Marketing Nathalie Dens
Marketing, society, sustainability and ethics
Unsustainable marketing
- Critical approach
o (Re-)evaluate marketing activities, categories, frameworks
o Extent to which marketing knowledge is developed based on our contemporary
social world
Current marketing knowledge = Western-centric
o Historical, cultural conditions in which we operate impact how we see marketing as a
discipline
o Marketing can benefit from other intellectual perspectives
Social anthropology, social psychology, linguistics, philosophy, sociology
- Marketing = manipulation
o Serves itself consumers
o Supports capitalist classes labouring
o Framing
= marketers presenting persuasive communication and audiences interpreting that
communication to assimilate it into their existing understanding, in relation to:
Situations
highlighting sales promotions available for a fixed time only
Attributes
highlighting usage features of, say, a mobile phone
Choices
showing a potential car buyer options across the range
Actions
buy now, pay later schemes
Issues
Asda explaining why it boycotted the 2015 UK Black Friday sales promotion
Responsibilities
Save the Children explaining why children in Indonesia need help so that it
can solicit donations
News
Volkswagen explaining why its chief executive was replaced after the
emissions scandal
o Framing becomes spin
= problem => marketing promotion becomes corporate propaganda
Photographic tricks to make food look great (using motor oil as syrup)
- Commodity fetishism
=> derived from Marxist economic theory
o ‘Society is dominated by consumption and fetishizes it’
o Before industrialization
goods produced for use-value, producer manufactured product for user and
exchanged it with customer
o After industrialization
workers exploited for labour, became removed from product they produced, were
paid piece rate share of financial return generated as result of their labour
1
, Marketing Nathalie Dens
Goods acquired exchange-value = tradable with other goods in capitalist
market system benefiting the capitalist/investor
- Externalities
= negative impact companies have on society
o Challenges ‘more choice is good’ and ‘marketing works to meet needs of customers’
o Marketing system = amoral
= designed without caring whether it harms or not (≠ immoral)
Distributing alcohol, gambling services, illegal offerings on crypto markets
Made moral by decisions of governments, other institutional actors in
regulating the marketing system
o Exploiting workers in foreign countries
o Cultural imperialism
= dominant country imposing own cultural aspects onto other nondominant country
o Overconsuming
o Customer surveillance
o Power imbalance
2
Marketing, society, sustainability and ethics
Unsustainable marketing
- Critical approach
o (Re-)evaluate marketing activities, categories, frameworks
o Extent to which marketing knowledge is developed based on our contemporary
social world
Current marketing knowledge = Western-centric
o Historical, cultural conditions in which we operate impact how we see marketing as a
discipline
o Marketing can benefit from other intellectual perspectives
Social anthropology, social psychology, linguistics, philosophy, sociology
- Marketing = manipulation
o Serves itself consumers
o Supports capitalist classes labouring
o Framing
= marketers presenting persuasive communication and audiences interpreting that
communication to assimilate it into their existing understanding, in relation to:
Situations
highlighting sales promotions available for a fixed time only
Attributes
highlighting usage features of, say, a mobile phone
Choices
showing a potential car buyer options across the range
Actions
buy now, pay later schemes
Issues
Asda explaining why it boycotted the 2015 UK Black Friday sales promotion
Responsibilities
Save the Children explaining why children in Indonesia need help so that it
can solicit donations
News
Volkswagen explaining why its chief executive was replaced after the
emissions scandal
o Framing becomes spin
= problem => marketing promotion becomes corporate propaganda
Photographic tricks to make food look great (using motor oil as syrup)
- Commodity fetishism
=> derived from Marxist economic theory
o ‘Society is dominated by consumption and fetishizes it’
o Before industrialization
goods produced for use-value, producer manufactured product for user and
exchanged it with customer
o After industrialization
workers exploited for labour, became removed from product they produced, were
paid piece rate share of financial return generated as result of their labour
1
, Marketing Nathalie Dens
Goods acquired exchange-value = tradable with other goods in capitalist
market system benefiting the capitalist/investor
- Externalities
= negative impact companies have on society
o Challenges ‘more choice is good’ and ‘marketing works to meet needs of customers’
o Marketing system = amoral
= designed without caring whether it harms or not (≠ immoral)
Distributing alcohol, gambling services, illegal offerings on crypto markets
Made moral by decisions of governments, other institutional actors in
regulating the marketing system
o Exploiting workers in foreign countries
o Cultural imperialism
= dominant country imposing own cultural aspects onto other nondominant country
o Overconsuming
o Customer surveillance
o Power imbalance
2
