitability (Goldberg and Vandenberg, 2021). Proctor and Schiebinger (2008) described agnotology as the intentional propagation of misinformation to sway public perception, a strategy with significant implications for businesses. The distortion of information, often involving marketing mechanisms, undermines market transparency and leads to the manipulation of consumer behavior. As Oreskes and Conway (2010) argued, deliberately disseminating misinformation and promoting climate skepticism, particularly by the fossil fuel industry, can hinder essential climate change interventions. The tactics resisting sustainable practices (Ferns and Amaeshi, 2019) indeed shed light on these actors’ political influence (Nyberg and Wright, 2016; Supran and Oreskes, 2017), suggesting that the collusion between politics and the business world prioritizes value capture over equitable distribution (Parry et al., 2021).
In summary, by emphasizing a few minor sustainable actions, marketing researchers may support the fallacious idea that these efforts sufficiently address environmental crises. At its core, sustainable marketing embodies what Morena (2023) calls “incantatory governance.” Aykut (2017: 4) describes this as a move away from top-down regulations to a system highlighting allegedly consensus-driven objectives, adaptable management tools, and compelling narratives for the global community from which dissenting voices are excluded. Consequently, incantatory governance overlooks transformative actions vital to tackling deep-seated environmental crises, inching toward climate denial (Wright and Nyberg, 2016). Norgaard (2011) and Nyberg and Wright (2022) distinguish between “literal denial” of anthropogenic climate change and a more subtle form of “implicatory denial,” which recognizes the issue but downplays the urgency of profound socioeconomic transformation. The authors argue that “implicatory” denial leads to “interpretative” denial, which manifests in much management research through the promotion of broadening the scope of wealth generation, for example, fallacious initiatives targeting the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) segments (Landrum, 2021; Press and Arnould, 2014), and framing climate change as “manageable” within the DSP (Nyberg and Wright, 2022: 717).
Postulate 3: Marketing is an apolitical tool
Although marketing encompasses several tools serving various purposes, it is not – and has never been – politically neutral (Polanyi et al., 1971). Modern instruments such as branding and persuasive advertising emerged in tandem with the rise of large multidivisional companies in the 19th century (Pistor, 2019). Chandler (1977) captures this shift as moving from the “market’s invisible hand” to the “managers” visible hand. While marketing’s roots predate capitalism, its evolution has been deeply intertwined with capitalist development, becoming institutionalized during the Fordist era (Bartels, 1988; Tadajewski, 2006). Since the 1970s, marketing has been central in facilitating flexible mass production and product differentiation (Boyer and Durand, 1998), while corporations themselves have harnessed extensive value chains to establish powerful brand equity (Galluzzo, 2020).
As neoliberal policies took root in the 1980s, oligopolies in global industries solidified, reinforcing international investments (Foster et al., 2011). Marketing tools and techniques have gradually become pervasive and accessible to everyone, from MNCs to small craftsmen and individual prosumers operating on collaborative exchange platforms (Juge et al., 2019, 2022).
The idea that marketing has not only a distinct role and function but also a superordinate role and function has been a rhetorical achievement of marketing gurus since the 1960s. Marketing education relies on clichés and generalizations promoted in basic textbooks (Kotler’s much-copied textbook, first published in 1967). These deploy ideological strategies, such as imagining all consumers have resources to pursue their consumption goals, universalizing the benefits and virtues of marketing, mythologizing the role of the marketing manager, and ignoring the profit priority at the heart of the business enterprise. Incidentally, it is worth noting that the ideology of marketing (Marion, 2006) has expanded to include employees of all forms of organizations (Gummesson, 1991), including educational establishments that respond to financial pressure by resorting to marketing value-optimizing marketing strategies and tactics. Presenting marketing management as a realm of neutral knowledge thus amounts to neglecting its development context and historical determinants. Nyberg and Wright’s (2022) analysis reveals, for example, a stark bias toward profit and growth reflect in academic writing, overshadowing discussions on climate change However, sustainable marketing is not immune to criticism due to its implicit depoliticization, notably when it overlooks radical strategies such as reducing resource use or consumption (Dekhili et al., 2021; Volle and Schouten, 2022). Instead of tackling the issue of a lack (or insufficiency) of regulations for the benefit of living on a habitable planet, sustainable marketing leads us to believe that salvation will come from corporate social responsibility (CSR), which has been largely ineffective so far (Hickel, 2019). Furthermore, the emphasis on the underlying responsibility of businesses and their pragmatism to act “for a better world” (Chandy et al., 2021) obfuscates the urgent need to transition away from a currently unsustainable marketing paradigm.
