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Marketing Means and Ends for a Sustainable Society: A Welfare Agenda for
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Marketing Means and Ends for a Sustainable Society: A Welfare Agenda for Transformative Change
Richard J. Varey
Journal of Macromarketing 2010; 30; 112
DOI: 10.1177/0276146710361931

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Articles
Journal of Macromarketing
30(2) 112-126
Marketing Means and Ends for a ª The Author(s) 2010
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Sustainable Society: A Welfare Agenda for DOI: 10.1177/0276146710361931
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Transformative Change

Richard J. Varey1

Abstract
This article examines the principles and practices of the marketing system within corporate social responsibility and sustainable
development frameworks to argue that responsible marketing and sustainable marketing are not synonymous ideas. The article
identifies misleading assumptions about progress through economic growth and preference satisfaction and highlights the issues
to be confronted by marketers to fully address the social and ecological crisis of destructive overconsumption. The basic rationale
for the developmental welfare marketing course of action is outlined, and this systemic policy is distinguished from the conven-
tional appropriative form of managerial marketing. A radical new logic for marketing as a social process requiring thinking beyond
the discipline is called for. The result of this review is an agenda for a sustainable society purpose and form for marketing, part of a
catalytic movement, outlined in an emergent set of transdisciplinary propositions that reflect disillusionment with current values
and beliefs.

Keywords
marketing process, marketing system, responsible marketing, sustainable marketing, social value of marketing, welfare marketing,
well-being, sustainable society, sufficiency

Introduction discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change
of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace
In a thorough reflective and critical review of the literature on a
with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the
number of social phenomena, themes included consumerism
coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain
and affluent consumption, economic growth and ‘‘the new
ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.’’ Market-
economy,’’ environmental degradation and sustainable devel- ing surely has a future—what will we have it be?
opment, the market system, the marketing system, the social
The goal of sustainability comes to the fore when we recog-
role of marketing, the ‘‘value’’ of marketing, and the market-
nize the contradiction of modern society’s provisioning system.
ing–consumption dynamic.
There is a common purpose in population growth and higher
In this endeavor, it is instructive to draw on the thoughts of
material standard of living. This assumes infinite resources and
those who have sought to bring about social change, while
that only more is good (not less). That ignores the truth of a
recognizing evolutionary forces. Thomas Paine saw why
finite habitat. The capacity of the environment to renew and
change does not always come spontaneously: ‘‘The long habit
restore resources that are used up and degraded (consumed,
of not thinking a thing wrong creates the superficial impression damaged, taken out of circulation, i.e., the natural and the pub-
that it is right.’’ Albert Einstein observed that ‘‘We cannot
lic become private and for sale) and to repair the damage
solve the problems we have created with the same thinking
caused by the exploitation of those resources is limited and
we used to create them.’’ Marshall McLuhan diagnosed the
problem: ‘‘We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.
We march backwards into the future.’’ Lester Milbrath urged
us to put our collective energies in to ‘‘learning our way out.’’ 1
The Waikato Management School, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New
Thomas Jefferson had more to say about future thinking: ‘‘I am Zealand
not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions,
Corresponding Author:
but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the prog- Richard Varey, The Waikato School of Management, University of Waikato,
ress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, Private bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand.
more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths Email: rvarey@waikato.ac.nz

112 Downloaded from http://jmk.sagepub.com at University of Waikato Library on May 25, 2010
Varey
declining. The moral question is ‘‘should some of us go on
living at the expense of others, and how much longer can we
do it?’’
This transdisciplinary review of the consuming and
marketing phenomena raises some pivotal issues that are not
substantially addressed within the orthodox logic/ideology of
the marketing discipline. What do marketers—as citizens—
need to know about marketing, consumption, and society? Can
consumption become sustainable and what would marketing be
in a sustainable society? The issues addressed in this discussion
set out an agenda for rethinking the ends and means of
marketing.
 The growth imperative of business and the relationship to
overconsumption—the assumption that more wealth put
into society provides more welfare out is misleading and
wrong.
 The consumption way of life is in question—what are the
‘‘goods’’ we acquire and use? At what cost do we benefit
from our consumption?
 What is lost when citizens are treated as consumers?
 Citizen empowerment in a market society of consumers.
 What to do with bad ‘‘goods’’?
 The purpose of marketing?
 Marketing educators (and neoliberalists) have been too
successful in promoting marketing strategy.
 Goods are offered as solutions to life’s problems as defined
by the seller.
 The question of whether more is better?
 Diminishing hedonic return from economic growth.
 Profitability and sustainability—must there be a trade-off
of profit and ecology and when is profit too costly?
 The purpose and form of sustainable development.
 Living off capital and not income (consuming the habitat).
 Social and cultural evolution.
The Growth Imperative
The orthodox political perspective on ‘‘progress’’ continues to
equate social progress and the pursuit of economic growth.
Most economic growth derives from increased personal con-
sumption. This growth is widely believed to be the foundation
for enhanced well-being. What are the social effects of the con-
tinued growth fixation? The benefits of economic growth are
taken to be self-evident, yet there is considerable evidence of
diminishing benefits and rising costs. Sustained growth has
failed to eliminate poverty, and the costs fall largely outside the
marketplace. Speth (2008) highlights the overriding issue by
focusing on habitat damage as one measure of the seriousness
of the problem: ‘‘all we have to do to destroy the planet’s
climate and biota and leave a ruined world to our children and
grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing
today, with no growth in the human population or the world
economy’’ (Speth 2008, x)—yet both are purposefully being
enlarged.
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113
Capitalism is different from other economic systems,
operating with the drive to accumulate, a predisposition to
change, and thus the built-in tendency to expand (Heilbroner
1985). There is inherent accelerating growth, the profit motive,
continuing spread of the market into further geographical and
societal areas, and biases that favor the present over the future and
the private over the public. This is characteristic of the nature and
role of the modern corporation, the prevailing values of society,
and contemporary government and politics (Korten 1999).
Happiness comes from satisfied wants, and economic growth
can be sustained only if people are discontented. Unhappiness
sustains growth (Hamilton 2003)—growth requires unhappi-
ness; a seemingly perverse contradiction with aspirations. If
today’s ‘‘market’’ delivered high levels of life satisfaction, genu-
ine well-being, and true happiness to societies, there would be lit-
tle need for change. However, the current system cannot deliver
the desired well-being, and nature is in deep trouble(Bosselmann
1995)—this invites transformative ideas and action for a better
future (Speth 2008). Do we want happiness or growth? This is a
confusion of means and ends, and the growth imperative cannot
be supported merely by arguing that no growth would cause
problems (such as business failures, unemployment, etc.).
A growth-based economy only operates by generating dis-
content. The prevailing approach to living the good life is a
quest for abundance, and, ironically, it is self-defeating in
destroying the environment (‘‘resources’’) on which it depends.
Wachtel (1989) diagnoses basic misleading assumptions about
the individualistic consumerist way of life. We have lost track
of what we really need: psychological well-being, in terms of
social ties, openness to experience, and personal growth. In
economic terms, well-being is calculated on quantity of pro-
duction and the accumulation of outputs. The culture of con-
sumption is a reaction to the emptiness of affluence when
basic needs are satiated. Consumption is no longer to meet
needs but to manufacture identity (Shankar and Fitchett
2002). Consumer behavior has, in the era of affluence, changed
from acquiring status through displays of wealth, to creating
the self through association with certain products and brands.
Purchasing decisions are now social statements (Hamilton
2003, 97).
The difference of the limitlessness of neoclassical economic
thinking and the limitation of ecological systems thinking is the
difference between cancerous growth and organic growth
(Vickers 1983, Bosselmann 1995, Korten 1999). In times of
population growth (more people) and more expensive
resources (resource scarcity, rather than satisfaction scarcity),
we also expect more income for more consumer spending, as
well as more for our income—more, bigger, better, and faster.
There is positive feedback in the self-exciting system of pro-
ducers, advertisers, and consumers (Vickers 1983). There is
mounting expectation of more for less and an assumption of
indefinite expansion of prosperity—but there are limits!
