What is it about?
This article asks what marketing could become in a society that no longer relies on ever-increasing production and consumption. It argues that environmental problems cannot be solved simply by asking individuals to consume more responsibly. Moving towards a post-growth future requires broader changes involving governments, markets and communities. In such a context, marketing would also need to change: rather than mainly serving business growth and encouraging consumption, it could help organise exchanges and choices around human well-being, social needs and the limits of the natural world.
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Why is it important?
Marketing plays a major role in shaping what people buy, how businesses grow and how societies define prosperity. If economies need to reduce their dependence on continuous growth, marketing cannot remain unchanged. This article is important because it shows that marketing can be part of the transition rather than simply a driver of ever-increasing consumption. It invites researchers, businesses and policymakers to rethink marketing as a tool for supporting well-being, meeting social needs and operating within ecological limits.
Perspectives
We see post-growth not as the end of marketing, but as an opportunity to rethink what marketing is for. Marketing has powerful tools for understanding needs, shaping markets and organising exchanges, and these capabilities could be redirected towards goals other than increasing consumption. In our view, the key challenge is to move beyond placing responsibility mainly on individual consumers and to focus more on the collective arrangements, institutions and market structures that make sustainable ways of living possible. This also opens up an important research agenda: exploring how marketing can contribute to forms of prosperity that depend less on economic growth and more on well-being, sufficiency and ecological sustainability.
Professor Dominique Roux
Universite de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Marketing (for) a post-growth future, Marketing Theory, May 2025, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/14705931251342548.
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