In summary, while marketing rhetoric is a powerful proponent of market ideology, it coexists with numerous cultural trends and technological advance that contribute to our current precarious global state. It is not to say that marketing is inherently harmful, as some functions of marketing are essential to any complex economy, nor to claim that planning offers an approach to resource allocation necessarily more efficient or morally superior to that of markets. However, framing marketing as a mere neutral “tool” can be misleading, especially when neglecting the close ties between marketing, capitalism, and profitability.
Postulate 4: Marketing helps create value that all stakeholders agree upon
Sustainable marketing narratives presume that a consensus exists on the nature and allocation of value generated by markets and, hence, a harmony between shareholders’ and other stakeholders’ interests. This perspective is rooted in a particular management science tradition of CSR and the “extended value” it is purported to lead to (Dekhili et al., 2021: 11), which minimizes conflicts of interest and unequal political relationships among stakeholders. However, in many cases, envisioned win-win partnerships are unattainable, and exploitative practices persist (Varman, 2018). Indeed, narratives in sustainable marketing largely downplay conflicts of interest expressed through large-scale protests against resource exploitation (Hickel, 2021; Varman and Belk, 2009). For instance, since the 16th century, the capitalist economy has expropriated and exploited resources from southern countries (Foster, 2022; Saito, 2017), which now bear the brunt of climate change (Hickel, 2021). For example, Coca-Cola’s exploitation of India’s water reserves has led to significant local shortages and social conflict (Varman and Al-Amoudi, 2016; Varman and Belk, 2009). Such instances, proliferating in disputes over mega-basins or the recent freeway A69 in France, underline the point that environmental degradation is not merely a consequence, but a precondition for certain economic activities (Bonnet et al., 2021). However, in spite of this context, sustainable marketing fails to consider scenarios in which a company’s cessation of activities, or even its very disappearance, might be necessary for the benefit of the environment or society, due to their incompatibility with planetary boundaries (Bonnet et al., 2021).
Postulate 5: The consumer must be made responsible for his or her consumption choices
Among the key concepts of sustainable marketing is that of the “responsible consumer” (Francois-Lecompte and Valette-Florence, 2006; Özçağlar-Toulouse, 2009), who is presumed to consider the consequences of their consumption into choice criteria (Özçağlar-Toulouse, 2009; Webster, 1975). As a result of this neoliberal transfer of responsibility from the state or corporate actors to the consumer (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014), the responsibilized consumer is expected to consume less, embrace a frugal lifestyle (Lastovicka et al., 1999), stick to sobriety and sufficiency (Gorge et al., 2015; Guillard et al., 2021), and consider the ecological impact of their purchases. However, when it is about consuming better, even well-intentioned consumers fall into the trap of the mega-machine (Scheidler, 2020), which maintains the illusion of virtuous consumption while ensuring that the consumer society remains largely unchanged (Parise, 2022: 22).
In terms of consuming less, the prevailing discourse conceives of the consumer as a key component of the climate equation, although not the sole and most efficient one (IPCC, 2022). But there is little reason to believe that micro-changes in consumption made voluntarily as a result of personal reflection will lead consumers to treat consumption – and the pleasure it generates – as “a means rather than an end” (Guillard et al., 2021: 51). This would entail a radical reversal of contemporary axiology. According to some authors, sober consumption would involve strictly meeting “one’s essential needs,” they define as necessities that, if unmet, “result in the loss of vital energy” (Guillard et al., 2021: 51). However, because needs are culturally constituted, it is challenging to ascertain truly essential needs and to convincingly justify why owning a handbag does not require “sacrificing the need for elegance and/or practicality in the name of sobriety” (Guillard et al., 2021: 68), while having both a tablet and a computer is superfluous. Any discussion of need that neglects its fundamental cultural and ideological underpinnings perpetuates economistic mythology (Baudrillard, 1969; Sahlins, 1996).
Beyond the contradictions of moralizing the consumer (Devinney et al., 2010; Luedicke et al., 2010), the promotion of individual sobriety conceals more significant issues.
First, it skirts around the issue of unequal access to low-carbon solutions and local consumption choices, which are generally expensive and inaccessible to economically vulnerable populations.