We need to be more discerning about what we encourage
and discourage—economic activity can be directed to
increasing personal wealth or toward restoring and protecting/
conserving the environment while strengthening healthy
113
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relationships. This requires a political commitment to less gross
domestic product (GDP) derived from short-term personal grat-
ification and more invested in wider and long-term social and
environmental goals. Thus, we need to be concerned more with
why we operate an economy, before focusing narrowly on how
to be more efficient, because economic growth is not the purpose
of life. As in so many aspects of life, the dominance of quantity
thinking over quality thinking is unhealthy. It is self-evidently
pointless—stupid even—to consume more to generate wealth in
an attempt to fix the problems caused by consuming more! Is
human nature bound to take us into crisis and collapse? ‘‘The
industrial system with its crazy acceleration of linearly-singularly
production methods is the most foolish strategy for survival which
humanity could ever have come up with’’ (Bosselmann 1995, 49)
Proposition 1: Material progress is an increasingly dysfunc-
tional idea in affluent societies and should not be the
basis for political, economic, and social action.
Proposition 2: The social process of marketing is not
founded on the pursuit of growth in consumption—it is
a process of value cocreation. Neoclassical economic
assumptions of utilitarianism and atomism are damaging.
Material Self-Interest and Overconsumption
The growth imperative is easily explained at the personal level:
‘‘the values of society stress unrestrained appetite’’ (Bell 1976,
xi). The consumption problem—overconsumption, consumer-
ism, commodification, volume of throughput (flow of material),
growth (increasing economic activity), scale (scope and speed of
economic activity relative to human and ecological capacity),
patterns of resource use (quantity and quality of products used,
and their meanings)—is far more complex. We are faced with
the great contradiction—despite sustained economic growth in
recent decades society is no happier. Gorz (1989) charts the
transition from ‘‘enough is enough’’ to ‘‘more is better’’:
This literature makes clear that, once basic material needs are
satisfied, people seek in ever growing consumption satisfaction
of wants (security, novelty, space, social advantage, a sense of
belonging, etc.), which consumption cannot possibly deliver, or
only to a tiny minority, and which it may even in fact under-
mine. Not only are the costs of consumption much greater than
orthodox economics allows, as is now widely acknowledged;
the benefits are also much less (Gorz 1989, 245).
The new values of the enlightenment provided us with the right
to happiness, but prosperity and happiness are not correlated.
Beyond a threshold, increased prosperity grows social patholo-
gies. Quality of life (QoL) does not continuously increase with
economic growth. Well-being (happiness) does not endlessly
increase with income—ill-being does! (Speth 2008, 131-2).
In the neoliberalist marketing society, we seek fulfilment but
settle for abundance (the condition of supply exceeding need;
Speth 2008, 117). The growth goal of laissez-faire capitalism
has not produced continually greater happiness, but there is
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Journal of Macromarketing 30(2)
much evidence of resulting manipulation by marketers, obses-
sive materialism, environmental degradation, endemic aliena-
tion, and loneliness.
How does the growth imperative of capitalist/industrial
society lead to overconsumption? What seems to go unnoticed,
and thus unchallenged, is the surprising universality of the val-
ues of unlimited economic growth and unlimited competitive
materialism that have become part of the industrial value sys-
tem (Kassiola 1990). Firm and market growth may seem to
be a business strategy, but in the bigger picture become appar-
ent as part of the logic and ideology of capitalism–industrialism.
The industrial revolution dramatically changed the provisioning
of society by creating paid employment and the complex of
technological advances. Perhaps more significant, the values
of society became those of the industrial or modern worldview
of liberal progress. With that transformation came the seemingly
endless growth of the consumption way of life and its conse-
quences in the pursuit of more and more goods for more and more
people. Advanced industrial societies are suffering from a
‘‘growth addiction.’’ Kassiola (1990) shows that the industrial
(market) values have become the essence of the modern mindset.
Drawing on Camus, Kassiola explains that our obsessive pursuit
of growth is an attempt to escape from our limits as human beings
(our knowledge, mortality, physical strength and reach, etc.).
Economic growth is proposed as the only policy for prog-
ress, because it improves absolute wealth—but it cannot
improve relative wealth. The alternative is redistribution—
either by taking from the rich and giving to the poor or by dif-
ferentiated growth. Endless consumption is necessary to
achieve unlimited economic growth. Marketing is legitimated
as a driver of consumption. Among the wide-raging critique
of the economic growth policy, Mishan (1967) famously con-
sidered the costs of economic growth, showing that the neo-
classical argument (on which the central theory of marketing
is founded) is flawed. The range of unmet conditions that
would ensure a positive relation of economic growth and wel-
fare is considerable: a highly competitive market in which
prices tend to equal corresponding marginal costs; all effects
on people are accounted for; increasing per capita output does
not bring about a less equitable distribution of income; the
consuming public are fully conversant with the comparative
qualities of all goods coming to the market; the public become
no worse off in adapting themselves to new techniques of pro-
duction; and, an increase in per capita income does not make
some people feel better off whereas others feel worse off.
There is, according to Kassiola (1990), ‘‘... A clear connection
between the symptoms of social malaise and the processes that are
generated by economic growth,’’ when profit as an end for most of
society and economic growth is taken as the means—for some
people, but not for all. Yet, the way forward seems clear: ‘‘... the
chief hope of maintaining the economic momentum of a wealthy
private-enterprise system lies in the development of ... a consum-
ing public ... [and] the continuous creation of new dissatisfactions
which are made to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of old satisfac-
tions’’ (149), even as this results in ‘‘... The collapse of traditional
values and the growth of dissatisfaction with the status quo’’ (127).
Varey
In the industrial mindset, growth has then to be managed,
and ‘‘... the institution of commercial advertising accentuates
the materialistic tendencies in society and promotes the view
that the things that matter most are the things that money will
buy . . . ’’ (Kassiola 1990, 175). Demand is stimulated. This
highlights the adverse effect on welfare of continuous product
innovation. Choice arises from ever swelling variety, fuelled by
intensive advertising, yet the comparative qualities and perfor-
mances are often beyond our powers to appraise, creating ‘‘the
growing menace of obsolescence’’ (127), even as there is
evidence of only a weak link between expanding choice and
welfare, even if tastes remained unaltered in the face of mas-
sive promotion of options for consumption (Kassiola 1990).
This growth is not organic growth, but profit-propelled growth.
Disruptive developments are brought about by commercial enter-
prise in a wealthy society. These are ‘‘... overtly corrupting influ-
ences exerted on society by the ceaseless search for profits in a
mature economy’’ (Kassiola 1990, 148). The search for profit is
the central activity of the capitalist socioeconomic system.
Indeed, the social formation we call capitalism has a unique
form—the human drive for power and domination are sublimated
into the desire to accumulate capital, and the expression of subor-
dinate status is manifested through the acceptance of market and
property relations (Heilbroner 1985). Producer-marketers pro-
duce consumers and markets as well as goods and services.
Capitalism is a self-expansive social process of the continu-
ous transformation of capital-as-money into capital-as-
commodities, then into capital-as-more-money (Heilbroner
1985) in the ‘‘the restless and insatiable drive to accumulate
capital’’ (42). In industrialization (modernization), the accumu-
lation of capital has become the organizing basis for sociopoli-
tical life. Commodification is the ‘‘continuous search of
business for areas of social activity that can be subsumed
within the capital-generating circuit’’ (118). Modern society
is overtly commodified, allowing further economic growth and
the accumulation of profits, yet resulting in a weakening of the
political process for valuing ends and means.
The Consumption Way of Life
Although ‘‘hedonism ... has become the prevailing value in our
society’’ (Bell 1976, xi), ‘‘... the advent of the marketing soci-
ety is strongly correlated with the rise of depression, anxiety,
obesity and a range of other disorders’’ (Hamilton and Denniss
2005, 38). The dominant way of life seems self-defeating.
It is clear to see that in our society we have a multitude of
competing conceptions of the good life. Happiness is only one
goal. According to Frank (2004), the problem is not one of
overspending but of spending on the wrong things. Why might
absolute living standards matter? Because, we might be able to
spend our money in other ways that would make us happier.
