Abstract

Marketing elicits polarized views regarding its societal impact. Proponents argue it drives innovation, economic growth, and improved living standards, while critics highlight its role in fostering consumerism, environmental degradation, and inequalities. This article examines marketing’s dual nature within a market-driven economy, acknowledging both its benefits and detriments.

On the positive side, marketing spurs competition, enhances consumer choice, and drives technological advancements, leading to improved products and services. However, aspirational advertising and psychological manipulation have fueled overconsumption, dissatisfaction, and unsustainable practices. Marketing’s environmental footprint is significant, contributing to microplastic pollution, climate change, and resource wastage through practices like planned obsolescence and fast fashion. Moreover, the rise of targeted advertising and influencer culture blurs the line between genuine needs and artificially created demands, perpetuating socioeconomic disparities and undermining consumer trust.

Despite these concerns, marketing can serve as a force for good. This article advocates for a shift toward sustainability-focused models, aligning with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles. Sustainable marketing strategies—such as promoting circular economies, slow consumption, and responsible advertising—can help mitigate the harmful effects of traditional practices. Ethical standards, transparency, and truthfulness must become industry norms to rebuild trust and foster equitable progress.

By balancing profitability with societal and environmental responsibilities, marketing can transition from being a contributor to global challenges to a catalyst for sustainable change, emphasizing its potential to drive meaningful progress for society, the economy, and the planet.

Keywords:Consumer Behavior; Aspirational Advertising; Environmental Sustainability; Ethical Marketing; Planned Obsolescence; ESG Principles

Introduction

Discussions about marketing as a discipline often ignite a polarized debate, splitting participants into two distinct camps. On one side, proponents, particularly those of us whose livelihoods are intertwined with marketing and business, champion it as an essential force driving customer satisfaction, business expansion, and profitability. Conversely, detractors denounce marketing as frivolous, intrusive, and even detrimental to society.

The purpose of this paper is to delve into this dichotomy, examining the role of marketing as a driving force behind the market-driven economy. The modern socioeconomic landscape is deeply rooted in the principles of a free market, a system that gets credited with fostering job creation, technological progress, and consumer choice while discouraging monopolies. While a comprehensive analysis of the merits of a free-market economy falls outside the scope of this essay, it is crucial to acknowledge its role as the backdrop against which we evaluate the significance of marketing.

Marketing as a discipline has been the driving force behind the market economy. It has fostered competition among products and services and thus forced them into a continuous search for improvements. Thanks to marketing the customers have learned about the product characteristics, places to acquire them, and the prices they need to pay. With better choices and more information, the overall standard of living has improved, the customers have been enjoying more convenience through improved distribution, and the market competition has reduced prices and improved the level of services.

Advocates of the beneficial role of marketing point out the tangible benefits, such as enhanced mobility and connectivity, simplified access to information and entertainment, increased accessibility to leisure pursuits and travel, and advancements in health and well-being. These advancements, in theory, contribute to an overall improved quality of life, particularly for most members of developed nations. However, upon closer examination, this seemingly rosy picture may reveal a less brilliant reality.

Critics of contemporary marketing practices argue that its influence fosters a culture of consumerism, overspending, and bad behavioral patterns.

While acknowledging the central and pivotal role marketing plays in the modern world, it is crucial to examine its potential negative effects. Even as a former marketing professional, I believe it is imperative to address the areas where marketing practices have negatively impacted our environment, societal well-being, and individual lives.

It’s an uncomfortable truth that marketing bears a significant responsibility for contributing to environmental degradation. From exacerbating climate change to the pervasive presence of microplastics and the alarming loss of biodiversity, the industry’s footprint is undeniable. Furthermore, marketing practices have contributed to the rise in societal anomalies, including obesity, mental health issues, and other negative phenomena.

