Rethinking Marketing : Professor Ken Peattie, Director, BRASS

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Rethinking Marketing Professor Ken Peattie,
Director, BRASS
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Sustainability

• Involves development that meets the needs of the
  present without compromising the ability of
  future generations to meet their own needs
  (Brundtland Report Our Common Future 1987).
• Key principles
• Futurity (beyond current stakeholder generation)
• Welfare (including QoL environmental quality)
• Equity (to better balance costs benefits)
• Need (particularly in relation to the Worlds
  poor)
• Global environmentalism
• Environmental limits

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The (Marketing) Story So Far

• Pre-mid 1980s reliance on compliance, somebody
  elses problem
• End of 1980s euphoric discovery post
  Brundtland Report, new age of marketing
  announced
• Early 1990s concern about the backlash and
  the emergence of normalisation
• Mid 1990s new emphasis on win-win
  solutions competitive advantage
• New Millennium renewed interest, linked to CSR,
  brand value reputation,integration of
  pioneering green brands into mainstream

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Marketings Big Ideas

• The superiority of markets
• The marketing philosophy
• Consumer sovereignty
• Customer satisfaction
• Targeting and segmentation
• Competitive advantage (esp.differentiation)
• The marketing mix
• The product lifecycle
• Customer relationship management
• The marketing environment.

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Rethinking Markets.

• Markets are seen as the most efficient way of
  allocating scare resources, with the potential to
  be harnessed to protect the environment.
• But economics is an If doctrine (Woods 1991)
• socio-environmental issues are treated as
  externalities
• markets are blind to ecological distinctions
• markets assume property rights will be respected
• ecosystems work around thresholds, not linear
  functions
• market-less resources are given no worth.

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The Marketing Philosophy
Marketing
understanding who we make
it for and the benefits we provide are the keys
to success
Business Mindsets
Products what we make is the key to success
Production how we make it is the key to success
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Rethinking Consumer Sovereignty

• Consumer sovereignty is fundamental to economics
  and marketing
• the only grounds on which consumer sovereignty
  may be attacked, is by a refutation of our
  conception of liberty
• Hutt 1936.

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Rethinking Consumer Sovereignty

• perhaps a curious choice given that today
  monarchies are mostly symbolic -
  are democratic electorates a better model ?
• it can be used by firms as an excuse.
• it depends on good customer knowledge/information
  and real rather than apparent freedom of choice
• it ignores customer welfare
  in favour of customer wants

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Rethinking Customer Needs and Wants
Balancing wants and welfare.
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The Madness of King Consumer ?

• Consumers exhibit Schizophrenic views
• the industrialised consumer lifestyle is bringing
  us an ever-improving quality of life
• it is impairing our quality of life as we become
  increasingly materialistic and self-centred
• And Paradoxical attitudes
• a belief that market forces will encourage CSR
• coupled with a general lack of change in personal
  purchasing behaviour on the basis of CSR (ie
  someone elses invisible hand will do the work)

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Rethinking Satisfaction (We Cant Get No !)

• Marketing assumes that given an appropriate
  marketing mix, satisfaction will flow from
  consumption.
• So why when material standards have risen so
  steadily over the last 50 years, are we no
  happier ?

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• Customers viewed narrowly as consumers, with
  needs considered individually
• Consumption viewed narrowly in terms of
  purchasing - but post-purchase is key to
  environmental impacts
• Satisfaction seen more as a function of product
  ownership rather than use
• Evidence from psychology suggests that the link
  between consumption and satisfaction is far from
  simple
• Satisfaction is not a product of a simple
  benefit/price relationship, but a complex set of
  transaction costs.

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Targeting Segmentation

• Marketing seeks to deliver benefits to, and
  generate satisfaction for, its target market
• In the marketing text books, if you want a
  product, but cant afford it, you dont exist
• Four-fifths of the Worlds population have no
  disposable income, but promotional messages have
  an increasingly global reach
• We measure consumer satisfaction, but not the
  impact beyond the target market
• Does targeting segmentation cause inequity?

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In The Mix Rethinking Product Benefits
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Rethinking Product Benefits
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Re-Thinking Products

• The concept of The product has widened from the
  original concept of a physical Core product to
  include other dimensions (e.g. packaging
  services) and even the means of production
  (Total product, Peattie 95)
• Can we reverse the conventional hierarchy to make
  the core product the last component in the total
  customer experience/benefit delivery system ?

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Re-Thinking The Product Life-Cycle
From Economic
.To Physical.
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Re-thinking Other Mix Elements

• Place the distribution of products is a major
  part of their environmental impact, could
  re-localisation be the key ?
• Price can prices internalise key
  socio-environmental costs ? Can we move to a
  transaction costs based approach ?
• Promotion can we move to a more interactive and
  constructive dialogue based on communication ?

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Rethinking the Marketing Environment
The Traditional Telescope View
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So Where is the Mainstream Marketing Mindset ?

• Still more focused on the product, than on the
  delivery of benefits to customers
• Locked in a pattern of incremental change driven
  by consumer preference
• Still accommodating sustainability pressures into
  existing models/strategies (End-of-pipe process
  changes, niche products)
• Caught up in a myth of consumer championship, CRM
  innovativeness

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Getting more or less innovative ?
Working out an answer
2005
1965
1985
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A Mini Saga ?
1985
1965
2005
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Its For You
2005
1965
1985
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A Stable Home ?
2005
1965
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Hells Kitchen ? The Décor May Have Change, But
The Shape Remains the Same.
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Sustainability Thinking

• Futurity
• Welfare
• Equity
• Needs
• Global environmentalism
• Environmental limits

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Sustainability MarketingThinking
Thinking

• Futurity
• Welfare
• Equity
• Needs
• Global environmentalism
• Environmental limits

• Here, now short term
• Gratification
• Consumer sovereignty
• Wants
• Globalised production and consumption
• Economic hyperspace

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Rethinking Marketing to Create More Sustainable C
P Systems

• Will require more than product/process changes -
• Changes in business education
• Changes in expectations
• A changed attitude to change
• Connections between consumers consequences
• Changes in investor/manager time horizons
• Changes to the way we live
• Changes in the media agenda
• Changes to business models and relationships