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This essay explores sustainable consumption and considers possible roles for marketing and consumer researchers and public policy makers in addressing the many sustainability challenges that pervade the planet. Future research approaches to this interdisciplinary topic must be comprehensive and systematic and would benefit from a variety of different perspectives. There are several opportunities for further research; the authors explore three areas in detail. First, they consider the inconsistency between the attitudes and behaviors of consumers with respect to sustainability. Second, they broaden the agenda to explore the role of individual citizens in society. Third, they propose a macroinstitutional approach to fostering sustainability. For each of these separate, but interrelated, opportunities, the authors examine the area in detail and consider possible research avenues and public policy initiatives.

In this paper, we explore the consumer experience of responsibilization, wherein consumers are tasked with addressing social issues via their consumption choices. We study an approach to responsibilization which we label conscious pricing. Conscious pricing asks consumers to place a price on morality: How much would they pay for their lunch to combat the social issue of food insecurity? Conscious pricing stems from the broader movement of conscious capitalism, defined by its chief architects as an approach to business wherein the goal is to create value for all stakeholders: financial, ecological, ethical, and spiritual. Strategies such as conscious capitalism rely on consumers acting responsibly, assuming that consumers, when presented with the opportunity to \"do good,\" will do so, and that consumers will prefer companies who provide them this opportunity. Using a case study approach and online reviews, in our analysis of Panera Cares, we find that consumers in fact experience discomfort when asked to address social issues via how much they choose to pay for their meal. Because food insecurity is embodied by homeless people eating with them in the café, eating in the café is perceived as unpleasant, and the homeless also feel demoralized. This discomposure leads consumers to resist the subject position of being responsibilized by not supporting the organization that is tasking them to do so. This study is the first empirical examination of the consumer experience of consumer responsibilization and allows us to contribute to a deepened understanding of consumer ethics.

Hero-Brides engage in a mythic quest in order to obtain the most sacred object of the wedding: the wedding dress. This retail quest follows the same path as traditional myths. [Display omitted] ► Consumers engage in quests to obtain objects of personal and social significance. ► Retail quests and follow the arc of departure, initiation, and return. ► Consumers enact agency by exerting control over their environment. ► The ultimate goal of transformation happens if consumers succeed at the quest. This paper expands agency theory by identifying mythic agency as a lens through which retailers can view spectacular events during which consumers act heroically to achieve an important consumption goal. Partaking in a stressful and challenging retail experience invokes the stages of a quest, through which successful consumers emerge transformed and where they challenge, at least in part, the culturally prescribed role of bride. Retailers who create events that evoke and support consumers’ heroic actions can develop powerful, meaningful, and enduring relationships with their customers.

Using depth interviews and observations, the authors empirically examine market activities of women who care deeply about nature. Interpreted in the light of ecofeminist theory, the data suggest that these women are forging an ecological self that affects their view of consumption and the marketplace. Leading ecological lives, the women challenge traditional notions of feminine consumption and are a force for change in their relationships with family, friends, the workplace, and the community. These data dispute conventional notions of environmentalism and green consumption; they support and extend an ecofeminist notion of the ecological self as a nondominating path of change. The authors outline implications for relevant stakeholders.

Dans cet article, Giana Eckhardt et Susan Dobscha abordent le construit du ‘conscious pricing’ et décrivent comment celui-ci est utilisé par les entreprises pour tenir compte des considérations sociales. Elles soulignent que les consommateurs ne sont pas prêts à supporter le coût de ces aspects sociaux. Ceux-ci doivent plutôt être pris en compte au niveau structurel.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges and opportunities of collaboration in interpretive consumer research.Design methodology approach - The paper reviews literature on research teamwork, particularly on qualitative and international projects. It also provides an account of research collaboration on an interpretive research project across four countries, involving eight researchers.Findings - Despite the cult of individualism in academic life, most articles in leading marketing journals are now written by multi-author teams. The process and implications of research collaboration, particularly on qualitative and international projects, have received little attention within the marketing literature. Qualitative collaborations call for another layer of reflexivity and attention to the politics and emotions of teamwork. They also require the negotiation of a social contract acceptable to the group and conducive to the emergence of different perspectives throughout the research process.Originality value - While issues surrounding the researcher-research participant relationship are well explored in the field, this paper tackles an issue that often remains tacit in the marketing literature, namely the impact of the relationships between researchers. The paper draws on accounts of other research collaborations as well as authors' experiences, and discusses how interpersonal and cross-cultural dynamics influence the work of interpretive research teams.

On first glance, distribution strategy seems to be the staidest of all the marketing functions, yet it is fundamental to business success. This chapter shows how consumers have created new strategies for dealing with those goods and services that they no longer need or for reclaiming those goods that may to the untrained eye appear to be worthless (broken, disfigured, out of style, for example). It presents The Inverted Pyramid of Sustainability and discusses specific marketing strategies that relate to each section. The chapter looks at examples of these redistribution channels to see how consumers in these markets are using these channels to enact values of sustainability. It considers how corporations have been tackling these issues, oftentimes in response to grassroots consumer actions. The chapter presents exercises designed to open up student debate around sustainable distribution and the role consumers play therein.