Second, it focuses on the “infra-ordinary” while overlooking how to bring about significant systemic changes in the most critical consumption domains, that is, energy and food. As the latest IPCC report notes, “individual behavioral changes are insufficient to mitigate climate change unless they are part of a broader structural and cultural change” (IPCC, 2022: 506).
Third, and consequently, the individual approach to sobriety touches only tangentially on the question of supply, even though technological lock-ins and oligopolistic domination of consumer markets orient consumers’ choices toward more environmentally benign options. Not unlike the movement for sober consumption, the myth of the ecologically responsible consumer assumes that awareness of climate change will lead consumers to demand more eco-responsible products and practices. However, this movement, theorized in the 1980s as the “green marketing revolution” (Peattie, 1992), has failed to achieve its anticipated results.
Fourth, promoting material sobriety overlooks the impact of rising GHG emissions from the immaterial digital world, as well as the mad rush to extract the rare metals essential for technological devices (Pitron, 2018).
Fifth, the individual sobriety perspective overlooks the role and importance of the state and public authorities, whose actions in terms of low-carbon pricing, subsidizing fossil fuels rather than green energies, and the absence of regulation on environmentally destructive financial practices have a significant influence on companies and households options.
Finally, when have humans ever lived in this imagined state of sobriety and who would want to? Certainly not the billions desirous of enjoying the fruits of consumer society. Fun, gaiety, and occasional creative explosions of excess are inherent to the human condition and should be considered when seeking a solution to a crisis (Wilk, 2022).
In summary, focusing on the agency of isolated individuals or their immediate circles obscures underlying consumption conditions. Comby (2015) highlights that while this depoliticization operates through the “singularization of the general,” it is not apolitical at all, but rather aligns with a political project of governmentalizing consumption (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014; Rumpala, 2009). The depoliticized view also fails to recognize that the individual is made of an incorporated social fabric and that one cannot change individuals without changing society (Comby, 2015: 208). Hence, emphasizing individual responsibility overlooks the infrastructure that ingrains consumer habits (Villalba, 2023). As a result, without careful consideration, companies and policymakers are inadvertently absolved of their responsibility to foster significant changes, perpetuating the allure of green innovations without challenging the fundamentals of consumption (Villalba, 2023). The narrow consumer-centric view also neglects the uneven contribution of different social categories to humanity’s overall ecological footprint and disparity of living conditions. A proper consumer orientation should perhaps focus on the wealthiest population segments that are also the most polluting (Coulangeon et al., 2023). As Barros and Wilk (2021: 316) point out, “billionaires have carbon footprints that can be thousands of times higher than average citizens, even in the richest countries.”
To conclude, “responsible,” “sustainable,” and “green” marketing have not, so far, yielded the anticipated positive effects on society or the environment. While marketing management played a significant role during the post-World War II “great acceleration,” leading to the hyper-growth of a techno-fossil society, it is challenging to discern the impact of these new narratives on climate change mitigation and adaptation, and how they might address major social and ecological challenges.
Research agenda: How to market for a better world?
These observations urge us to consider a marketing paradigm where growth is no longer the be-all and end-all of future strategies and socioeconomic actions. They lead us to explore how marketing research could redefine itself to grapple with a non-growth world (Jackson, 2021) and be genuinely respectful of planetary boundaries. We next sketch some proposals, the aim of which is not to ring the death knell of marketing, but to bring it into line with the evolution of bioclimatic parameters and make it accountable for its contribution to mitigating environmental damage.
Proposal 1: Rethinking marketing in a post-growth world
Growth, particularly its exclusive measurement of GDP, has long been criticized (Parrique, 2022). The arguments employed span various theoretical perspectives: ecological, socioeconomic, feminist, geopolitical, cultural, anti-capitalist, anti-industrial, and even conservative (Schmeltzer, 2023). The ecological critique of growth is straightforward: Infinite growth on a finite planet is physically impossible. The primary issue stems from the fact that GDP omits environmental externalities, disregards dwindling resource stocks, and ignores inequality. In contrast, market capitalism directly threatens modern civilization and, more broadly, life on Earth. Life on Earth relies heavily on the proper functioning of various interacting dynamic systems (e.g. climate, biodiversity, and biochemical flows), whose balance is currently at risk (Hickel, 2021). As noted above, green growth fueled by technological progress and/or the mere substitution of resources and energy use are not realistic goals in the short or medium term. Growth, be it green, will not achieve absolute decoupling of GDP from GHG emissions and energy consumption (Parrique, 2022). Adopting an economic trajectory genuinely in line with the planet’s physical boundaries thus requires complementing potential efficiency gains from better resource and energy utilization with measures aimed at reducing demand (Hickel and Kallis, 2020; Parrique et al., 2019; Wiedmann et al., 2020).
