Macromarketing Our Way to a Zero-carbon Future

Climate change is a clear and present danger for humanity. The twin ills driving climate change (overproduction and overconsumption) are supported by a logic of economic growth and a materialist consumer culture completely at odds with increasingly scarce natural capital (Prothero and McDonagh 2021; Shultz 2017). Macromarketing's fundamental mission is to “improve the human condition, and to sustain the world humans inhabit” (Shultz and Wilkie 2021, p. 5). Climate change therefore places the macromarketing mission under direct threat, requiring us to act. Fortunately, our focus on markets, consumption, and well-being positions us well for providing thought leadership as to how humanity might adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.

Over 15 years ago, Fisk (2006) noted that “current developments in globalization, consumerism, and innovations ensure that the future of macromarketing is being reshaped even if macromarketers do nothing” (p. 214). Since then, macromarketers have not been idle, raising profound questions about marketing's responsibilities and ethics (e.g., Prothero and McDonagh 2021; Sheth and Parvatiyar 2021; Varey 2012). In our mission to “save the world” (Shultz and Wilkie 2021, citing George Fisk) we have provided insight into the nature of marketing systems that perpetuate unsustainable growth (e.g., Layton 2015; Varey 2012; Wooliscroft and Ganglmair-Wooliscroft 2018). We have worked hard to take the field forward in the general area of social development, focusing on health, well-being and quality of life (QOL), sustainability, poverty, food and agriculture, equality and fairness, and ethics (Ekici, Genc, and Celik 2021). We note though, that while environmental sustainability is not an underrepresented research domain in macromarketing (Ekici, Genc, and Celik 2021), the role of marketing in climate change is understudied (Hall 2018). As climate change affects “the very basic aspects of humanity: the need for fairness and the maintenance of a life with optimized physical conditions, nourishment, and subsistence” (Ekici, Genc, and Celik 2021, p. 41), it transcends traditional issues-based sustainability scholarship (Varey 2012). To address that, as Varey (2012) highlighted, we need to do transformative work that underpins a “restoration economy in which business does no damage and contributes to undoing existing damage” (p. 432). Thus, rather than being treated as a sub-category of sustainability research (Ekici, Genc, and Celik 2021), we feel climate change should be treated as a focus and as a focal category of research in (macro)marketing. That was the driving logic behind this special issue, which had its genesis at the 2019 Macromarketing conference in Cleveland (Little and Helm 2019).

We argue that climate change represents both an opportunity and a threat to marketing, and to marketing practice. Traditional marketing logic focuses on demand creation and a growth imperative, which is at odds with climate change mitigation (Sekhon and Armstrong Soule 2020). Therefore, as Russ Klein (2019), former president of Burger King and CEO of the American Marketing Association points out, the end of business as usual is near. A vision of marketing assuming unfettered consumption must be replaced by a new vision where “social impact is no longer a marketing strategy, but a moral imperative”. Even the conservative business press is calling for change, for example the Financial Times: “The global pursuit of net-zero carbon emissions is a huge undertaking, and only possible with the help of businesses” (Colback 2020), and the Economist: “Climate change is about to upend the corporate world. Firms must react fast” (Scriven 2020). Reflecting change in the business zeitgeist, business schools are paying greater attention to sustainability issues. The AACSB has urged its members to “step up” to address the damage done by privileging profit over planet (Bach 2019). Many business schools have responded, adopting the United Nations’ Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of their charter.

Following their institutions, marketing educators must likewise become more socially responsible. However, progress is slow. As we write in 2022, as a discipline we have not yet wholeheartedly embraced our role and responsibilities for climate change in our thoughts, or in our academic practice (Hall 2018; Helm, Little, and Kemper 2020; Kemper, Paul, and Hall 2017). Consequently, our contribution to the climate change discourse has been evanescent, for reasons that have not been systematically explored (Little and Helm 2019). We speculate that the pressures of change in our institutions towards a more research-agnostic student-service model are part of the problem. Our universities have become market oriented, competing for fee-paying students. In this corporatized higher education environment, neoliberal and gender driven ideologies have visited increasing managerialism on our academic practice (Dholakia, Ozgun, and Atik 2020; Kilkauer and Young 2021; Kravets, Preece, and Maclaran 2020). Marketers have been unwittingly complicit in strengthening rather than challenging the forces that drive social inequality and climate change: “The broadening of marketing can be seen as a movement that unwittingly supported neoliberalism … Despite the noble intentions of the broadening progenitors, [it has] exacerbated inequality and eroded access to public goods and services” (Dholakia, Ozgun, and Atik 2020, p. 887). The enlisting of universities into the neoliberal project is reflected in the marketing discourse (Cabrera and Williams 2014).

It is time to push back. As Kemper, Moscato, and Kennedy (2022) point out, “We need to ‘hack the system’, to infuse environmental and social issues into marketing education.” (p. 1), and “[overhaul] the marketing micromanagement rhetoric that currently dominates the curricula of business schools”. They suggest adopting the principles of accountability and the circular economy to guide curriculum and pedagogy, highlighting the need to adopt transformative rather than reinforcing learning approaches in marketing education (Kemper, Moscato, and Kennedy 2022). Macromarketers can provide intellectual and institutional leadership in this regard, drawing on our scholarship to drive change in our departments and universities. The nascent nature of the area presents opportunities for macromarketing research that breaks new ground, emphasizing the systems imperative (Wooliscroft 2021; Wooliscroft and Ganglmair-Wooliscroft 2018). There is ample scope for contribution in this emerging area. We urge motivated, creative scholars to consider how they might pivot their research to address the most pressing challenge of our age, rather than projects that reinforce overconsumption.