Much of Frank’s analysis is to show that, and explain why,
we do not make those choices. Applied measures of subjective
well-being may miss other ‘‘things’’ that matter to us, such as
health, longevity, and so on, even if not happiness. Frank shows
that alternative ways of using expendable natural resources can
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115
produce the sustained increment in human welfare that we
seem to desire, and that careful judgment is needed because
spending in some categories matters more than in others. Some
categories of consumption are inherently ‘‘dirty’’ (bad) while
others are ‘‘clean’’ (good).
There is widespread conflict between individual and groups
interests. There is an incentive gap. This is, according to Frank,
the most important explanation for the imbalance in current
consumption patterns. In natural selection, individual interests
often prevail, even when what is efficient for one is wasteful for
all. Individual moves to self-gain produce collective costs. The
individual pursuit of self-interest does not produce the greatest
collective good when each individual’s well-being depends on
others’ actions. The spending decisions of some individuals
affect the frames of reference with which others make impor-
tant choices, and many goods become either more or less
attractive to one when others also have them. The consumption
imbalance resulting is of too much time spent earning money to
buy material goods with too little time with relatives and
friends. This is derived in consumption activities that are more
attractive to individuals than to society. The imbalance results
from faulty choices of individuals, and the solution to this prob-
lem lies in unilateral action. These decision errors bias our
choices toward conspicuous consumption. Most conspicuous
consumption products and activities are commercially offered,
and heavily and persuasively promoted with biased, incomplete
information. Inconspicuous consumption is not visible for
comparison as such items are generally not offered for sale in
the marketplace, so their benefits are not promoted. Some see
inconspicuous consumption choices as driven by the desire for
intimacy, familiarity, or frugality—a kind of ‘‘status deflation’’
alternative to ‘‘showing off’’ wealth. Choices such as home
cooking instead of processed food products and own brand
products instead of premium brands, are illustrative of intent
to not display, to not signal, and to avoid or minimize shopping.
Adaptation is a further contributor to the problem. We adapt
to our experiences, so conspicuous consumption items are typi-
cally initially very attractive, yet diminish in attractiveness rap-
idly in time. There is an initial thrill of novelty, but the capacity
to stimulate often decays rapidly. Inconspicuous consumption
items exhibit the reverse characteristic, therefore we tend to spend
too much on the first and too little on the latter, even though, long-
term, the inconspicuous consumption would contribute more to
our subjective well-being. Self-control is also a widespread source
of problems—or rather, a lack of it. Yet, Frank shows, postpone-
ment of consumption can produce more favorable consumption
opportunities by, for example, choosing saving over immediate
gratification. There can be regret in purchasing an exhilarating but
impractical sports car that is prone to theft and expensive insurance
and requires special secure storage/parking for that reason.
Balloon rides and skydiving are short-lived excitements that usu-
ally carry a hefty price tag. That move to a distant bigger house
may just be less value-for-money, more stressful, and socially dis-
ruptive than a carefully planned renovation of the family home.
What are the consequences of a consumption-oriented soci-
ety in which we have too much or too little? (Durning 1992).
115
116
Today, consumer, person, or citizen is used as virtually synon-
ymous terms. Our society has shifted in the past century from
community as the organizing principle of our lives to private con-
sumption. Human wants are insatiable, so our consumer society
can never keep the promise of fulfillment through material pos-
sessions. We gorge on material things while hungering socially,
psychologically, and spiritually, for family and social relation-
ships, and meaningful work and leisure. Consuming is now, for
many, the primary means of self-definition and an important lei-
sure pass time activity. In an era when progress is still sought
through higher consumption and the consuming elite are respon-
sible for most of the exhaustion, poisoning, and disfigurement of
our precious life-sustaining land, water, and air, are we really
dying to shop, and in so doing, dying of consumption?
A number of recent authors tackle the social problem of the
damage done to our health, our families, our communities, and our
environment, by the obsessive quest for material gain (see, e.g.,
Schor 1998; Lane 2000; De Graaf, Wann, and Naylor 2002;
Hamilton 2003; Hamilton and Denniss 2005; James 2006, 2007;
Speth 2008). These authors show that problems of loneliness, ris-
ing debt, longer working hours, environmental pollution, family
conflict, and rampant commercialism, are caused by the epidemic
of affluence seeking that is the main topic of mass advertising.
Who is to blame? Consumers demand the good things of
life, and producers are only too pleased by this as they artifi-
cially stimulate consumption to keep production going (not
even always at a profit). Who bears the costs of waste, degra-
dation of the environment, obsolescence, and the spectacle that
is advertising and promotion of brand-based lifestyles? The
political sphere is eroded by the industrial ideology of
marketization and commodification. In the modern world,
social and environmental problems are largely treated as
scientific-technical problems, rather than as value-based,
normative-moral problems (Kassiola 1990). The examination
of underlying values regarding a social problem and a prescrip-
tion of appropriate value changes is a political philosophical
process, toward a new social order (Kassiola 1990). To date,
the ecological crisis and social ills of industrial society have
been treated with an ‘‘economism’’ way of thinking, in which
there is excessive commitment to and valuation of economic
values and behavior in social life.
The outgrowth of liberalism—the political philosophy that
views politics and government as coercive and accepts inequal-
ity rather than uncertainty—is an expression of the ‘‘fear of
falling.’’ Economic growth is used ideologically as an alleged
substitute for redistribution—limitless growth is politically
acceptable to the elite. Thus, the market emerges as a replace-
ment of politics with an almost ubiquitous (yet odd) willingness
to accept compulsion from an impersonal source (market
forces). Much of the limits to growth critique of industrial soci-
ety is flawed, because it neglects normative issues and the pre-
scription of alternatives to industrial values. Milbrath (1989),
for example, defined an alternative value structure for a sus-
tainable society. Problematically, even in this valiant attempt
to break free of the ‘‘modern’’ mindset, Milbrath presents a lin-
ear monistic value hierarchy in which all other values are
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Journal of Macromarketing 30(2)
subordinated to the single ecological factor of ecosystem viabi-
lity. Fligstein (1996) recognizes that changes to an alternative
value system will be resisted by those with the interests that pre-
vailing exchange practices have endowed them with. Thus,
clearly, economic exchange is a political process.
Proposition 3: We need to be more concerned with what we
are producing and consuming, and why and how, rather
than how to make and sell more cost-effectively and
more profitably.
The QoL: Happiness and Well-Being
How does consumption improve the QoL? If marketing is the
engine of expansive consumption, then how does marketing
contribute to the society of citizens? Phillips (2006), Campbell,
Converse, and Rodgers (1976), and Andrews and Withey
(1976) provide an extensive overview of QoL research in the
context of American capitalist society. More generally, Nuss-
baum and Sen (1993), Arndt (1981), Sirgy, Samli, and Meadow
(1982), Sirgy and Samli (1995), and Sirgy (2001) examine QoL
in the specific context of marketing. In focusing on the signifi-
cance for marketers, Arndt defines ‘‘quality of life [as] the
satisfaction of instrumental wants and final physical, social and
self-actualization needs from an individual’s participation in
the different arenas of action in human life’’ (1981, 287). In the
market society, consumption is seen as the (obvious) doorway
and path to pleasure. Research has distinguished various moti-
vations for consumption: basic needs satisfaction, social com-
parison, social integration, and hedonism (a good life should
be a pleasurable life; see Guillen-Royo 2008, for example).
Arndt (1981) pointed out that the need concept (a central
part of the bedrock of the modern marketing mindset) is ambig-
uous, diffuse, and problematic. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is
intuitively appealing, but the theory is vague and partially con-
fusing. Furthermore, ‘‘... the quality of life is not only deter-
mined by what people have, but also by what they do and the
social context of their activities. This has important implica-
tions for marketing’’ (294). So, the QoL can be understood in
relation to the pursuit of subjective well-being and objective
well-being, but research shows no necessary relationship. This
suggests what should be an obvious question: Can the good life
be measured in terms of consumer goods?
