“What Is Packed in the Package?”: Representation,Sign Value,and Construction of Sustainability in Marketing

This article examines contemporary sustainability discourse as it is visually and spatially constructed in everyday consumption settings through marketing practices. Drawing on Jean Baudrillard's concepts of simulacra, simulation, and hyperreality, the study approaches sustainability not as a reference to material environmental conditions, but as a system of signs-meanings that produce and circulate through packaging, shelf arrangements and retail space. Using semiotics and geosemiotic methodological analysis of 290 images of packaging, supermarket shelves, and aisle arrangements in four retail stores, the article shows how narratives of “naturality simulacrum”, “pureness simulacrum”, and “ethical narrative simulacrum” are assembled and stabilised within retail spaces. These visual and spatial arrangements enable the narrative of sustainability to circulate largely at the level of representation, shaping how environmental responsibility is encountered and understood in the market. This article argues that sustainability in contemporary retail space operates effectively as a self-referential regime of sing-value through which hyperreal model of sustainability is continuously produced.