Are marketers, the proponent for continuous economic growth, the ultimate climate criminals? So far, their job has been to create unnecessary demand and to promote the overconsumption and waste that threatens our very existence on this planet. In this book however, the authors explore the potential of marketing to do the opposite – that is to help create a more ecologically sustainable future. This book argues that marketing researchers and practitioners have a crucial role to play in reimagining and promoting alternatives to growth capitalism.

Existing sustainability narratives focus on sacrifice and limitation, rendering potential futures uninspiring and unappealing. Drawing on critical marketing scholarship and degrowth principles, this book proposes an alternative way of thinking—dystopian optimism—which allows us to imagine degrowth as desirable. The authors suggest that the transition to a post-growth future can be achieved by theoretically reimagining that future and outline practical ways for critical marketers to contribute to this transition. This book adds to the small but growing stream of marketing literature that concerns itself with marketing’s role in the currently unfolding ecological calamity. Marketers and marketing researchers will learn how marketing’s role in the calamity is threatening its legitimacy but, by following the chapter-by-chapter analysis, they will also learn how marketing can transform itself by focusing on selling sustainable futures.

This book is essential reading for those who want to understand why it is so hard for us to imagine desirable, sustainable futures and who want to be part of changing that. For those who are interested in saving, not just marketing’s legitimacy, but also the planet, it is a must read for scholars and upper-level students of critical marketing, marketing ethics, marketing theory and consumer culture.

Carys Egan-Wyer is a Senior Lecturer at Lund University’s School of Economics and Management, Sweden.

Jon Bertilsson is a Senior Lecturer in marketing at the Department of Business Administration, Lund University, Sweden.