Because of the prominence of the ‘‘economics of happi-
ness’’ (Frey and Stutzer 2001, 2005), there has been a fixation
on economic goals. In this view, welfare is defined in terms of
resources at one’s command (Titmuss 1958). A shift in per-
spective to psychological goals—from being well-off to a sense
of well-being—emphasizes that life experience must be stimu-
lating, rewarding, and secure (Campbell, Converse, and
Rodgers 1976). Standard of living is a crucial criterion of QoL,
but realizing that QoL experience matters makes QoL an
elusive concept. QoL thinking has taken on new dimensions
such as equity, participation, respect, challenge, personal
growth, and these are needs that are not basically material. QoL
implies a value judgment anchored in personal standards of
Varey
adequacy, feasibility, and fairness. So, considerable efforts
have been made to refine measures of QoL other than economic
measures—hence, the evolution of the ‘‘social indicators’’
movement since the 1930s.
Two serious problems are evident in the economistic way of
thinking. First, ‘‘ . . . the dazzling spiral of rising affluence [in
North America] since 1945 . . . ’’ (Campbell, Converse, and
Rodgers 1976, 2) and in the face of ‘‘ . . . the naive faith that
national affluence would produce national well-being . . .
Affluence has not lifted American society to utopian levels
of social harmony and personal fulfillment but it has helped
raise national aspirations to the attainment of these goals’’
(2). Furthermore, in applying subjective measures, public pol-
icies for maximizing experienced QoL can give more attention
to successful dissatisfied captives of the ‘‘hedonic treadmill’’
(Kahneman et al. 1999) than to unsuccessful members of soci-
ety experiencing a ‘‘humble but happy life’’ (Rapley 2003).
Csikszentmihalyi pointed out that ‘‘We already know that
material possessions alone do not improve the quality of life.
We know that excessive concern for material goals is a sign of
dissatisfaction with life. We know that trying to avoid the mental
chaos of everyday life by resorting to acquisitions and passive
entertainment does not work very well. Yet we insist in the vain
hope that we can achieve happiness through consumption—
regardless of the consequences’’ (Csikszentmihalyi 2000, 271-
2). It is goal-directed activity that ‘‘fills the experiential vacuum
that leads to depression and despair’’ (Csikszentmihalyi 2000,
270). Furthermore, people report being happier when they are
actively involved with a challenging task and less happy when
they are passively consuming goods or entertainment (Csikszent-
mihalyi 1997, 1999). Consuming beyond a certain point seems to
contribute little to a positive experience, and negative effects of
materialism on subjective well-being are better understood by
accounting for the motives people have for valuing financial
success: social comparison, security, family support, and pride.
Both materialist industrial society and modern economics
are dependent on the Hobbesian view (conception of mankind)
that man is competitive, ever-restless, never-satiated, and needs
to constantly seek happiness or pleasure in pursuing acquisition
of material goods (Kassiola 1990)—we need unfilled desires to
be happy! In this view, economics is the study of the allocation
of limited means of satisfying unlimited human wants. Rous-
seau took the opposite view. Even if Hobbes is right, do these
desires have to be material and competitive?
Happiness is usually equated with ‘‘getting what one wants,’’
yet postindustrial society promises what it cannot deliver logi-
cally or empirically—everyone winning. Growth-addicted,
advanced industrial society is evidently not sustainable as increas-
ing number of citizens are disappointed or feel relatively deprived
when their always competitively rising expectations cannot be
satisfied due to biophysical and conceptual limits. The erroneous
value structure of modern growth society makes it unworthy and
impossible even if preferred. The pursuit of profit-making and
wealth-accumulating expansion has produced a redefinition of
happiness: from fulfillment in developing capacities, cultivating
personal relationships, and adhering to a moral code, to
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117
maximized episodes of emotional and physical pleasure
(Hamilton and Denniss 2005, 47). There is a continuing confusion
of wants and needs, and the primary purpose of the advertising
industry is to convert wants into needs (so that luxuries seem to
be basic necessities of life; Hamilton and Denniss 2005, 61).
The definition of economic wealth changes with increasing
affluence, amplifying the drive for public esteem, and social
distinction. Thus, social inequality expands with relative
wealth now dominating all values. The most important value
is now competitive success at acquiring relative wealth. This
contradicts the idea that economic growth improves the eco-
nomic condition for everyone.
Scitovsky’s (1986, 1992) discussion causes us to pause for
thought about the economy’s contribution to human welfare
and to consider both economic and noneconomic sources of
satisfactions. He points out that most of our life satisfactions,
including companionship, belonging, respect, and so on, come
from outside of the market economy from nonmarket goods
and services, self-sufficiency, mutual stimulation, externalities,
and from work. Yet, as we are engulfed daily in a sea of promo-
tional messages that tell us to find our satisfactions in our pur-
chases, we miss the realization that the contribution of the
economic product (i.e., that which passes through the formal
contractual market process) to human welfare ‘‘turns out to
be small indeed’’ (1986, 103). What is perhaps more important
is the economy’s ability to produce economic product with a
maximum of beneficial and a minimum of harmful accompany-
ing side effects. In the market, two parties exchange because
each prefers what they get to what they give. However, many
exchanges occur outside of a market and many unreciprocated
acts are satisfying to both giver and receiver. This is seen, for
example, in the commitments of carers and helpers of the
elderly, the lonely, the infirm, and generally in voluntary,
social, and charity work, much of it unpaid. Furthermore, some
market exchanges create both satisfactions and the needs they
satisfy, and thus have little or no use. Most stimuli bring exter-
nal benefits that are sensed by the consumer and others, so
enjoyment is often enhanced by sharing. Most comforts have
no external benefits and they generate external nuisances
(e.g., noise annoyance, chemical pollution, etc.).
Kassiola (1990) concludes from his extensive analysis, that
‘‘economic growth worsens and does not improve the quality of
life ... because it increases the desire—without possible realiza-
tion—for previously competitive, luxurious goods’’ (105).
Kassiola is optimistic that this increases the likelihood of repo-
liticization as the nonelite demand from the public sector
provide the satisfaction that is not provided by the private (mar-
ket) economy. Resource investment to enhance QoL through
improved objective well-being and less emphasis on subjective
well-being will affect subjective well-being by promoting trust,
social inclusion, and social cohesion. Moral growth is sustain-
able and enriching in a way that material growth can never be.
Happiness, life satisfaction, objective, and subjective
well-being are to be found in a hazardless environment, long-
evity, and health. Arndt (1981) observes, from a marketing per-
spective, that ‘‘True satisfaction does not come from
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unstimulating passive ownership of material possessions, but
from participation, from social relationships, and from the
experience of steady progress toward distant goals’’ (299).
We should figure out how marketing can support that purpose.
Marketing, or at least promotional advertising, professiona-
lizes the arousal of dissatisfaction and associated appeals to
consume now. As consumers, we are encouraged to put
ourselves before others. Markets create isolation. As society
moves from collective activity to increased individual
consumption, social interaction declines. The popular idea of
economic growth implies and encourages rising expectations.
Yet, there is also ‘‘popular ignorance of the sources of people’s
own ill-being’’ (Lane 2000) with ‘‘self-inspired unhappiness.’’
For Lane, the answer lies in companionship—friendships and
good family life outside of the market.
The role of citizen and a consumer identity are becoming
blurred (De Graaf et al. 2001; Durning 1992). Firat (2001)
explored the history of how a human being is honored by the title
‘‘consumer.’’ As in neoclassical economics, the processes of pro-
duction and commerce have been recognized as the source of
wealth and value creation, and consumption has been conceived
as the counter process to symbolize wealth and value destruction.
This conceptualization has dominated most marketing activity
and thought: a citizen [consumer] is seen as a parasite in the con-
sumptional part of his/her life (Firat 2001). Spring (2003)
describes a consumer-citizen to be ‘‘a person who accepts any
political situation as long as there is abundance of consumer
goods.’’ The definition implies the person who compromises
against both his personal values and the widely accepted norms
of morality, and who has a tendency to sacrifice anything, assume
any form, and take any position for the sake of a certain perceived
level of abundant provision of material goods and services. It is
someone who would find it effective and justifiable to leave
behind any concerns about the consequences of his actions in pur-
suit of temporary satisfaction of his desires. Consumers, unlike
citizens, have no duties, responsibilities, or obligations to other
consumers (De Graaf et al. 2001). The impairment of citizen iden-
tity is the result of ever-expanding commercialization creeping
into most aspects of a social life.