The Dark Side of Marketing Practice

One of marketing’s most potent, and potentially insidious sources of its power of persuasion is its exploitation of behavioral psychology. Advertising frequently promotes the allure of aspirational lifestyles, and with it subtly shapes consumer behavior, desires, and perceived needs. The underlying message often boils down to: “Purchase our product or service, and you too can attain this enviable and fulfilling lifestyle.” The use of aspirational lifestyle marketing first gained significant traction in the 1950s, spearheaded by cigarette brands. This approach quickly infiltrated other industries, including soft drinks, alcoholic beverages, fashion, accessories, and luxury goods and services. Advertisements in these categories often depicted lavish lifestyles, emphasizing idealized notions of beauty, sex appeal, and social status. The underlying message was clear: purchasing these products would grant consumers access to a more desirable and fulfilling life.

The sophisticated manipulation was uncovered and criticized early on in The Hidden Persuaders (Packard, 1957) but the marketing profession and the general public alike ignored its attempts to limit its harmful persuasion effects. On the contrary, the captains of the industry supported it with the objective of affirming the role of marketing as one of the key forces in business, according to McCarthy (1960).

This messaging has a profound impact on consumer motivation. Products that were once considered “nice-to-haves” are gradually reclassified as “must-haves” in the minds of consumers, thus converting their wants into needs [1]. This shift leads to a perception that these goods are essential for well-being and happiness, justifying their acquisition regardless of cost or actual utility.

However, research paints a different picture. Consumer research evidence reveals a strong negative correlation between advertising expenditure and overall life satisfaction. Increased exposure to aspirational lifestyle advertising is linked to decreased levels of satisfaction within the general population [2]. This suggests that unattainable aspirations, fueled by marketing, can negatively impact our perception of our own lives.

Dissatisfaction with their own lifestyle, body and social relationships is further exacerbated by the content produced by many prominent influencers in social media. Frequently they propagate appealing and desirable lifestyle which they claim to be part of. For their followers, the tips these influencers share in their social media posts are perceived as guidelines on how to be cool, trendy and fashionable. The goods and services mentioned or used by the influencers therefore gain a desirable status with their followers who tend to trust the influencers’ endorsements more than branded advertising messages. Many of the followers still believe that the influencers act as trustworthy satisfied customers who had paid for the product, and they promote it out of their sincere satisfaction with it. They fail to understand that these influencers create promotional content for reward which is commensurate with the size of their follower audience. Because they seem to appear in a variety of fashionable outfits, enjoy a broad range of hospitality services, or get to use otherwise hardto- afford products or services, they directly project their versions of aspirational lifestyles which their followers hope to join, even it is out of their normal reach. Simpler, less knowledgeable and often less educated consumers of social media content cannot distinguish between branded and non-branded content, therefore they are easily manipulated with such imposed aspirational lifestyle, enabled by a specific brand [3].

Aspirational marketing has developed a detrimental consequence, the phenomenon of purposely designed obsolescence. Perfectly functional products are deemed outdated based on superficial design changes, creating psychological pressure to replace them with newer models. This practice, known as dynamic obsolescence (McDonough and Egolf, 2002), has been first established in the automotive industry, and it has subsequently permeated other sectors where visual appearance plays and important role.

There is another, even more harmful occurrence, the planned obsolescence, where products are intentionally designed for a limited lifespan. This strategy ensures consumers need to replace items more frequently than necessary due to built-in weaknesses, compatibility issues, or other barriers to extended use. Examples of this practice, including also dated obsolescence of software updates, prevail in electronics, appliances, mobile phones, and other technical product categories.

Discarding perfectly usable, even unused products, is becoming common practice in the fashion industry. From the former configuration of four seasonal collections, the apparel industry has progressed into a setting of constant novelties, resulting in 52 weekly cycles of new product releases, as argued by Presley and Meade [4]. This shift is exemplified by retailers like Zara, who pioneered fast fashion with their rapid collection turnovers. However, the industry has since transitioned to an even faster pace with the emergence of ultra-fast fashion retailers. These retailers flood the market with a never-ending stream of new products characterized by low cost, questionable quality, and a short lifespan, often intended to be worn only a few times before being discarded.