The myth of perpetual growth and infinite consumption cycles raises essential research questions when viewed through the lens of the renunciation and relinquishment of present productive activities. Minimizing anthropogenic pressure first needs to address consumption practices with a significant carbon impact (Villalba, 2023), such as meat production, the second largest source of GHG emissions after transport in advanced economies (IPCC, 2022). However, while livestock is responsible for over a third of global methane emissions and two-thirds of nitrous oxide emissions – these being respectively 28 and 265 times more potent than CO2 in contributing to the greenhouse effect (Institut de l’Économie pour le Climat (I4CE), 2019) – few studies have been conducted on meat production and consumption systems. With exception, Wiart et al. (2022) have questioned its legitimacy issues while the pioneering work of Gallen et al. (2019) has paved the way for research on entomophagy. Beyond this work, the possibility of more sustainable hunting, fishing, and decentralized livestock production as alternatives to industrial livestock production is rarely considered and discussed.
The I4CE (2019) report also contends that it is now essential to not only target consumers but also the primary players shaping dietary practices, which are intensive agriculture, the agri-food industry, and large retailers. More broadly, agriculture must be fully considered as a whole. Besides being a significant driver of drastic biodiversity decline, the rampant use of fertilizers and pesticides in conventional agriculture also contributes to GHG emissions, both through their production and the degradation of chemical inputs into nitrous oxide (Johnson et al., 2007). Just as marketing once advocated a world where smoking and eating junk food was “cool,” it could now promote sustainable fishing and hunting, permaculture, and regenerative agriculture techniques (Valiorgue, 2020), such as agroforestry.
Likewise, while sharing is presented as a mitigation strategy by IPCC (2022), recent research highlights the existence of environmental drawbacks associated with the peer-to-peer economy (Juge et al., 2022; Robert et al., 2014). In particular, the purchase and sale of secondhand clothing on platforms can end up multiplying the number of transactions and the carbon impacts of transportation, just as carpooling or shared accommodation can ultimately lead to an increase in travel (another example of the rebound effect). Consequently, the environmental benefits of these consumption patterns are not as straightforward as expected and should not be unquestioningly endorsed by marketing scholars.
Marketing specialists could also explore methods to raise awareness, not only among consumers but also among elected officials, policymakers, and international decision-making bodies, presenting them not merely descriptively (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014). In doing so, they would contribute to correcting the ostensibly neutral and apolitical nature of the discipline.
In various sectors, such as energy, linking household behavior to technical solutions or fiscal incentives on offer would also embed marketing research in a more systemic understanding of consumption issues. Usually, marketing focuses on micro- and meso-social scales of observation, leaving economists to examine macrofinancing or public policy tools. As a result, it appears often disconnected from economic, technological, and political contexts of consumption (Barrios et al., 2023).
Overall, the role of marketing in a post-growth world must be redefined by seriously addressing “ecological redirection” (Bonnet et al., 2021). Considering the legacy of marketing stances, mechanisms, and tools, it is necessary to reflect on what can be retained and what needs to be relinquished (Bonnet et al., 2021) in favor of other sources of social and societal value, such as health, education, care, repair, and conviviality (Durand and Keucheyan, 2019; Hickel, 2019; Illich, 1973).
Lifestyle changes begin to usher in novel themes, such as reproductive frugality, following childfree movements (Collet and Gorge, 2023) and contemporary forms of ecocentric relationships flourishing in cooperatives, AMAP (Association for the Maintenance of a Peasant Agriculture) community-supported agriculture initiatives (Robert-Demontrond et al., 2017), and ecovillages (Arnould, 2022; Helkkula and Arnould, 2022; Marchais, 2021, 2023; Press and Arnould, 2011).
These new initiatives foster profound ontological changes that depart deeply from the abovementioned eco-gestures. In particular, their reconsideration of the place of man in the world can lead to a more balanced relationship with nature, particularly with non-humans (animals, plants, and things), thus restricting the expansion of the human species and limiting its tendency to preemption, production, and destruction (Descola and Pignocchi, 2022). This reconsideration, however, is not just about a balanced relationship with nature but about considering ourselves as being of, and in nature, regardless of what we do (Askegaard, 2021). It is representative of a fundamental biocultural turn in consideration of human life in both being and becoming, a paradigmatic shift potentially as revolutionary for our understanding of the world as Newton’s mechanical physics was at its time (Ingold, 2013).
