Has Marketing Come Full Circle? Demarketing for Sustainability kamaljit@galgotiasbschool.

in Introduction: The discipline of marketing assumes its importance from establishing an interface with the consumer and the society at large. The idea of growth and increasing demand is implicit in marketing. This philosophy has developed in a marketing environment in which it was assumed that there would always be more consumption potential that could be serviced by marketing organizations. However, the continued growth of consumption in the 1990s, together with more recent economic and inflationary pressures arising out of the global financial crisis , materials shortages etc.. have tested the marketing system's ability to fully meet its objective of achieving customer satisfaction, long-term profitability and community satisfaction/ accountability to the stakeholder . The growing recognition of a fundamentally resource-constrained environment and the increased salience of various global common effects on customers (Farley and Daly 2006; Shultz and Holbrook 1999) require a much guarded response from the marketer, since the marketer represents the face of the organization. Responsiveness in terms of products offered and impact of using and disposing products is also looked at as the marketers responsibility. The development of a marketing orientation specific to this new marketing environment is the basis of the concept of demarketing. This concept maintains that the marketer's task is to shape demand to conform to long-term objectives rather than blindly engineer increases in sales without regard to such objectives- Sustainability in the present day context being one such objective. There is a need to move the sustainability debate from intractable moral realm and toward potential solutions within market structures, incentives, and regulations. This kind of market situation has accelerated interest in demarketing and offers new opportunities to the alert marketer and important opportunities for all companies to increase the productivity of their marketing expenditures. In the future it is reasonable to expect oscillation in the market environment between marketing to create or maintain demand and marketing to ration or reduce demand. Faced with the current situation of depleting resources, an ambience of increasing sensitivity to environmental issues and the increasing demand of the consumer for a safer planet, how will the marketer justify pushing the product through the pipeline and on to the consumer? The Challenge: The conservation and protection of the natural environment is an area of growing interest for policy makers, marketers, consumers, and society as a whole (Baker and Sinkula 2005; Banerjee, Iyer, and Kashyap 2003; Granzin and Olsen 1991; Menon and Menon 1997). Research in this area discusses the ways governments, companies, and consumers can develop and protect the environment. It specifically suggests that 30%40% of environmental degradation has been brought about by the consumption activities of private households (Grunert 1993). Thus, changing consumer behavior can have a substantial impact on the environment (McDougall et al. 1981; Stern 1999). Societys growing awareness of the environment has led to consumers who demonstrate concern through their

purchasing decisions, preferring environmentally friendly, green products (Menon and Menon 1997; Newell, Goldsmith, and Banzhaf 1998; Zinkhan and Carlson 1995). The number of pro-environmental consumers is constantly rising, increasing the targeted population for pro-environmental marketing and demarketing efforts (Granzin and Olsen 1991; Menon and Menon 1997; Pieters et al. 1998). Nonetheless, this behavioral change is not easy for most consumers. There are many products and behaviors whose deconsumption would benefit the environment but whose personal benefits to consumers are only secondary; furthermore, such environmental benefits are often associated with the distant future (Kasulis, Huettner, and Dikeman 1981; Osterhus 1997). Although the secondary personal benefits (e.g., social) should not be ignored, they are likely to be less valued when deconsumption is considered in the context of environmental protection (Frederick, Loewenstein, and ODonoghue 2002; Rangan, Karim, and Sandberg 1996). In addition, such behavioral changes are costly, involving, for example, switching and transportation costs (Osterhus 1997; Pieters et al. 1998). Overall, this suggests that the intangible, costly, indirect future benefits of deconsuming non-environmentally-friendly products raise concerns about the ability to elicit desired consumer behavior (Pechmann et al. 2003; Rangan, Karim, and Sandberg 1996; Zinkhan and Carlson 1995). An Arthur D Little report entitled The Innovation Highground suggests that while it is important for social and environmental concerns to receive explicit attention when setting strategy and designing products, relatively few companies display this capability (Arthur D Little 2005). The report suggests that main barriers to sustainability initiatives are: a lack of understanding among strategists of the significance of social and environmental trends; internal and external scepticism, often combined with a perception that these activities involve high risk and uncertainty; an absence of appropriate business models, particularly for emerging markets; a tendency to use available capital for more of the same rather than new business models; and, an unwillingness to finance new projects, particularly at the bottom of the business cycle. Interestingly, this research was conducted among major international companies including Sony, Dupont, HP, and Vodaphone The Issue: Why Marketers? Because, its customers who are driving the demand for companies to be more accountable and marketers are at the front line of building relationships with these customers, identifying with them. This puts them in a strong position to take this customer insight to the rest of the company. Marketers impact on those areas critical to engagement with sustainability processing, packaging and distributing a product. Their communication skills keep the customer and the rest of the company informed on the viability of sustainability practices. The marketing Industry stands accused by NGOs, think tanks and the media of fuelling rampant and unsustainable patterns of consumption. Marketers are blamed for a multitude of sins: encouraging even greater consumption; using too much packaging; limiting the useful life of products; producing greenhouse gasesThe list seems never ending. In this context, the fundamental purpose of marketing is re-viewed in the light of growing demands for quality of life and the sustainability of resource use, and responsibility to society for the actions and effects of firms. The marketing-consumption dynamic comes

