Marketing and the New Materialism

Abstract

Modern man’s unsustainable systems of production and consumption are symptoms of underlying problems in how we understand and relate to the material world. Socially constructed dualities between the social and natural sciences and between meaning and materiality have encouraged societies to indulge in magical thinking about the ability of material goods to deliver nonmaterial wellbeing, which in turn places marketing at the center of the destructive overconsumption of natural capital. This essay calls attention to a growing philosophical countertrend, neomaterialism, that is reshaping research in such a way as to collapse such false dualities. The new materialism, carried over to marketing practice, demands a meticulous, if not obsessive, attention to material things, their provenance, their agency and their downstream destinations, thus forming the basis of a more sustainable society.

Once upon a time there was a consumer…: stories of magic and the magic of stories

“…It further attracts scholarly criticism for its contribution to a materially oriented view of the 'good life' with negative social and environmental impacts (see e.g. Belk & Pollay, 1985, p. 887;Scott et al, 2014). Marketers are seen as 'hegemonic advocates of commodification', creating consumer demand via persuasive, deceptive, or manipulative techniques (Stoeckl & Luedicke, 2014, p. 23), while disregarding the social and ecological costs of their actions (e.g.…”

“…At times these criticisms can seem overblown, telling a story with marketing in the role of an all-powerful puppet master behind every incidence of greed or envy. Critical scholars are also quick to resort to magical or fairy-tale metaphors to describe marketers' influence on consumers: from 'perpetrators of an immature fantasy of the world as a gigantic candy-store' (Alvesson, 1994, p. 309) to sorcerers or casters of 'magic spell[s]' (McLuhan, 1953, p. 557;Otnes & Scott, 1996), confusing or 'mystifying' consumers with smoke screens (Alvesson, 1994) and mirrors (Scott et al, 2014). Advertising, in particular, is said to produce 'hypnoid states of uncritical consciousness' that reduces consumers to passive subjects (Pollay, 1986, p. 26; see also Baudrillard, 1988).…”

“…Marketing practices, especially advertising, are said to validate consumption through fantastic and magical inducements (Elliott, 1997; see also Baudrillard, 1998;Thompson, 2004), and encourage magical thinking regarding the effects of possessions and consumption (Scott et al, 2014). While marketers' part in the enchantment of consumption is generally accepted, the role of consumers therein and the contexts in which enchantment occurs have been less debated.…”

“…Addressing this is especially important because marketing's promotion of magical thinking and enchantment of material goods is said to facilitate excessive consumption (see Alvesson, 2013;Scott, Martin and Schouten, 2014). Moreover, this role in promoting over-consumption and the environmental problems associated therewith (e.g.…”

Marketing and compromising for sustainability

“…This is regularly the case in ecologically or environmentally sensitive markets (Humphreys, 2014;Peñaloza and Mish, 2011;Scott et al, 2014). Marketing systems that include environmental matters of concern are often fraught with moral controversies over the appropriation of the common good into a market logic, as for instance in the 'marketization' of environmental assets or in the notion of ecosystem services (Corbera et al, 2007;Pröpper, 2015).…”