Week 11 Marketing and Society

Ethical Consumption

  • Ethical consumption involves consumers considering the public consequences of their private consumption and using their purchasing power to drive social change.
  • It is a broad term encompassing a range of motivations, including political, religious, spiritual, environmental, and social concerns.

The Paradox of Capitalism and Consumption

  • Capitalism relies on creating excess demand that it can never fully satisfy.
  • Consumption is increasingly viewed as a potential solution to capitalism's issues.

Rise of Ethical Consumption

  • Ethical consumption has become more prominent in wealthy capitalist nations over the past few decades.
  • This rise has coincided with increasing critiques of market capitalism in areas like advertising, brands, media, marketing research, and consumerism.

Ethical Decision Making

  • Rest (1986) model of ethical decision-making.
  • Hunt and Vittel (1986) general theory of marketing ethics.

Motivations to Consume Ethically

  • Peattie (2012) typology of seven motivations for ethical consumption.

Ethical Consumption Gap

  • Many consumers state their intention to shop ethically, but rarely follow through.
  • This discrepancy is known as the ethical purchasing gap or attitude-behavior gap.
  • Obstacles include availability, choice, information, and cynicism.

Critiques of Ethical Consumption

  1. Displaced Responsibility: It shifts responsibility from governments and corporations to individuals.
  2. Socioeconomic Limitations: Not all consumers have the resources to shop ethically.
  3. Market-Driven Limitations: It encourages consumption by simply replacing products.

Consumer Activism

  • Consumer activism involves opposition to corporate behaviors and marketplace practices.
  • Tactics include protests, boycotts, buycotts, and online activism.

Historical Waves of Consumer Activism:

  • Co-operative consumers (Mid 1800s)
  • Value for money consumers (1930s)
  • Naderism (1960s)
  • Alternative consumerism (1980s)

Protests

  • Protests are demonstrations expressing disapproval or objection to an issue.
  • Unethical businesses are increasingly subject to protest action.
  • Actions may include demonstrating, marching, picketing, or petition gathering.

Boycotts

  • Boycotts involve consumers voluntarily refusing to purchase goods from a specific entity.
  • They are based on social or political objectives.
  • Their power lies more in causing reputational harm than economic harm.

Buycotts

  • Buycotts encourage purchasing from a specific entity.
  • The Carrotmob uses consumer power to reward socially responsible businesses.
  • Consumer behavior is used as a tool to further ethical goals.

Online Activism

  • Activists unite online under a common cause.
  • Naming and shaming occurs online through negative word of mouth.
  • Critiques of 'slacktivism' have emerged due to the highly visible nature of online action.

Degrowth Movements

  • Logics of growth in consumption (Chatzidakis et al. 2014).

Simple Living

  • It is a growing trend towards minimalist lifestyles.
  • People engage in voluntary simplicity or downshifting to escape the rat race.
  • This is a response to pressures in measuring success.

Anti-Consumption

  • Anti-consumption is a resistance to, distaste for, or resentment of consumption.
  • It includes freeganism, gleaning, dumpster diving, squatting, and guerilla gardening.

Culture Jamming

  • Culture jamming is an effort to counter consumption-oriented messages in mass media.
  • It includes creating doppelgänger brand images and billboard hacking.
  • Challenges the values a company claims to represent.

Subvertising

  • Spoof or parodies of advertisements to make a statement against the brand itself (Smith- Anthony and Groom 2015).
  • Transforms a corporate monologue into a dialogue using parody and satire (Lasn 2000) with the intent of exposing the ‘reality’ behind advertisements (Rumbo 2002).

Alternative Market Systems

  • Alternative economies are disembedded from capitalist exploitation.
  • They aim to empower subjects and provide community-based welfare.
  • Alternative markets resist the commodification of social life.

Collaborative Consumption

  • Emphasis is on communal ethos.
  • Sharing economy for access or sharing of resources.
  • Focus is on the liquid relationship to possessions.