into play and the role of the marketer in enhancing responsible consumption becomes more highlighted. The apparent mainstream purpose of the social practice of marketing is to expand the reach of the social institution of the market and to increase consumption premised on the pursuit of growth that creates profits by providing value through production and distribution. Consumerism, the mass adoption of the values of the mass-industrial market (rather than the 1960s movement to protect consumer rights to safety, to be informed, to choose, and to be heard), assumes that having more is being more, and that if having some is good, then having more is obviously better. Well-being, it is supposed, comes from buying, accumulating, and displaying goods and services. In 1776, Adam Smith declared that consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production (Smith, 1776/1970). But that dictum does not answer our more telling question: what is the purpose of consumption? Is it really our belief that to shop is to be? Economic growth remains a compelling goal, in business and in wider life circles, even though its yield is disappointing there has been a diminishing return on income yet many of us work more to earn more (Frank, 2000; Schor, 1998). Economic growth buys happiness (in terms of satisfaction with ones life experience and sense of wellbeing) in poor societies, but not in rich societies (Lane, 2000). The richer we become, the less purchasable are the goals that bring us happiness. Measured economic progress does not equate with our ordinary life experience. Our sense of well-being or life satisfaction is not derived only from spendable income and buying power, but from family and social relationships, meaningful work, and leisure (Durning, 1992; Lane, 2000; Schluter and Lee, 1993, 2003). Conventional marketing is blind to customer/ community well-being and shares a more transactional relationship with the consumer.. There is a need to move the sustainability debate from intractable moral realm and toward potential solutions within market structures, incentives, and regulations. Since marketing is the consumer interface and creates the consumer touch points and shapes product experiences, a major part of the responsibility of operationalizing sustainability will rest with the marketer. Sustainability through Marketing: A Sustainable Marketing system could arise from a revolutionary radical reassessment, rather than evolutionary extension, of basic marketing principles and practices. In contemporary terms, sustainability is a radical move in applying standards of accountability for value produced and costs incurred. Profit performance has to be balanced by delivering value to society and improving 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). Further, he asserts that material consumption and money-making, whilst attractive and profitable for some people, do not have precedence over human rights, democracy, environmental protection, 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 inhabitors. The aim of sustainable

marketing practices is the preservation of ecosystem capital and quality over the long run and thus quality of life for contemporary and future inhabitants of this spaceship earth (Boulding, 1966). A number of definitions of sustainable consumption mirror mainstream definitions of sustainable development. The United Nations Environment Programme [10], for example, defines sustainable consumption as the use of services and related products that respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life while minimizing the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as the emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations. More simply Dahl [11] suggests that sustainable consumption refers to the need to stay within the global sustainability of resources. Consumer well being and Sustainability: Most discussion of marketing treats the environment as no more than something to be coped with or mastered (exploited). It presents the marketing manager with opportunities (customers, unmet needs, products, etc.) or threats (competing offers, disloyal customers, and so on). In recent years, the natural environment has become recognised as a key variable in the marketing environment. Concern among business managers for matters ecological has been manifested in, recognition that exhaustible resources are being consumed (destroyed), that much human activity exceeds the capacity of the environment to absorb the effects, and is thus corrosive, and that societys overall quality of life is not enhanced despite escalating consumption. Consumer well-being is viewed as a monotonically increasing function of overall consumption. An expanding literature suggests a more complex relationship. In particular, work by Easterlin (2001), Czech (2006), and others suggests that reported happiness does not increase with income (or overall consumption) once income exceeds some minimal level. This finding and ethical considerations support the idea that sustainability initiatives should be focused especially on helping poorer nations achieve a higher level of income and consumption, rather than on maintaining or increasing the levels of overall consumption in rich nations. In addition, there is increasing evidence that an individuals reported well-being depends importantly on his or her consumption relative to others consumption (e.g., Frank [1985]; Howarth [1996]; and Schor [1998]). A more comprehensive assessment of well-being would examine not only how average consumption changes over generations (the focus of sustainability) but also how consumption (or income) is distributed across individuals within a given generation. The links between the global market economy and environmental degradation have become clearer (IPCC 2007). Moreover, the seriousness of environmental degradation, the clear depletion of and constraints to natural resources, and the urgency for behavior change are now undeniable. Indeed, there are now daily reminders (even from the Weather Channel) that we live in a risk society (Beck 1992).