All previously described bad effects of marketing practices culminate in the annual Christmas shopping frenzy. Christmas time has transformed from its original religious holiday meaning into a period of extreme shopping, amounting to 40 % of the annual sales of many retailers. Buying presents for family members and friends has extended to self-gifting, and consumers often succumb to the mass hysteria of shopping, fueled by relentless advertising and promotions through all imaginable channels.

Black Friday, initially a post-Thanksgiving event marking the start of the Christmas shopping season in the United States, has now become a global phenomenon, further contributing to this obsessive shopping pattern. Many purchases made during this frenzy are impulsive and rarely used. Research by Brändlin [5] reveals that nearly 80% of items purchased during Black Friday sales end up as waste within a year, often after only a few uses. In addition, many people get under pressure to spend more than they can afford, therefore getting themselves into unfavorable economic situations in the months following the excessive spending spree [6].

Being pushed into accumulating and ever-increasing debt is becoming even more of a threat for lesser financially savvy individuals, with more than a half of respondents claiming to regularly overspend their monthly budget, according to O’Brien [7]. “Buy now pay later” has become an attractive proposition to reach a lifestyle beyond the means available yet devastating for the individual’s economic independence [8].

With the emergence of online retail and in particular after the COVID pandemic buying things has become easy and highly competitive. In order to cope with the increasing competition, the retailors have to offer an easy and risk-free process to their customers. The customer journey through the selection, ordering, payment and delivery process has been streamlined, and it encourages even more of the impulsive buying decisions.

Furthermore, free delivery and free returns encourage customer behavior, known as bracketing in the clothing and footwear sales: the customer orders several versions of sizes and colors of an item, knowing that they could easily and with no cost return the unwanted versions while paying for only the one to keep. Fast fashion is characterized by a 40% return rate [9]. Many of the returned items go directly to landfills, since the disposal costs less than inspection and repackaging. An equally alarming waste rate happens in other product categories with promotional items, free samples and merchandising products, as argued by Cysewski [10].

Digital marketing has enabled faster feedback information on customer demand and its deviation from the expectations and consequentially adjusting the price to maximize sales. However, it has also provided the mechanisms for discriminatory handing of specific customer segments, in particular the already more pricesensitive groups of lesser educated, not digitally literate or elderly customers, according to Masukiewicz and Dec [11]. For their lack of information, they are penalized by being offered higher prices than other segments who have access to more information, or their demographics show a more prosperous background, such as their residence information.

Greenwashing is a portmanteau term for false or misleading statements about the environmental benefits of a product or service [12]. The term originates from a paper by environmentalist Westerveld in 1986 in which he identified the hotel industry reuse of towels as cost-saving action falsely presented as care for the environment [13]. Recently the term can be understood to include all deceptive claims about sustainability benefits, including ESG criteria [14].

The appeal of distributing sustainability-related image of a company or a brand is closely connected to the higher awareness and critical attitude of customers who increasingly expect their chosen brands to act responsibly in all aspects of their business. Covering up major shortcomings with a small, possibly not very relevant piece of positive information, could improve the reputation of a company or its brand by its customers and other stakeholders; therefore, companies often request fabrication and distribution of such positive content from their external advertising or PR agencies or internal communication resources. However, in this period of easy access to all kinds of information, the well-informed and critically thinking stakeholders can easily distinguish between a relevant and thorough change in an organization in contrast to a publicity stunt invented only for a cosmetic greening of the company’s image; hence an uncovered greenwashing action can backfire and cause strong negative reactions. Examples from the oil and chemical industry are well documented, followed by greenwashing attempts of the airline industry, fashion and food [15,16].

The Marketing Paradigm Needs to Change

The list of negative impacts of marketing in the previous section of this paper is quite long but by far non-exhaustive. Based on it, one could conclude that marketing is in essence a malicious discipline and it is directly responsible for all these unfortunate effects it has on society, customers and the environment.