Proposition 4: The goods and services that we acquire and
use are judged in terms of pleasurable satisfaction of
wants defined as needs, and welfare and happiness are
not assessed.
Proposition 5: Personal well-being does not require
economic growth but selective consumption and noneco-
nomic social resources (social capital).
Proposition 6: Social advancement does not require
economic growth but careful use of wealth.
Value Shift and Sustainable Society:
Sociocultural Evolution
The emerging new form of society requires an evolution of
marketing in principle (end) and in practice (means), because
‘‘technological man has long passed when he can adapt to the
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changes which he himself has become organized to produce’’
(Vickers 1983, 146). We have passed through a history of pre-
industrial thinking of humans active in nature and an industrial
mentality in which humans sought increasing mastery and
exploitation over nature. The emerging postindustrial world-
view invests in the integration of technology with nature, an
ethic of humans working with the habitat and not using it up.
The pursuit of accumulative material wealth can lead to
uncounted ecological and social costs and unaccountable actors
(some inadvertent and unintended), in processes of obscuring
costs and distancing of benefits from costs. This is the propen-
sity to externalize costs through production processes that
separate production, selling, and consumption decisions on
dimensions of geography, culture, bargaining power, and
agency. The impacts of these decisions are not always obvious,
intended, or known to decision makers. Ecologically informed
and ethically responsible decisions are made possible in a differ-
ent system. Consciousness of the tension between ‘‘cultural’’ and
‘‘natural’’ speeds of evolution is critical. Already, due to the
breathtaking acceleration of cultural evolution, events which
would take a long time and would be limited geographically in
the absence of humans, take place at an enormously increased
rate due to human actions and globally, (Bosselmann 1995, 44).
Sustainable development seeks the integration and balance
of social, environmental, and economic goals as the means of
enduring equitable and enhanced QoL. Economic growth is not
seen as the purpose of life. Sustainable development provides
at least as much natural, produced, and human capital, per
capita, to future generations as to the current generation. This
is a fundamental shift in worldview and value system. The con-
cept of sustainable development considers concern for the rela-
tion of resource use, population growth, and technological
advancement; concern for the production and distribution of
food, energy and industry among developed, developing, and
underdeveloped nations; concern for uneven development, the
gross inequities among rich and poor, and the underlying ideo-
logical differences of economic dominance; and, concern for
environment, degradation, and ecological crisis and ecosystem
collapse (Smith 1991, Large 2010). Thus, sustainable develop-
ment is a response to ecological and moral imperatives, requir-
ing equity among present inhabitants of earth as well as
intergenerational equity.
The producing economy depends on a utilitarian hedonism
to justify mass production and consumption, so we live in a cult
of things, readily implicating property, production, and distri-
bution. An alternative is a cult of people (relationships), which
requires none of this. In the era of affluence, we have been
overvaluing material wealth, property rights (to own, to use,
and use up), and competition, while undervaluing amenity
rights, cooperation, and social cohesion (Large 2010).
Galbraith argued for a societal goal of social balance (Galbraith
1970). In the light of this, we can imagine several levels of
marketing system: the purpose of managerial marketing is to
persuade buyers to limit their choices to exchange with the firm
on favorable terms in the face of competition (the competitive
firm level); the purpose of relational marketing is collaboration
Varey
of providers with buyers and users to cooperatively create
valuable life conditions; and the purpose of welfare marketing
is to better the lives of participating partners (Varey 2008). This
plurality of purpose would bring about social (public–private)
balance and more service and less object ownership. Then, pro-
duction gives way to provision, and consumption becomes less
important than use. Then, a proper appreciation of sources of
well-being can make the full realization of human potential
possible. This is a profound challenge to capitalism’s focus
of producing and distributing material wealth (Hamilton
2003; Speth 2008).
The emergence of a new set of values to replace consumer-
ism, individualism, and domination of nature will emphasize
QoL, human solidarity, and ecological sensibility. The efficient
enhancement of the ‘‘QoL’’ should be the end goal for develop-
ment, now that the problem of scarcity and survival has been
resolved for many. Attention can then properly be turned to ful-
fillment, not wealth, as the primary measure of success and
source of well-being. Human solidarity expresses a sense of
connectedness with people who live in distant places and with
the unborn who will live in a distant future. It is a manifestation
of the natural capacity for reciprocity and empathy and is the
basis for the democratic ideal and the great social struggles for
tolerance, respect, equality, and rights. The propagation of a
highly evolved ecological sensibility will cause growing mys-
tification and abhorrence of the neglect and damage of the nat-
ural world. Reverence for, rather than the right to dominate, the
natural world, is an increasingly motivating sentiment. This has
been the foundation of Native American culture throughout its
long history (Laderman 2003). Man, in this view, was not
trapped in nature and struggling to take control. Sustainability
is a core part of the contemporary worldview, which would
‘‘deem any compromise of the integrity of our planetary home
both laughably idiotic and morally wrong’’ (Raskin 2006, 2).
Ideology in the marketing academy threatens the future of
society. The four tenets of marketism (the ideology of market-
ing) are the belief in growth (as good, as necessary), a materi-
alistic value system (consumption as a profit source), an
instrumental view of the consumer (as a profit-making
resource), and, the postulate of an absence of conflict of interest
between consumers and producers (Arndt 1981). Furthermore,
the marketing concept, from neoclassical economic thinking,
holds that market demand guides all marketing decisions and
it provides economic and social legitimacy for the firm’s exis-
tence (Varey 2010). All functions and activities of the firm are
integrated and coordinated around market demand, and this is
the means to long-term profit enhancement. A product is val-
ued as desirable if there is a demand for it. Marketing ‘‘has had
a strong positive indirect influence on the materialistic compo-
nent of the quality of life by rendering work life possible and by
providing the goods and services entering the Consuming life
arena’’ (295). Marketing has been a biasing force for emphasiz-
ing products designed to meet short-term private, materialistic
needs, offering market solutions to almost all life needs/prob-
lems. This gives priority, and thus emphasis and promotion,
to materialistic needs. Hence, ‘‘marketing may contribute to
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119
modern man’s alienation by inducing individuals to view their
relationship with another as marketing [relationships] or
exchange relationships’’ (296).
Sirgy, Samli, and Meadow (1982) urged, and stressed the
importance of, ‘‘a critical assessment of marketing’s function
within society’’ (82), while Sirgy and Samli (1995) recognized
‘‘... the power of marketing to enhance the QoL’’ (front plate).
Kotler asserted that ‘‘Most people would agree that quality of
life is a worthwhile goal for the marketing system’’ (Kotler
1986, 21), and he saw this thinking as a natural outgrowth of
the evolution of business orientation from production to prod-
uct, to selling, to marketing, then to QoL. Samli (1992) pro-
posed ‘‘proactive marketing’’ as a socially responsible form
of marketing (or QoL marketing) in which goods and services
are developed and marketed through ‘‘a system of internal and
external controls that are designed to ensure that consumers
and the environment are best served.’’ This form has emerged
from reactive marketing, which in turn is superseded by inac-
tive marketing and negative marketing. William Lazer’s
(1969) position comes closest to this.
Proposition 7: Accountability to meet society’s economic,
legal, ethical, and philanthropic expectations does not
in itself foster social welfare. We need to ‘‘learn our way
out’’ of the crisis, thus adopting an adapted set of values.
Beyond Managerial Marketing
Is ‘‘marketing’’ the wrong idea for the transition and beyond or
the right idea widely misused? The unsuitable market con-
struct, with the capitalist assumption of prosperity by taking,
leads to an unintended order (Ward and Dubos 1972). Contrary
to this appropriative assumption, leading intellectual Zia Sardar
has asserted that ‘‘The good life of the good person can only be
fully realized in the good society. Prosperity can only be con-
ceived as a condition that includes obligations and responsibil-
ities to others’’ (quoted in Jackson 2009, 29).