Proposal 2: Embracing democratic degrowth and ecological planning
Contrary to the off-putting image that some use to discredit degrowth, for example, “the Amish model” that President Emmanuel Macron alluded to, or the argument that degrowth would inherently lead to a recession (Hickel, 2019), the growing awareness of the scale of environmental damages compels a radical rethinking of economic functioning.
Fundamentally, as Hickel (2019: 2) argues, to degrow means committing to “a planned reduction of energy and resource use aimed at bringing the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being.” Addressing these challenges requires reorganizing production on multiple fronts, such as reducing the use of natural resources, reallocating scarce resources, relocating and shortening supply chains, increasing lateral cycling, enhancing product durability, intensifying biomimetic design and production, returning certain waste products to the biosphere in ways that enrich it, engaging in democratic debates on collective priorities and environmental justice, and doing so on a large scale and in a very short time frame (Durand and Keucheyan, 2019). The plan in question undoubtedly surpasses market coordination. Consistent with social democratic values, it must enable political oversight of production and lay the groundwork for a new economic model that meets fundamental human needs while respecting planetary boundaries.
Ecological planning needs to draw lessons from past experiences, which have often been productivist, technocratic, centralized, authoritarian, and inefficient, resulting in shortages and wastage (Chavance, 2019; Durand and Keucheyan, 2019). It should not be equated with those implemented in the past or present by totalitarian states. Instead, it involves conceptualizing and coordinating collective initiatives stemming from groups of citizens and/or consumers globally (ESADICAS, 2020). Proactive ecological planning could thus enhance the reach and the number of such initiatives, for instance, by enrolling public decision-makers and providing guarantees to producers who commit to environmental approaches. Overall, with its anticipatory nature, the very concept of planning offers a means to shield economies from the severe shocks that can (and will) occur and democratically organize the essential deceleration of economic activity (Hickel, 2019). This means first and foremost moving beyond denial in the face of looming collapses that threaten us (Bourg, 2019).
Management research in general and marketing research in particular can play a significant role in designing a newly planned economy and ecology. Commenting on an article from the Financial Times titled “The Big Data revolution can revive the planned economy,” Durand and Keucheyan (2019) argue that significant advances in computation, collection, and processing of digital data, which are now at the heart of cloud computing and predictive analytics, make it conceivable to envision a resource allocation system far more efficient than 20th-century centralized planning tools. Marketing research has indeed amassed a wealth of knowledge regarding consumer behavior, the effectiveness of communication techniques, logistical flows, distribution networks, and the workings of the commercial world. Numerous studies have allowed us to critically assess past state-led planning experiences (Gao, 2018; Papushina, 2020). This knowledge could be mobilized to conceptualize and highlight sustainable alternatives to the current economic order. To achieve this, we need to rethink marketing outside the frameworks of the free market and capitalist economy, shifting from a managerial perspective to public-policy-oriented marketing.
In this regard, the marketing discipline inadequately addresses numerous critical issues. These include carbon taxation measures, the effectiveness of regulatory tools that expedite the decarbonization of consumption, the liberation of consumer imaginaries from the stranglehold of neoliberalism, and the new registers of property relations (Dabadie and Robert-Demontrond, 2022).
In addition, it overlooks the nexus between health, well-being, and the biosphere, as well as processes of outscaling and upscaling transformative experiments undertaken by alternative or degrowth communities (Béji-Bécheur et al., 2021; Marchais, 2023).
Proposal 3: Adopting an ecosystemic approach
Beyond the deconstruction of the socially dominant paradigm, it is important to critically examine the democratic approach that could enable the active participation of consumers/citizens in determining the needs to be met and the quantities to be produced. This represents a challenge to move beyond the market, combining regulation and participatory democracy. What political mechanisms could allow for determining and reconciling each individual’s needs? What experiments, beyond the phenomenon of temporary escapism from consumption described in Burning Man (Kozinets, 2002), can inspire researchers? This question has been raised by Durand and Keucheyan (2019), who considered ways to reconcile ecological planning and the market. In order to facilitate a transition toward alternative economic arrangements, procedural innovations are necessary, involving the establishment of mechanisms for citizen participation and deliberation.