However, marketing serves the business, and it functions in accordance with its mission, defined by a plethora of its definitions. There are numerous definitions of marketing available in literature, many of which are wordy in their attempt to cover the whole spectrum of marketing-related and marketing-affected processes. An example of such a definition comes from AMA [17] which says: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

Yet, for the elaboration of this discussion I prefer to adopt a tighter and simpler definition, attributed to the Harvard University professor Nick Nugent [18]:

”Marketing is the science of satisfying consumers’ needs profitably.”

This definition can be broken into two pieces: a) customers’ needs; and b) profitably. Each of these two pieces when separated can help to analyze the problem, which is how and why marketing delivers negative effects, and point towards possible remedies, what needs to change in order to reduce or eliminate these negativities.

Every customer wants to get the most benefits and convenience for the least effort and the amount of money they spend. This is the foundation on which the sales motivation is built, and it drives the competition among potential providers of goods or services. Only the provider which is perceived to best respond to the customer’s explicit and implicit expectations gets the business, all others are left without the sale. Because of this the competing companies engage in the market battle, and they try to come up with an offer which would be perceived as superior to the selected customer group.

The customer has expectations of functional, emotional, social, and even societal benefits [19] which the selected product or service should deliver. These expectations are primarily based on their previous individual experience, experience of other customers shared by word of mouth and social media. In addition, they are informed by advertising messages, branded content, and non-commercial content in media which may be biased towards promoting a certain brand or associated lifestyle by the use of product placement.

The brands competing in the marketplace try to improve their competitive position and win the preference of the customer, and as part of this battle they finance and influence these inputs, which then result in a continuous raise of expectations by their prospective customers.

In many instances the consumers need a frame of reference to compare their expectations and desires against. They also learn about what is trendy, socially popular and desirable from the input of media and the social media influencers they follow.

Inflated expectations imply that more is better, fueling desire for more products, more features, or more convenience, making customers unsatisfied with customer unhappy with what they have or what is accessible to them, wanting more (for less). In essence, there seems to be a causal relationship: more advertising causes more aspiration, which results in less fulfilled expectations and consequently in less satisfaction and more frustration in life. Large-scale research across 27 European countries supports this flow of effects: doubling the advertising spend can result in a 3% reduction in life satisfaction after a lag of two years, suggests Oswald’s research [20].

When discussing the customers’ needs, an essential question emerges: Does the customer really know what she/he wants? The marketing theory explains both answers, the positive and the negative one. If they really know what they want they may already have established criteria for evaluating the offered product or service, and the role of the marketer is meeting their already defined expectations better than a competitor. In many instances, however, the customer cannot compare the product against their expectations and may not perceive a need for it. In this case the marketer must demonstrate the benefits in such a way as to create a need for it. Steve Jobs has famously said: “Some people say give the customers what they want, but that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d ask customers what they wanted, they would’ve told me a faster horse.’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page,” [21]. With this statement Jobs does not negate conventional customer research, as often misinterpreted, but he argues for understanding the customer behavior on a higher level than what they are able to express from their cognitive experience. His product development philosophy urged for creating products that would deliver better product experience and utility than demanded from the customers’ declared wants.

The opposite, confirming answer to the question can also be sourced back to a legendary quote by David Ogilvy from his 1955 book ‘Confessions of an advertising man’: “The customer is not a moron. She is your wife.” Ogilvy, one of the most prominent and celebrated creators of marketing communications, used this quote for emphasizing the need to not only listen to customer’s needs, but also to respect the customer as a party in the process who does not deserve to be manipulated or patronized about their needs. Obviously, this quote originates from an era of different gender roles and conscientiousness, thus it should not be criticized from a sexist perspective but only appreciated for its principal message to respect the customer, whoever that customer might be.

And now let us examine the other part of the marketing definition above: b) profitably.