Demarketing For Sustainability:

Demarketing is a concept which means to discourage the use of some product or good in the times of shortages. It is usually practiced by governments when shortage for any good or services arise in short term. This concept is used to curb consumption or injurious consumption and the task of the marketer is to promote deconsumption of a product / behavior. This appears to be a concept which may help in strengthening the sustainability agenda. In 1971 Phillip Kotler and Sidney Levy first put forward the idea of de-marketing the notion was that marketing could be used to dampen and control demand as well as generate and satisfy it. At any point in time demand levels may be below, equal to or in excess of those desired by an organisation. In the latter case a tool for reducing or controlling demand is required. Traditional marketing tools are used, but in reverse: for example, the marketing mix variables are adjusted to "cool" demand. Kotler and Levy identified differing types of de-marketing, dependent on the nature of the demand that it is necessary to reduce. Demarketing defined as Attempts to discourage customers in general or a certain class of customers in particular for consumption of a specific product on either a temporary or a permanent basis. Demarketing maybe used to raise the awareness of consumers about raw materials , product use and disposal which is not sustainable. In a social marketing context, they define demarketing as having the objective to decrease demand by discouraging consumption or use of products such as alcohol and cigarettes that pose health risks. They note that while governments use various demarketing strategies and instruments independently to curb smoking (increasing taxes, clean indoor regulations, banning advertising). The study tests the effect of a government proenvironmental demarketing campaign on the deconsumption behavior of minority groups and the majority population. Awareness, Prevention, Protection and Prosecution can be considered as tools of demarketing used by governments. A key element of a marketing-oriented approach is for management to see the product shortage difficulties as opportunities, opportunities rather than insurmountable problems. As Kotler stated: Periods of shortages are an opportunity for the enterprising firm. The very definition of a shortage is that customers' needs are not being met . . . . A shortage of heating oil means an opportunity to increase the sales of sweaters, fireplaces, and electric heating blanket. In a similar vein, sustainability is an opportunity for the marketer to understand and respond to the environment. The need to change consumer behavior in the context of the environment leads public policy makers to employ a range of economic, legal, technological, and demarketing treatments (e.g., Andrews et al. 2004; Stern 1999; Wall 2005). Of special interest to marketers and marketing scholars is the effectiveness of demarketing. The concept of demarketing can be traced back to the 1970s. It was first defined by Kotler and Levy (1971, p. 75): Demarketing is the aspect of marketing that deals with discouraging customers in general or a certain class of customers in particular on either a temporary or a permanent basis. Demarketing campaigns typically involve traditional marketing efforts, such as advertising, public relations, and sponsorships (Deutsch and Liebermann 1985; Pechmann et al. 2003; Wall 2005). Empirical research on demarketing is scarce. Marketing scholars have studied demarketing primarily in the context of smoking (e.g., Andrews et al. 2004; Pechmann et al. 2003), drug

use (e.g., Kelly, Swaim, and Wayman 1996), and energy conservation (e.g., Deutsch and Liebermann 1985; Kasulis, Huettner, and Dikeman 1981), often focusing on government, not business, demarketing (Gerstner, Hess, and Chu 1993). Although demarketing is viewed as more expansive than regulatory and economic tools, it is increasingly being employed (Andrews et al. 2004). Still, there is disagreement in the literature as to the effectiveness of these campaigns and whether they work better than alternative methods (Pechmann et al. 2003; Wall 2005). In the specific case of proenvironmental deconsumption, evidence is also inconclusive (e.g., Deutsch and Liebermann 1985; Newell, Goldsmith, and Banzhaf 1998; Osterhus 1997; Rangan, Karim, and Sandberg 1996). Overall, therefore, it is unclear whether demarketing works well in general and, in particular pro- environmental issues Fisk (1973, p. 24) proposes a theory of responsible consumption, which refers to rational and efficient use of resources with respect to the global human population. This theory challenges marketing managers to employ these criteria in running their organizations and as a guide to future marketing policy. Shapiro (1978, p. 3) examines the role of marketing in a society with increased ecological concern and natural resource constraints. He points to serious issues with increased product generation with no regard to the environmental impact of production and proposes (p. 7) that consumers should attempt to do more with less through resource sharing and that producers should institute full-cost pricing, which would incorporate hidden externalities (social cost and ecological services) into product prices. Shapiro goes on to suggest (p. 12) that changes should be made in managerial practice insofar as practitioners find themselves in a world that values conservation, voluntary simplicity in lifestyles, and ecologically responsible corporate marketing. Demarketing was touted as another way to manage the energy crisis. Analogous to the incorporates economic, social, and environmental factors (the three-legged stool) and contemporary idea of downshifting (Ghazi and Jones 1997), demarketing meant that firms should encourage consumers to purchase less on a temporary or permanent basis (Hanna, Kizilbash, and Smart 1975). Other proposals for consumers to survive the energy crisis consistent with Jimmy Carters infamous malaise speech of July 15, 1979included careful planning and limiting the purchase of nonessential food items, doing without, and reducing consumption in general (Shipchandler 1976). With the push for short-term solutions, ideas for paradigm shifts such as Shapiros (1978) faded. In many companies, marketing teams, which are best suited to create this shift in thinking, have been left out of the process of driving sustainability agendas. Managers can utilize the creativity and innovation inherent in the system by moving marketing to the forefront of the sustainability paradigm. Global Impact: Market systems are supposed to respond to consumer demand to produce a desirable standard of living. However, a market system also generates externalities that challenge its existence and threaten desired standards of living. Frequently, there is also a lag between what the system produces and evolving consumer demand. These externalities and this lag, which are currently inducing a commons effect in the global ecosystem (IPCC 2007; Shultz and Holbrook 1999), may also produce consumption constraints (Layton 2007; Wstenhagen, Wolsink, and Brer 2007).( Melea Press and Eric J. Arnould )