Markets and marketing have proven to be powerful aspects
of modern social systems. Market relationships have an ability
to penetrate into individual minds, thus causing cognitive, emo-
tional, and value biases in almost all facets of life. The process
has been captured by the concept of hypercommercialization
(De Graaf et al. 2001) that defines the process of looking at
everything materialistically. Current affluent society appears
to have fallen victim to the ever-growing perpetuated forces
of consumerism (Spring 2003) and materialism (Belk 2001).
Some have argued that consumers are not victims, but they are
active constructors of their existential consumption practices.
Nevertheless, wide deployment of the narrowly conceptualized
version of the managerial micromarketing technology (Bartels
1965; Varey 2004) may have given rise to the present proble-
matic social structures—the Consumeristic Society.
On the contrary, the future seems to be positive, and the
current social structures are thought to be evolving to a ‘‘post-
consumerism’’ era (Durning 1992), the ‘‘companionate democ-
racy’’ (Lane 2000), or the ‘‘inconspicuous consumption
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culture’’ (Frank 2000). The existence of this type of marketing
system, in fact, demonstrates widespread use of sustainability
principles of responsible consumption, happiness, well-being,
the sense of sufficiency, and healthy buying behavior. The sus-
tainable marketing system is intertwined with the notion of
marketing that is socially responsible (Lazer 1969), nondes-
tructive (Hart and Milstein 2003), value driven and relational
(Varey 2002a, 2002b), and cocreative (Prahalad and
Ramaswamy 2004).
Several reformist formulations of marketing have been
expressed—implemented within the modern society complex,
leaving the industrial value system, ideologies, ownership pat-
terns, and institutions intact: societal marketing; ecological
marketing; green/environmental marketing; social marketing;
sustainable marketing; and QoL marketing. Societal marketing
takes account of the long-term welfare of society as well as the
wants of consumers and commercial requirements of business
shareholders (Lazer 1969; Kotler and Levy 1969). It is closely
linked with the principles of corporate social responsibility and
of sustainable development, being a forerunner of sustainable
marketing in integrating issues of social responsibility into
commercial marketing strategies. Note Lazer’s (1969, 3) open-
ing statement ‘‘Marketing is not an end in itself. It is not the
exclusive province of business management. Marketing must
serve not only business but also the goals of society. It must act
in concert with broad public interest. For marketing does not
end with the buy–sell transaction. Its responsibilities extend
well beyond making profits. Marketing shares in the problems
and goals of society and its contributions extend well beyond
the formal boundaries of the firm.’’ Kotler and Levy (1969,
10) were less clear with their focus: ‘‘marketing will either take
on a broader social meaning or remain a narrowly defined busi-
ness activity.’’ Theirs was a broadened scope rather than an
alternative form and purpose.
In response to growing concerns, ecological marketing
(Henion and Kinnear 1976) brought attention to marketing
activities that contributed environmental problems and that
may provide a remedy. Green marketing (Peattie 1992) is a par-
tial corrective, in that it serves business goals in such a way that
the preservation, protection, and conservation of the physical
environment are accomplished (Mintu and Lozada 1993). This
is not a full corrective, because it encourages consumers to
increase their consumption of more eco-efficient products
(Smith 1998), but it also promotes the continuance of
aspirations to ever enhanced hardworking, high-earning,
consumption-intensive lifestyles (Peattie and Peattie 2009).
Environmental marketing (Coddington 1993) is the practi-
tioner’s interpretation of the imperative addressed by green
marketing, highlighting environmental stewardship as a busi-
ness development responsibility and business growth opportu-
nity. Environmental marketing is the holistic management
process for identifying, anticipating, and satisfying the require-
ments of customers and society profitably and sustainably
(Peattie 1995).
Social marketing aims for enhanced QoL by reducing the
negative impact of material acquisition and consumption on the
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health and personal relationships that are the basis for happi-
ness and life satisfaction (Peattie and Peattie 2009). Sustainable
marketing integrates environmental issues and ecological prin-
ciples for both transforming and reducing consumption (e.g.,
Fuller 1999). Interestingly, Fuller’s perspective would seem
to be waste management, suggesting that a corporate cost
reduction benefit is sought (i.e., a corporate economy/effi-
ciency motive). Fuller, for example, taking his lead from the
coining of the term ‘‘sustainable marketing’’ by Sheth and Par-
vatiyar (1995) argues that sustainability is ‘‘a logical extension
of contemporary marketing’s managerial orientation’’ (4) and
sets out a logic for converting linear consumption systems into
sustainable cyclical resource systems that are less polluting of
ecosystems (Fuller 1999; Saren 2000; Sheth and Parvatiyar
1995). Sustainable marketing addresses concerns for progress
and well-being in the complex of environment, social, and eco-
nomic domains. An ecological ethic engenders an obligation to
preserve a habitable home and to share sufficient resources.
Sustainability of consumption implies that we revalue the
acquisition and use of things that deplete our finite resources
and degrade our habitat, and shift thinking away from consum-
ing to value creation (Ponsonby and Boyle 2004; Ramirez
1999; Vargo and Lusch 2004).
Saren (2000) is rightly concerned that sustainability can
ever be successfully operationalized in the normative manage-
rial marketing worldview. Traditional marketing thinking (and
the following practice) is functionalist, anthropocentric, and
consumerist. This is the very way of living that is implicated
in locating the causes of the waste, damage, and excess of the
contemporary market-based system of consumption. Fuller, it
seems, argues for extending traditional managerial marketing
to take account of ‘‘green’’ issues. As Brownlie and Saren
(1992) showed, earlier, this is not a realistic option for the mar-
keting tradition, given the obvious ideological basis in neolib-
eral, economistic capitalism.
QoL marketing enhances customer well-being while preser-
ving the well-being of other stakeholders (Lee and Sirgy 2004).
This form integrates the economic interests of the firm the and
society’s wider interests, by combining societal marketing and
the ethical extension of relationship marketing. Profit is the
reward for ‘‘good’’ business in terms of society’s moral stan-
dards and is essential to corporate well-being. For example,
drug dealing profits from ‘‘bad’’ values and practices and there-
fore should not only not be rewarded (with large profits) but
should be punished as immoral and illegal behavior. Another
recent development is the subfield of transformative consumer
research, concerned with the enhancement of the welfare of
individuals and society in both present and future generations
(Mari 2008), by informing marketers’ values and practices to
encourage citizens to purchase products that will improve their
welfare (see Mari 2008 for a helpful overview).
A marketing system for sustainable society could arise from
a revolutionary radical reassessment (Kilbourne, McDonagh,
and Prothero 1997), rather than evolutionary extension, of
basic marketing principles and practices. In contemporary
terms, sustainability is a radical move in applying standards
Varey
of accountability for value produced and costs incurred. Profit
performance has to be balanced by providing valuable life con-
ditions to society and protecting and recovering the ecological
environment. Capra (2002) identifies an emerging shift from
unsustainable linear consumption of goods (from production
to abandonment or destruction) to a cyclical service-and-flow
process (including recycling and remanufacture). Furthermore,
he asserts that material consumption and moneymaking, while
attractive and profitable for some people, do not have prece-
dence over human rights, democracy, environmental protec-
tion, or other social values. This requires a shift of attention
from the client (end product user) as a paying customer to the
broader community of stakeholders (Polonsky 1995) as citizen
inhabitants.
More radically, welfare marketing is an extension of the
QoL conception of marketing that requires an alternate set of
‘‘postindustrial’’ values, recognizing that the generation of
wealth through profitable growth is only one contribution to
QoL, health, and happiness. Marketing’s primary contribution
to society is thus the proactive and essential creation of valued
benefits that does not create unsustainable costs and harmful
consequences.
Marketing for a Sustainable Society
This comprehensive transdisciplinary review has suggested
that the adoption of social responsibility in marketing princi-
ples and practice is a step forward, but it is not far enough to
address the worrying failure of marketing to support sustain-
able contentment with QoL experience. This inability and
unwillingness of marketers to generally engage with policy
through macro-level thinking was noted by Fisk (1974) in
regard to the micro–macro split in the field. Reformism is
likely to be insufficient and a radical change is necessary. On
the face, there seems to be little good reason to fix a market sys-
tem that evidently generates great wealth for many people. The
crisis is the consequence of actions that were stimulated by our
best intentions (Mesarovic and Pestel 1976). If today’s
capitalism delivered high levels of life satisfaction, genuine
well-being, and true happiness to societies, there will be little
need for change. However, the current industrial system cannot
deliver the well-being, and nature is in deep trouble. This
invites transformative ideas and action (Kassiola 1990).