The mission of marketing as a discipline is based on the economic model from the 1950’s which promoted profitability as the single overarching criterion of business success. Being profitable, while remaining competitive in its marketplace and not stepping over defined legal boundaries, was sufficient for a company to earn its reputation and good societal standing. In addition, many companies occasionally contributed to some CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives to earn additional admiration and favorable impression in their stakeholder groups, but most commonly only at times of their peak profitability surges, not as a long-term commitment to a cause. The profitability-only criterion of company’s success rested on the assumption that all customers have equal access to information, and that they all act reasonably and rationally.

However, recent economic models expand beyond profitability as their single criterion of successful performance and include two additional criteria: impact on the physical environment and societal influence. The three areas of company’s performance indicators are referred to as triple P (3P: people, planet and profit; [22]). The company hence needs to demonstrate its performance over a triple bottom line: impact on the planet (environmental impact), the people (employees, suppliers, communities: societal impact) and the original bottom line - financial profitability. Business reporting, required by the investors, financial and governmental institutions, increasingly calls for ESG (environmental, societal & governance) compliance reports.

The new economic models redefine the relationship between producers, distributors and customers, as elucidated by Chassagnette and Trias Pinto [23], and they broaden the scope of interest from shareholders to all company stakeholders. The transition from the shareholder capitalism model to the stakeholder capitalism model demands to consider benefits of good company performance for all stakeholder groups, not only the company shareholders. These new models aim to replace the market economy, which measures success exclusively with growth and profitability, with the sharing economy (also known as a double-sided marketing), functional economy (also known as payper- use business model), the circular economy (which is based on using waste of one industry as a resource for another), and other models in various stages of their development and emergence, as suggested by Randle and Eyre [24].

Therefore, the criteria of successful business performance have expanded, and marketing must find ways to incorporate them in order to remain the harbinger of new business reality. Marketing in its present form does not enjoy a very favorable perception in general public. Its numerous critics point out wasteful handling of natural resources and energy, customer manipulation, greenwashing, and most importantly, promoting increasing consumption. It is held responsible for negative effects in the society which are outside of its reach and is therefore perceived as a scapegoat for many anomalies of the contemporary first-world society.

One of the anomalies is the entitlement perception of the customer. “The customer is king” has been a mantra of the industry, pointing at the central and decisive role of the customer, who can make the decision to buy or not to buy. An essential part of any marketing strategy has always been to please the customer with whatever it takes. However, this aim has resulted in an undesirable sense of entitlement of many customers: they expect their needs to be served over and beyond expectations, right away, preferably in real time, with none of their effort. Free shipping and overly facilitated returns encourage impulsive shopping and “bracketing” (ordering multiple versions of a single product to find the best fit) which cause additional, yet avoidable packaging and shipping costs, and often result in additional waste. Therefore, exaggerated customer rights and privileges which are a consequence of the competitive battle in the marketplace, result in undesired effects on the Planet, i.e. the physical environment, and the People, i.e. the socioeconomic environment, the employees and the suppliers, as discussed earlier in this paper as criteria of responsible marketing.

Saturation of the mass media has been resulting in reduced effectiveness, and skepticism of customers, as well as doubts of advertisers. John Wannamaker, the industrialist and inventor of department stores in the late 19th century, famously quipped: “Out of every dollar I throw into advertising, a half is wasted. The problem is I don’t know which half.” [25] Now, more than a century later, the effectiveness can be even worse:

The overload of impulses makes most customers insusceptible to them, thus the marketers need to be even more aggressive with their communication and their offers, which in turn yields an even stronger resentment. In order to regain its respect, the marketing communications industry will need to be more selective and raise the criteria for its output.

How to rebuild the positive perception of marketing in modern society?

Philip Kotler, often referred to as the father of modern marketing, and one of the most referenced authors in the theory of marketing, pointed out the need to change [24,25]: “As Marketers, we need to question whether we are part of the problem and if we’re part of the problem, then we should be changing our objectives to become part of the solution. Our objective should be to help consumers engage in more sensible consumption.”

