Concerned market innovations acknowledge that businesses can no longer be driven by profitability alone and have to integrate non-economic values and collective concerns. Studying the evolution of such an innovation – a mobile phone recovery and recycling scheme – we find that social concerns enter the market and are integrated into its functioning through representational, exchange and normative practices. The integration of social concerns in the market results in the transformation of these practices so that they better fit the marketplace but lose their original form. Consequently, the representational, exchange and normative practices remain confined to society rather than being permanently integrated into and having a profound impact on the marketplace. Underlying this never-ending cycle is the perpetuation of conventional wisdom whereby the market has to be interested but separate from society, while society has to be concerned. Only when these opposing dynamics are overcome will policymarkers be able to foster a cultural change and hope to transform existing markets into more sustainable forms.
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Marketing seems to be slow to fully recognize its role, place and responsibility in changes in climate, biodiversity and resources. This reluctance can be attributed, at least in part, to the implicit assumptions of sustainable marketing, which tend to minimize the scale of the paradigm shifts needed to remain hopeful of a habitable planet. Consequently, the dominant approaches to “sustainable marketing” find it difficult to question the fundamental principles and ideological foundations of the market system. This is why we are calling for radical changes in marketing research in order to envisage a truly sustainable future. We are therefore formulating a program based on five proposals with the aim of inviting profound transformations in the discipline.
- Research
- Marketing, Sales and Communication, Sustainable Development and CSR