As the global community struggles with the issues of over population, increasing energy demands, loss of bio-diversity and the wide-ranging impacts of climate change, the sustainability issue is now a priority across boundaries; political, cultural and professional. The sustainability debate is certain to become the defining commercial issue for our generation of businessmen and women, and which will impact directly on the lives of all the generations that will follow. The difference this time however, is that the risks to life and lifestyle are now far greater and far more immediate. This is fuelling a growing sense of urgency in the drive to find solutions. Far from being a problem for other countries its becoming almost impossible for consumers anywhere in the world to ignore the changes brought about by climate change and environmental degradation Consumer Expectations: Corporate interest in sustainability has been influenced by several concerns. Corporations ranging from athletic shoe, furniture, and carpet manufacturers to big-box retailers are increasingly thinking about their carbon budgets, the cradle-to-cradle life cycles of their products, their energy and pollution costs, their natural resource use, and consumer concerns with these issues (McDonough and Braungart 2002; Wal-Mart 2007). The economic benefits of sustainability thinking to corporate cost controls and reductions in environmental liabilities have driven significant corporate sustainability initiatives (Epstein 2008; Global Reporting Initiative 2009; Green and Capell 2008). Finally, nationwide surveys find that both consumers and executives report that environmental issues (including climate change) are one of their greatest personal concerns for the next five yearsa substantial increase even since 2006 (Bonini, Hintz, and Mendoca 2008). Perhaps surprisingly, consumers have begun to express their concerns for and interest in sustainable behavior in energy consumption. For example, evidence of an emerging sustainability segment Socially Responsible Marketing Socially Responsible Marketing is a complex and emotional societal issue based on values and morals, which goes beyond managers responsibilities to shareholders and their responsibility to manage their affairs as efficiently as possible. Ethical behaviour is expected of firms and is rooted in a fundamental desire of people to be treated with respect and fairness. What price, then, commercial success? What will the manager do when profits are only available from the exploitation of scarce resources, unnecessary growth, pollution, or the wasteful deterioration of the quality of life experienced by buyer resources? The social responsibility of corporate marketers is an acceptance of accountability to meet the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic expectations of society for the behaviour of the firm (Crane and Matten, 2004). This accountability extends to the assessment and reporting of the firms activities and their social, ethical, and environmental consequences for stakeholders. The role of the firm in society, and the benefits and costs of managerial decisions are calculated in terms beyond the economics of profits, efficiency, and so on.

This is founded on the recognition that exhaustible resources are being consumed (destroyed), that much human activity exceeds the capacity of the environment to absorb the effects, and is thus corrosive, and that societys overall quality of life is not enhanced despite escalating consumption. The ecosystem can be viewed as a stakeholder of businesses (Saren, 2000). Saren, argues that sustainability is a logical extension of contemporary marketings managerial orientation (p. 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) rather than be engrossed in current mindless consumption and the bequest of its repercussions for generations to come. Conclusion: Businesses respond to sustainability actions with caution viewing them as a cost driver. Well-intentioned sustainability initiatives are often slowed or abandoned because of the belief that sustainability is a cost, with no return. The increasing interest shown by customers, however, means that this is no longer the case. Evidence shows that by including sustainability as part of normal business activities, the financial bottom line is enhanced, not diminished. Concerns about social and environmental issues provide opportunities for brands to connect with their consumers at a deeper level and, in doing so, gain competitive and sales advantage. Patrick Cescau, CEO of Unilever Business has three issues to face: what it takes, what it makes and what it wastes. --- Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce 1993. The consumer is also more accepting of demarketing efforts and is now willing to play along. The consumer understands his responsibility in co-creation of the environment, is willing to consume responsibly & make the sacrifices both in terms of behavior change and paying extra prices for longevity of the planet. .

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