PART I Understanding Sustainability and Marketing
1 Marketing in the Twenty–First Century
Challenges for the Twenty–First Century are:
- Population
- Poverty - almost half of the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day
- Health - although improvements in health technology have raised the life quality, a number of health
issues continued to threaten the quality of lives worldwide
- Urbanization
- Resource depletion - more aluminium, copper, oil etc. were consumed in the twentieths century than all
previous centuries combined
- Eco-system damage – Eco-systems provide food and regulate the climate and temperature.
- Eroding cultural diversity
- Food
- Water
- Climate change
Sustainable development is the kind of development that meets the needs of the present, without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The key principles of sustainability are
either explicitly expressed in the Brundtland definition or implied by it:
- Needs: concern for social justice and an anthropocentric viewpoint.
- Equity: fair distribution of costs and benefits of economic development over countries, regions, races, age
groups and between the sexes.
- Intergenerationality: seeking balance between present needs and future generations.
- Global environmentalism: the environment as a holistic, dynamic and vulnerable physical system with a
finite ability to provide our production, and consumption systems with resources.
The Ecological Footprint has emerged as the world’s premier measure of humanity’s demand on nature. It
measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resource it consumes
and to absorb its carbon dioxide emissions, using prevailing technology.
Sustainability approaches over the past decades are:
- Status quo oriented: maintaining current lifestyle.
- Reform oriented: promoted by groups like the international union for conservation of nature.
- Transformation oriented: inspired by Club of Rome; aiming at societies being socially equitable,
ecologically oriented and ultimately sustainable.
The Evolution of Marketing Thought:
Marketing can be conceived in many ways: as a commercial activity, management function/department,
business process, philosophy or as a discipline. By the end of the 1970s, the evolution of the core components
of modern mainstream marketing thinking was largely complete. The foundations of marketing theory and
practice are:
- Marketing philosophy: meeting the needs and wants of the customer is the principle around which a
business should be organized and from which success in the market and profitability will flow.
- Marketing environment: the principle that marketing should be an outwardly focused function within a
business, helping it to understand and respond to the environment within which it exists.
- Marketing research: to ensure that the marketing decisions, particularly concerning customers and their
wants, are based on insights derived from research.
1 Marketing in the Twenty–First Century
Challenges for the Twenty–First Century are:
- Population
- Poverty - almost half of the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day
- Health - although improvements in health technology have raised the life quality, a number of health
issues continued to threaten the quality of lives worldwide
- Urbanization
- Resource depletion - more aluminium, copper, oil etc. were consumed in the twentieths century than all
previous centuries combined
- Eco-system damage – Eco-systems provide food and regulate the climate and temperature.
- Eroding cultural diversity
- Food
- Water
- Climate change
Sustainable development is the kind of development that meets the needs of the present, without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The key principles of sustainability are
either explicitly expressed in the Brundtland definition or implied by it:
- Needs: concern for social justice and an anthropocentric viewpoint.
- Equity: fair distribution of costs and benefits of economic development over countries, regions, races, age
groups and between the sexes.
- Intergenerationality: seeking balance between present needs and future generations.
- Global environmentalism: the environment as a holistic, dynamic and vulnerable physical system with a
finite ability to provide our production, and consumption systems with resources.
The Ecological Footprint has emerged as the world’s premier measure of humanity’s demand on nature. It
measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resource it consumes
and to absorb its carbon dioxide emissions, using prevailing technology.
Sustainability approaches over the past decades are:
- Status quo oriented: maintaining current lifestyle.
- Reform oriented: promoted by groups like the international union for conservation of nature.
- Transformation oriented: inspired by Club of Rome; aiming at societies being socially equitable,
ecologically oriented and ultimately sustainable.
The Evolution of Marketing Thought:
Marketing can be conceived in many ways: as a commercial activity, management function/department,
business process, philosophy or as a discipline. By the end of the 1970s, the evolution of the core components
of modern mainstream marketing thinking was largely complete. The foundations of marketing theory and
practice are:
- Marketing philosophy: meeting the needs and wants of the customer is the principle around which a
business should be organized and from which success in the market and profitability will flow.
- Marketing environment: the principle that marketing should be an outwardly focused function within a
business, helping it to understand and respond to the environment within which it exists.
- Marketing research: to ensure that the marketing decisions, particularly concerning customers and their
wants, are based on insights derived from research.
