Paradox in Marketing: An Inquiry into Sustainability, Ethics and Marketing

Summary Marketing and sustainability are seen by some to be fundamentally incompatible because marketing is about selling more while sustainability is about consuming less. Given that marketing’s core role is to align what business produces with what the market wants, however, it is possible to consider a deeper level of engagement around the issues. A six-month cooperative inquiry research project, commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), worked with more than two hundred marketing, sustainability and ethics practitioners to investigate the links between the new ethical issues of environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the profession and practice of marketing. The outcomes of the research identified seven key paradoxes or challenges to the marketing profession concerning market theory and principles, reputation, trust and branding, planning, social and cause-related marketing, new product development and distribution, communications, and professional codes and development. The research concluded that marketing must frame its own response to issues of increasing social and environmental complexity and that this will, in turn, bring new stakeholder groups into the marketing field. Furthermore, if the marketing profession is not to be left behind by other mainstream management fields, it must both capitalize on the strengths of its current concepts and practices and be prepared to learn from the developing practice within corporate social responsibility and sustainability management in order to underpin both its position and its strategic response. The profession must show it can deal with uncertainty in the world and reinvent itself in order to take up its key role of linking business with its increasingly sustainable and ethical operating environment. Further interdisciplinary research opportunities exploring corporate governance, CSR, intangible brand value, reputation management, corporate reporting, media ethics, professional standards and education, and regional and international development are recommended to support these aspirations.