The current marketing paradigm rests exclusively on growth and profit-oriented criteria for performance. It needs to change as to accommodate the guiding principles of ESG orientation for the benefit of all stakeholder groups. Therefore, it needs to be at the forefront of acknowledging and promoting new more holistic business models, some of which have already been discussed in this paper.

Instead of interpreting marketing activities as warfare where competing brands are enemies fighting for the target audience, by using tactics such as guerilla marketing or price wars to trigger their engagement, and market intelligence is applied to guard the frontline of marketing logistics efforts, a visible change would be signaled by demilitarizing the language the marketing profession uses. Marketing should not be a synonym for a civilized version of war [25,26] with potential customers as targets, and the competitors as enemies in the struggle for profit and dominance.

Marketing should continue to follow its core mission, satisfying the customer’s needs, albeit with some course corrections. In order to remain a respected and accepted business discipline, it should refrain from inventing and propagating new needs that can be fulfilled by aspiring to buy and use more. It should be able to identify the customers’ real needs, and distinguish them from the declared ones, what the customers say they want.

Positive practices of responsible behavior of sellers and buyers in the process which lead to positive social changes must be identified and promoted as role models. The marketers will copy and embrace such examples of behavior, and the customers will be able to align their expectations and value systems according to positive examples [27-30].

The communication of positive practices should significantly contribute to the reputation of the marketer, the company and/or the brand. However, any excursions toward greenwashing, partial truth or exaggeration, must be avoided. Claims need to be verified, and the big picture must prevail over a partial claim of the desired effect. Serious cases of greenwashing claims should be exposed to criticism and discouraged by all means.

Finally, the marketing profession should use its power of communication and persuasion to provide an unbiased variety of information and educate its various audiences by offering access to differing views. The profession should make a clear commitment to not abusing its scientific power for harmful manipulation.

Fortunately, there are several examples of positive changes happening in product development and distribution, combined with changes in customer behavior which indicate different, more inclusive, responsible, and less aggressive concepts of living and using material goods and services. Here is a partial list of such changes, not necessarily in order of importance:
i. Circular economy business models: waste of one industry becomes a resource of another. Together with the 4R models of sustainable practice (Repair, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle) lifespan of many products can be radically extended, and resources used more economically.
ii. Vintage and pre-owned products in some categories, such as fashion and personal accessories, are gaining increasing positive perception and desirability. This is more associated with the changes of values in younger generational cohorts, such as Generation Z and Alpha.
iii. More and more initiatives in reducing food waste, reusing product containers, using recyclable materials for packaging, are growing in popularity. In many cases, these initiatives are perceived as competitive advantage of brands behind them.
iv. Environmentally friendlier modes of transportation (public transport, bicycles, electrically powered instead of combustion engine powered vehicles, trains instead of airplanes for short-range travel, etc.) are being promoted and preferred.
v. Slow tourism is a reaction against environmentally and socially damaging mass tourism based on cheap airfare and mass tourism. Slow tourism promotes more vernacular localized experiences, local foods, and less harmful transportation.
vi. Hybrid workplace models have been growing in popularity with employees and employers alike. Flexibility and less time spent commuting between the workplace and home contribute positively to higher satisfaction of employees, to their improved work-life balance, and to the overall quality of life.
vii. Healthier lifestyles are trendier and popularized in popular media and entertainment: better eating habits and inclusion of physical exercise into daily life have become ubiquitous topics, and smoking is being increasingly frowned upon, to name just the most visible ones.
viii. Fair trade labels promote responsible sourcing from less developed countries and help prevent exploitation of their unfavorable market competitiveness. Consumers progressively tend to prefer these products, conscious that their choice helps a good cause.
ix. Restrictions and prevention of fraudulent practices in advertising, ethical codes, and regulations are being introduced in national legislatures, thus reducing maneuvering space for unethical marketing practices.

These positive marketing-related trends indicate the orientation toward less aggressive and more responsible and ethical practices which can help to rehabilitate the marketing discipline back to its former positive perception.

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