The expansive modern capitalist system generates ever-
larger environmental consequences beyond the capacity to
manage them, and most environmental action remains
within the current system. This puts major efforts to correct
underlying drivers of deterioration out of bounds, and opportu-
nities are missed, and deteriorations compounded. The several
defects of industrial society—dependence on ceaseless, limit-
less, economic growth; materialism; harmful competition;
depoliticization—bias and distort our life goals and values.
Peter Drucker (1969) pointed out that a healthy business and
a sick society are not compatible.
The environmental movement has been locked inside
reform of the orthodoxy for decades (Kassiola 2003). Yet,
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121
evidently, we cannot solve the social and environmental prob-
lems from within. Current environmentalism is restricted in the
face of market fundamentalism (Speth 2008) and other threats
and concerns that compete for political space, and this is further
exacerbated by the complexity of the problem, the considerable
regulatory ‘‘slippage,’’ and a host of well-meaning pragmatic
actions to fix the symptoms of imbalance, degradation, and
exhaustion (Bosselmann 1995). We need to move thinking and
action outside the system—it is time for more widespread civic
‘‘unreasonableness’’ (Speth 2008). Alperovitz (2005) speaks of
the ‘‘systemic crisis,’’ which can be taken to be ‘‘a dangerous
opportunity to improve things.’’ From this, we could envisage
the accomplishment of betterment through social transforma-
tion to a superior social order (Ophuls 1977; Kassiola 1990).
Kassiola sees the imperative for radical change and is optimis-
tic that such change will come once the realities and deficien-
cies of industrial civilization are generally recognized.
The limits to growth debate have largely focused on an
empirical, technical problem: how to retain current postindus-
trial values more feasibly. What is now challenged is the domi-
nant social paradigm itself (Kilbourne, McDonagh, and
Prothero 1997; Pirages and Ehrlich 1974). An emerging tran-
sindustrial social order has fundamentally different values to
the industrial society—for example, nonmaterialism and spiri-
tualism. This will come about through transformative change
of contemporary capitalism by citizen demand. It seems possi-
ble to reinvent consumption to satisfy both existential and
experiential needs with minimal costs to the environment, thus
preserving the economy (Csikszentmihalyi 2000) by investing
in goods that increase human well-being without degrading the
world. Commerce would support consumption as processes of
ideas, symbols, and emotional experiences rather than primar-
ily as material breakdown. Beyond technical fixes based on
‘‘sound science,’’ citizens need to address changed political
conditions to overcome ideological and industry opposition,
with considerations of core values and vision of the future, not
the rational consideration of collective self-interest. Reformists
seeking to maintain the status quo—‘‘business as usual’’—
declare a range of value-based objections to the radical political
philosophical challenge to reset the way we judge and select
alternative values for the creation of corresponding appropriate
social institutions in the design of a new civilisation. The ‘‘new
order’’ fundamentally promotes a new relationship of human
society to nature and technology, in the face of today’s domi-
nant worldview, which is anthropocentric, materialistic, ego-
centric, contempocentric, reductionistic, rationalistic, and
nationalistic (Kassiola 1990). Reform perpetuates the very
industrial values basis of the crisis, whereas planned social
transformation is necessary to further our aims of a sustainable
society requiring systematic examination of core values as well
as empirical evidence of biophysical condition relative to lim-
its. A growth-addicted society is undesirable as well as impos-
sible to perpetuate.
Pirages (1996) emphasizes the need for a ‘‘transition strat-
egy,’’ and Kassiola (1990) urges the recognition that the tran-
sindustrial vision for society is neither preindustrial nor
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Table 1. Comparative Summary of Competitive Marketing and Sustainable Marketing
Reformed Marketing (Orthodox, Reformist)
Economic assumption Growth in material consumption—technoeconomic model
(more), materialism, competitive accumulation
Focus Individuality expressed in ‘‘product’’ selection, purchase,
and use
Role of marketing process Respond to, and manufacture of, demand
Nature of demand Choice, novelty, preference
Social purpose Sell green lifestyles
Method Value appropriation, market choice
Source of value Utility embodied in ‘‘products’’ and realized by destroying Produced in resource exchanges (including
(consuming) material things
Reward Pleasure: short-term, self-centered, oblivious to cumulative Happiness: lifelong, socially defined, aware of conse-
societal consequences, carefree
Success criteria Pleasure, accumulated Wealth
antiindustrial but beyond the industrial worldview and social
structure. Speth (2008) suggests three levels of change required
for the creation of the postcapitalist society: citizens and gov-
ernance processes need to encourage voluntary corporate
initiatives, as well as to promote corporate accountability
through regulation and other governmental controls, and to
change the nature of the corporation. We need a groundswell
of citizens who are motivated to act as ‘‘democratic revolution-
ary’’ (Kassiola 1990). The aim is an alternative sustainable,
transindustrial society, characteristically a nongrowth,
nonmaterialist, noncompetitive, depoliticized, participatory
democratic community in which public life is ‘‘educative.’’
In this normative mindset, fulfillment, not wealth, is the pri-
mary source of well-being and measure of success, providing
for the desired enhancement of QoL. Raskin et al. (2002)
already observe the progressive value shift from consumerism,
individualism, and domination of nature, to QoL, human soli-
darity (connectedness, responsibility), and ecological sensibil-
ity (see the new sustainability worldview). This would form a
new operating system alternative to the market-centered ortho-
doxy (see Alperovitz 2005; Greider 2003; Korten 1999), on the
basis of the ‘‘democratization of wealth’’ (Alperovitz 2005).
This transformation of consciousness (Reich 1970)—cultural
evolution that will change the prevailing consumerist cul-
ture—is essential because today’s problems cannot be solved
with today’s mind. This necessitates both a new consciousness
and a new politics.
Speth (2008, 194-5) propounds a set of propositions for a rein-
vented ‘‘capitalism’’: The current system of political economy
destroys the environment and will be forced to change. Affluent
societies have reached the point where the economic problem has
been solved (as per Keynes). Modern capitalism is no longer
enhancing well-being, and the dissatisfaction will grow and force
change. There is a strong international social movement for
change—peace, social justice, community, ecology, feminism
(Large 2010). Innovations can and do change the system and will
grow, and there is political space to question capitalism. Giddens
(1998) argues that this ‘‘third way’’’’ radicalism is beyond out-
moded political oppositions of left versus right and left reformist
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Journal of Macromarketing 30(2)
Welfare Marketing (Transindustrial, Radical)
Development of quality of life—socioenvironmental
model (better)
Citizen and community well-being
Change demand
Sustainability, durability, nonmaterial, equitable
distribution
Communitarian provisioning and contentment
Value creation, participatory democracy
nonmaterial resources) and cooperative/social activity
quences, caring
Welfare, habitat health
versus left radicalist. What is at stake is an alternative purpose of
government: ‘‘The new mixed economy ... [utilises] the dyna-
mism of markets but with the public interest in mind’’ (99-100).
Furthermore, he is clear that this is not a purely commercial issue:
‘‘Welfare is not in essence an economic concept, but a psychic
one, concerning as it does well-being. Economic benefits or
advantages are, therefore, virtually never enough on their own
to create it’’ (117).
This has major implications for marketing thought and prac-
tice: ‘‘In the ensuing new order, there would be little need for
marketing activities as applied up to now’’ (Arndt 1981, 297).
Now 100 years old (Applbaum 2004), marketing has a history
of adaptations: selling to marketing; broadened scope; societal
marketing, social marketing. Each of these has been implemen-
ted leaving value system, ideologies, ownership patterns, and
institutions intact. Richman and Macharzina (1974) observed
that a change of corporate values and goals is required, with
QoL goals built into the objective function of business rather
than seen as a set of constraints. We need to construct an alter-
native ‘‘sustainable prosperity’’ welfare social paradigm.
