On responsible marketing -- accepted for Consommation et Société

Joel Brée sent me a nice eMail a few days ago to let me know that my submission to the colloquium he organizes on the theme Consommation et Société has been accepted.

I will present the paper to which I refer a couple of posts below, with a few modifications. The first (generous) referee said in essence that the paper was very good but introduced the notion of quantum consumers too late (and superficially). I fully agree. As I wrote in my blurb, this was my first stab at a question I think is important, and it needs to be sharpened. I'll get back to this.

The second referee questioned my apparent neutrality in defense of marketing and introduced two important points. First, the referee argues that freedom of choice is an illusion. The argument I believe is that the corporate world limits such freedom. Honestly, I expected this line of thinking. And am realy looking forward to the conference because such questions are indeed terribly important. I suppose that my inclination is to argue that there must be a belief in freedom of choice at the consumer level, because without freedom of choice, there is no responsibility. I certainly think that I can choose...

The second point made is that I incorrectly write that there are no model of activism and should be familiar with the abundant literature in the field. I will confess that I am not very familiar with this stream. But will add that am aware of it, and that to the best of my limited knowledge, there are no models of activism beyond very sketchy boxes and arrows. No models that we can use to manage an organization.

So, I will now try to work towards a compact version of my arguments. I see three important issues that I believe I can convey in the (assumed) 30 minutes allocated to my ideas.

1. Societal marketing is (wrongly) moralizing. We can either advocate responsible marketing or remove utilitarian ethics from the societal ethos (a difficult undertaking at best) by arguing that societal should be meant as a formal consideration of distant stakeholders. A responsible organization is motivated to work in the best interest of its proximate stakeholders who have powers of voice and exit. A sustainable strategy must consider the (increasing) power of voice of distant stakeholders.

2. Marketing has an instrumental responsibility. Even in the hands of benevolent organizations, it may cause harm. The way to think about it is the parallel with medicine where well intentioned caregivers may end-up hurting patients and relatives. This must be recognized and corrected

3. Our field doesn't have the tools to manage tensions at the consumer level (quantum consumer) and social level (social canaries).

And I will have to confess that quantum consumers and social canaries are terms I used to entice people to read....

But more later on this. Late Spring and then Fall.