Regarding technical innovation, the issue is not so much about exploiting the existing value chains within a particular domain but rather about venturing into uncharted territories (March, 1991). Following Moore’s (1993) metaphor, exploration involves creating new ecosystems and not just fitting into established value chains. This means generating knowledge collectively, not just using currently available knowledge. It requires going beyond the linear logic of the value chain that addresses each environmental issue with a distinct type of remedy, thereby inhibiting the expression of multiple cross-fertilization initiatives and experiences.
According to Zask (2023), it would be more relevant to use the metaphor of a cable composed of numerous threads (Peirce, 1992), emphasizing the necessity of incorporating multiple contributors. For example, when addressing the prevention of mega-fires, Zask (2023) argues that it should entail a relational, interactive, and pluralistic approach, as when Australian authorities responsible for parks and natural reserves are engaging Aboriginal rangers who have cultivated the science and art of fire management in the bush for approximately 6,000 years. Such microlevel social innovations are also what Folke et al. (2021) advocate in hopes of disseminating new mental models, ideas, and practices across various spatial and temporal scales.
This echoes previous work (e.g. Thompson, 2019) that has rightly stressed that actor–network theory (Callon, 2017) and assemblage theory (Canniford and Bajde, 2016) can readily address the complex transformations and reconfigurations of the marketplace, consumption practices, and consumer identities. Assemblages (agencements in French) exist as an ongoing process of recruitment, enrollment, mobilization, and entanglement. Agencements (or assemblages) are performative structures characterized by distributed agencies. When conducting analyses of an assemblage, no a priori assumptions are made that any one actor (such as the customer or the consumer) is more influential or central to the arrangement than any other. It would be an ontological error to analyze the agency and capacities of consumers as characteristics that exist independently of market arrangements, just as it would be equally problematic to assume that the arrangements facilitating value extraction entirely determine their capacity for action, which is distributed.
Marketing as an academic discipline can be seen as performative, with some arguing that it was intentionally designed this way (Cochoy, 1998). In other words, the theories and models developed in marketing are typically intended to bring about effects rather than simply describing reality (Mason et al., 2015). A performative stance encourages marketing scholars to treat the link between theory and practice as an empirical question rather than a matter of principled discussion. Furthermore, studying marketing performativity can improve our understanding of how collective actions create markets.
Proposal 4: Engaging with social imaginaries
Marketing plays a crucial role in the creation of new narratives and social imaginaries, which are essential for exploring diverse perspectives on what could inspire efforts toward new trajectories of development (Folke et al., 2021). Social imaginaries are not only illusions. They are the core of the social institution and – equally important here – the forces of social instituting (Castoriadis, 1975). The social imaginary is foundational for social coherence and the source of the movers and shakers of society. As such, imaginaries represent the reality of a shared world in numerous ways, such as through societal projects, visions of the future, social dreams, political hopes, and collective aspirations. They lead to the development of ideologies and utopias manifested through specific practices and attachments. Notably, the “utopia” of ecological degrowth involves decolonizing the imagination (Latouche, 2004, 2022: 93–121) or driving a process of reimagination (Fournier, 2020) to usher in a paradigm shift that supports lifestyle transformations and breaks away from consumerism. However, imaginaries centered on frugality, voluntary simplicity, neo-animism, or sober living often appear far from economic realities or may be perceived as too radical, elitist, or gloomy (Marchais, 2023).
However, for a movement to gain traction, it must first prevail in the battle of ideas within public opinion. According to Gramsci (2011), this involves challenging prevailing intellectual discourse as ideas must have a power of attraction. An academic marketing researcher who is truly aware of the challenges outlined above should partake in this intellectual battle to disseminate new worldviews and fresh cultural perspectives. Hence, as Hoare and Sperber (2019: 33–34), quoting Gramsci, suggest that they should “actively participate in practical life as a builder, an organizer, and a “permanent persuader,” a point that we further elaborate on below.
Proposal 5: Making climate change a researcher’s commitment
Echoing Kunstler (2005), we have undoubtedly entered a period of long emergency, in which we will have to “live in a continuous evolutionary imbalance of fundamental existential conditions” (Dupuy, 2022: 39). This period prompts profound changes in the role of marketing researchers/teachers, not only regarding prioritized research themes but also in our critical stance on the discipline (Rémy and Roux, 2022b).