Much has changed since we issued the call for papers in 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic has reminded us of the importance of effective social institutions (good governance, health, transport, and education infrastructure) and of the preciousness of human connection. The pandemic also showed us the potential for rapid change, adaptation, and resilience. There is hope that we can avoid a worst-case scenario for planet and people if we can transform our collective way of life and share the burdens and benefits of embracing an equitable, low-carbon future. However, we are running out of time (IPCC 2021; Science Media Centre 2021). If we fail to develop new mindsets, new knowledge and new practices, humanity will be fighting a rearguard action to address resource shortages, likely in conditions of societal collapse (e.g., see Bendell 2018; Blom 2019; Diamond 2006; Scholars Warning 2021). We call on macromarketers to drive necessary change, pivoting the marketing discipline towards a new trajectory.

This special section is part of that change. It fields a small but strong showing from new and established scholars and a tribute to scholarship in a confronting, complex and nascent area during a global pandemic. We were gratified with the diversity and breadth of scope, as befits sustainability work. Approaches include action research, case study and experimental design, and the foci are fishing, fashion, and social media respectively. Please note that the organization of the section is intended to facilitate narrative flow rather than indicate importance—all of these works address critical issues. First, Venugopal and Chakrabarti (2022) draw on action research, an under-utilized but powerful approach to knowledge creation (see Bradbury et al. 2019; Saatcioglu and Corus 2019). Their findings provide insight into the systemic linkages between climate change and consumption adequacy in subsistence communities, where people rely on natural resources for basic needs and are hence particularly vulnerable to climate change. This intimate study of a fishing community in India highlights the tight coupling between market, social and environmental systems, and the likely effects of climate change-induced environmental disruptions on provisioning systems adequacy. Their study provides deeper insight into the mechanisms that may drive societal collapse (e.g., Bendell 2018), and how communities—subsistence or otherwise—might adapt to resource shortfalls. For further reading on this issue, Philip Blom’s (2019) accounting of the social effects of the “little ice age” of the 17th century provides an appreciation of systems complexity, and the potential effects of climate change. Our grateful thanks to the late Roger Layton for alerting us to this useful idea.

In the second article, Rashidi-Sabet and Madhavaram (2022) focus on social traps, the mechanisms whereby firms, individuals, or social groups favor short-term positive consequences for themselves over long-term negative consequences for society and themselves. In modifying the framework proposed by Shultz and Holbrook (1999), the authors consider the important question of how marketing can help firms escape the climate change social trap. Drawing on a case of the notoriously un-climate friendly fashion industry, they highlight conflicts in the logics of art, commerce, and sustainability, reflecting the forces driving wider society. They argue that firms can support climate change solutions through their marketing strategies and urge scholars to focus on the issue of how marketing might benefit the commons by better facilitating consumer choices and reduced consumption. Finally, in the same vein, Armstrong Soule and Sekhon (2022) draw on social media and experimental data to reconsider how brands might support consumers in actively consuming less, thus addressing demand patterns that drive resource degradation, waste, and climate change. Their work on green demarketing strategies stresses that not consuming at all is the most powerful way of addressing overconsumption. They further suggest that using conspicuous anti-consumption signals may be an effective way of reducing demand and call for research on the societal norms surrounding consumption; highlighting the systems issues that macromarketing scholars are well placed to address.

All three papers offer fruitful direction for increasing our research efforts on how we might intervene in marketing systems to decouple economy and consumption, use less resources, pollute less, decrease inequities, and increase overall QOL (e.g., Kilbourne, McDonagh, and Prothero 1997; Mai, Rahtz, and Shultz 2014). In addition to taking the field forward, these research efforts will support our work in the classroom as we educate the next generations of business people and citizens. Let us not underestimate the importance of our work. We observe in our own practice that students inhabit echo chambers very different to our own. In some of our recent classroom discussions, we were astonished that our students were completely unaware of the ideas of planetary boundaries, or the need for multiple earths to support Western consumption; and had never heard of Greta Thunberg or Extinction Rebellion; or initiatives such as the UN SDGs. Of most concern, these potentially influential young people cannot “connect the dots” between consumption and climate change. In grappling with the logics of overconsumption and climate change for the first time, one of our students became extremely distressed. We feel that this is a rational (if not desirable or constructive) response to current events by our young people, who will bear the brunt of the disruptions ahead of us.

To conclude this editorial, we return to the words of Margaret Atwood and complete the excerpt:

“There is no inevitable The Future, just as there is no inevitable Right Side of History. There is no inevitable Road to Perdition, there is no inevitable Road to Oz … But there are consequences of actions, not all of them foreseeable.” (Margaret Atwood, in Armistead 2021 )

Whether (macro)marketers act out of self-interest, collective guilt, duty, or excitement in directing our efforts to a truly grand challenge, we should, and indeed must be at the forefront of the intellectual, policy, and practical measures to support humanity's efforts towards emissions reduction and climate change adaptation. We cannot presume we are doing the “right” thing, nor can we be confident that our actions will count as history unfolds. However, we do not wish to tell our children that we did nothing, or that we continued to teach an unquestioned logic of growth and overconsumption when we knew without a doubt that this would compromise their future. We choose remorse rather than regret, and we embrace the climate challenge with excitement, humility, and hope.