Should Marketing Die? Examining its Role in Confronting the Environmental Crisis

Understanding consumer needs: this is one of the primary objectives of marketing in order to offer the right product, at the right price, at the right time and in the right place. A relatively simple definition and yet: what do we really mean by need ? Or what should we hear?

Many people identify marketing as a lever of the overconsumption society : it is about producing and consuming ever more in a quest for profits and permanent economic growth. Needs must be met, but also needs created and renewed. The weekly collections of Shein, Zara or H & M are the perfect example. They encourage people to buy clothes regularly by imposing the idea that fashion is in perpetual and – very – rapid change. If you want to follow trends, then consume, consume and consume. In view of the devastating consequences of these practices – violation of human rights, contamination of the oceans, emissions of greenhouse gases to name but a few – it is clear that we can only wish their ends, and this rather today than tomorrow. I then wondered if this discipline should have a future. Is it able to meet the needs of the essential ecological transition?

Can marketing respond to environmental issues?

In reality, I firmly believe in the ability of marketing to be useful to us in developing solutions to this crisis ; provided that its methods of application are in adequacy with their contexts. Completing a business model without circularity today seems to me insane. Ignoring the negative impacts in social, economic and environmental terms amounts to making the conscious choice to set aside the consequences of one’s actions. There are many tools such as the 4P method, which subject to supposed neutrality have set aside crucial aspects. But, new methods are developing, such as the 3P concept ‘People, Profit, Planet’ to complete these limited notions.

I think that these tools anchored in their contexts can then help us to refocus the objectives of organizations on needs, understood as the response to a feeling of lack or deprivation. So what do we need today?

We need to change our consumption patterns. We need to change our eating patterns. We need to extend our relationship to time. However, I do not believe that we should work to change or modify our needs. On the contrary, I see marketing as the ability to find them, those who have remained anchored in our environment and in our society. Thus, we must broaden our perspectives if we wish to continue to keep marketing alive. To fail in this vast task will be to condemn this discipline.

Author: Clarisse Chotard. Master’s student in Marketing and Society at Sciences Po Paris, I am interested in the development of sustainable strategies and marketing applications in the context of ecological transition to open up new avenues for companies with a positive impact.