At the very least, our primary responsibility is to scrutinize firms’ environmental claims. Lacking sufficient grounding in the natural sciences (biology, biophysics, biochemistry, pharmacy), we may be inclined to present firms as exemplars of virtuous innovations while neglecting the full spectrum of their direct and indirect (Scope 3) impacts. For instance, an eco-designed product is not necessarily biodegradable, a bio-based molecule might not be produced without fossil fuels, and biofuel has repercussions for land use, reducing food crops or biodiversity. Numerous technological innovations can cause environmental damage associated with the extraction of their components, their transportation, the waste they generate, and the transformations they cause to both human and non-human populations. Marketing researchers should grasp or at the very least, question these effects, but currently, few are willing to venture into this territory. Therefore, we must develop interdisciplinary research with colleagues from the natural sciences and disciplines already engaged in reflections on degrowth, such as history, heterodox ecological economics, political sciences, anthropology, and sociology of techniques (Kallis et al., 2018).
A significant step forward in this respect is acknowledging the continuum between what we used to treat as separate spheres, nature, and culture. A central contribution here might come from the discipline of biosemiotics (Askegaard, 2021; Cobley, 2010: 241). This research stream in biology and communication sciences defines life as a set of communication and interpretation processes that allow any living organism to create an “Umwelt,” that is, an understandable and navigable environment. The cultural implications of a biosemiotic approach posit that the scientism and determinism of mechanistic thought and sociobiology, which have been rejected by culture, are not meant to be replaced by autonomy, agency, (free) will, and other myths, this offering a form of response to Latour’s (1991) sociology of sciences.
Furthermore, as shown above, denying the political role of marketing and, by extension, our role as a researcher and teacher is pointless. Often personally affected by eco-anxiety and aware of the challenges we face, we will likely find ourselves increasingly stepping outside the supposed scientific neutrality on spurious grounds of rigor, recognizing that knowledge is never neutral (Foucault, 1980; Latour, 2010). Contrary to this stance, we believe that rather than limiting the implications of our research to managerial value, it is vital to consider its environmental, social, and political consequences consistently. This requires full acknowledgment of the marketing’s role in/on/for society at large and a discussion of its effects on various stakeholders, starting from the standpoint of collective and general interests, including those of actors in the non-human biome, rather than merely the interests of the company or its shareholders (Chandy et al., 2021). Therefore, marketing scholars should explore alternative ways of discussing and representing value. Beyond that associated with businesses and markets, it becomes crucial to reconsider the role of regulation, initiate discussions on common goods, and reclaim the distribution of value underpinned by ecological planning and biosphere stewardship (Durand and Keucheyan, 2019; Folke et al., 2021). In other words, it is appropriate to “politicize” our discipline.
Thus, a significant portion of marketing research could be devoted to identifying realms where the market should not serve as the primary means of resource coordination, thus pinpointing the boundaries and hazards of their commodification. For example, researchers have identified copious examples of consumption and brand-based platforms, subcultures, tribes, and communities, some taking the form of social movements, in which value is co-created and resources circulate (Cova et al., 2023; Gollnhofer and Weijo, 2023). In such social formations, market logic and practice are subordinated to the principles of gifts, reciprocal exchange, indirect exchange, and redistribution.
Similarly, cooperatives, time banks, local currency communities, transition towns, ecovillages, and existing indigenous communities worldwide use these non-market-based principles of resource circulation and value co-creation. Simultaneously, these communities usually struggle to sustain and reproduce their models to outscale and upscale them. Given our expertise exchange systems, should these communities not assume a more central role in marketing research with the aim of creating a better world?
Marketing’s raison d’être is the provision of narratives resonating with the culture it builds and serves. We are obviously in desperate need of a new root narrative for our social organization and our social being beyond the mythology of eternal growth. It is worth noting that the market as an institution and marketing as a practice are much older than the capitalist mode of production. The market, however, must be liberated from its current symbiosis with capitalism and the market economy’s linkage to growth. In this paradigm, the transfer of objects or resources fundamentally depends on profitability, and externalities are not only, unfortunately, undesirable by-products but incentives at the core of every production process. Marketing can be mobilized to tell a different story about a fundamentally different economy and market (Arnould, 2022).
From this, it emerges that acting for a better world requires marketing to embrace new axiologies, ontologies, and associated practices that align with the planet’s present and future, lest it fade away, like the toxic and archaic embodiment of a disintegrating world.