Table 1 is a summary of distinctions being made here, on a
range of characteristics and criteria, between orthodox/respon-
sible marketing and new-order welfare marketing. In a nar-
rowly defined ‘‘wealth’’ producing economy, marketing has a
clear purpose—to engineer lifestyles consisting of ‘‘problems’’
that a particular seller’s products can solve. This purpose is
wrong for a ‘‘health-producing society’’ (Eckerlsey 2004), and
the calculus of economics is wrong when applied to affairs that
require questions of right and wrong.
Welfare marketing would support ‘‘green consumption’’
(Elkington and Hailes 1989) by ensuring that goods and ser-
vices produced do not: endanger health; damage the environ-
ment in production, use, or disposal; create unnecessary
waste; destroy endangered species and environments; or injure
or exploit third parties (including wildlife). Such a commitment
will severely tax the judgment faculty of policy makers and
decision makers, making judgment far more significant in mar-
keting competence (Varey 2005), and drawing on economics,
as well as sociology, psychology, political science, and ecology
Varey
(see Svendsen and Svendsen 2009, and Capra and Pauli 1995,
for example). For the discipline of marketing, we need to com-
mit to a higher purpose—marketing as if social development
mattered, while recognizing presumptions and assumptions
about citizens as consumers and about markets, choice,
well-being, and so on. This requires: we apply moral/normative
constraints on the market and that we abandon our amoral
conception of productivity/efficiency as a good in itself (Kas-
siola 1990); and, the general adoption of the precautionary
principle in policy and practice (O’Riordan and Cameron
1994; Raffensperger and Tickner 1999). This means taking the
view that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversi-
ble harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a
scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of
proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.
Only then should the focus move to matters of practice, scope
of application, and efficiency. The social process of marketing
can contribute to transformative social change. In ‘‘learning our
way out together’’ from the corrosive-dominant social
paradigm (Kilbourne, McDonagh, and Prothero 1997), this is
a matter of both appropriateness and of expression of ideas and
values—for a ‘‘democratized’’ form of marketing.
A steady-state marketing that does not presume the need for
growth (consumption-growth marketing) would be cognizant
of the overall physical scale of the economy relative to nature
rather than efficient allocation of resources (Daly and Cobb
1989; Bosselmann 1995). This mindset focuses on values and
institutional patterns (qualities) rather than energy-material
process throughput (quantities)—shrinking production may
actually enhance well-being! A mentality of faster, further, and
more may be counterproductive. Marketing ‘‘strategists’’ need
to be part of the search for a society that is able sometimes not
to want what it would be capable of providing. Success would
then mean intermediate performance and self-reliance valued
in forms of prosperity that do not require permanent growth and
inherent waste and a real sense of the moral limits of markets.
The Future of Marketing and The Marketing
of the Future
Marketing, almost all of which is now the tool of capitalist cor-
poratism and market fundamentalism, is in distress. Modern
capitalism itself is in distress, because it does not deliver on the
promise of limitless happiness. Witness the current financial
crisis and the attendant insecurity in our societies. Capitalist
society is reaching a redefining turning point (Capra 1982; Salk
1973; Salk and Salk 1981; László 2006). This will see funda-
mental, nonincremental, transformative change in the system.
Indeed, this is certainly not the first indication that we are on
the brink of a new socioeconomic order, resulting from evolu-
tionary forces that will show globalization and free markets to
be ultimately uneconomic and transitory. This is not merely an
economic problem and is absolutely not to be resolved through
further growth. It is resolutely a political problem, specifically
a problem of governance—about how we decide what use to
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123
make of limited resources and finite sinks for waste and pollu-
tion; how we conegotiate valuations of people, nature, commu-
nity, intellectual, and cultural accomplishment. Our consumer
society has already passed the point of affluence, bringing the
purpose of ‘‘modern’’ marketing into question. For most of us,
our basic material needs are satisfied, so we seek in ever-
growing consumption the satisfaction of wants, which con-
sumption cannot possibly deliver, or only to a tiny minority
of us. Growth-driven consuming may even undermine all of
this pursuit of contentment. Not only are the costs of consump-
tion much greater than orthodox economics recognizes, as is
now widely acknowledged, but the benefits are also much less
than we expect. More is not always better, it is often worse.
Excess is pathological, and we see the evidence in social break-
down—loneliness, depression, stress, crime, fragmented com-
munities, suicide, and ‘‘busyness.’’
Whereas the still dominant model of society promises limit-
less opportunities for a better life it cannot deliver, and is
already creating degenerations of life, an alternative is needed
through a great transformation. This will center regeneration
and sustenance. Too many marketers do not see this through
their limited vision from within the boundaries of the disciplin-
ary presumptions and assumptions of competition for profit and
consumer gratification. It remains not uncommon, for now, to
hear marketing academics and professionals say that they would
not take sustainability seriously, as if it is not impinging on their
affluent life experiences. They have not yet recognized the signs
and imperatives as most citizens are not yet sufficiently
conscious (mindful) and engaged with matters of society and
ecology. Ubiquitous ecological consciousness is needed.
Wrong thinking about life entrusts neo-liberal economics
and capitalism to find the solution to how to live a better life.
Wrong thinking in economics assumes humans as rational, self-
ish, maximizers. Wrong thinking in marketing uncritically
takes the neoclassical market model and its neoliberal purpose.
Transformative change is needed to combat and repair the
degradation. For that we need to change our thinking about the
problem and the means to the solution.
Those with the long view, and the authors, count among
these many sociologists, philosophers, ecologists, futurists,
some scientists, and some economists, have anticipated this
value shift for decades. Now, the tipping point is in sight where
this has come to the consciousness of enough people to have
become a driver for the earnest search for human well-being.
Marketing will evolve, as in its industrial form it is way past its
‘‘use by’’ date. The form of marketing in question relentlessly
encourages, induces, and incentivizes expanding consumption.
This is accomplished through whatever half-truths, deceptions,
embellishments and inflations, or partial claims will generate
profit from a citizenry who are seen as gullible and vulnerable.
Transindustrial marketing is not antimarketing per se.
Proposition 8: Marketing has a different particular character
and role in a society that is not pursuing economic
growth, than does orthodox marketing for growth.
123
124
Proposition 9: The marketing system can produce collective
well-being, if the growth imperative is de-emphasized
and well-being is defined collectively.
Proposition 10: The term ‘‘sustainable marketing,’’
although becoming popular, is unsatisfactory in captur-
ing the foundational principles of value creation toward
welfare and happiness. The term ‘‘developmental mar-
keting’’ was considered, but it is also problematical,
because it assumes a growth imperative. The term ‘‘wel-
fare marketing’’ provides a fuller explanation, and its
emergence/evolution requires careful learning for action
with an alternative postindustrial value system.
Proposition 11: The dynamics of sociocultural evolution in
tension with ecosystems are not widely recognized in the
marketing discipline. A revolutionary radical reassessment
is required (true paradigm shift). Value shift must come
first, before institutional formulations. Technical policy
fixes will not suffice and ideological objections and indus-
try resistance must be faced.
Proposition 12: The role of transdisciplinary synthetic
research is not yet sufficiently recognized and thus
undervalued in the marketing discipline, yet it is the path-
way to transformation. Marketing scholars and educators
have much to offer, and to learn from, other knowledge
disciplines, especially in the political arena. Core values
and vision for the future must be the catalyst for transfor-
mative change.
Acknowledgment
The author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable critique of
Dr William Kilbourne and three anonymous reviewers and the
manuscript preparation skills of Pat Varey.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
Funding
This study was funded in part by a Dean’s Annual Sustainable
Business Award, the Waikato Management School.
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Bio
Dr Richard Varey is a professor of marketing in The Waikato School
of Management, Hamilton, New Zealand. He was born in East
Yorkshire, England, and is a graduate of the University of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom (BSc 1980) and Manchester
School of Management, UMIST, United Kingdom (MSc 1990, PhD
1996). He specializes in enquiring on commercial marketing,
social marketing, human interaction in commercial situations, and
associated systems of managed communication within the context of
understanding ‘‘marketing for sustainable prosperous society.’’ This
article is part of an ongoing ‘‘Sustainable Marketing’’ project.