Sustainability has emerged as a critical macromarketing perspective over the last
five decades. Starting with the early concerns in the 1960s about the world's finite
resources that would limit economic growth, sustainability thinking has expanded to
encompass societal issues and ecological and environmental considerations in economic
and governance activities. Governments and businesses need to act in tandem to address
myriad world problems associated with climate change, pollution, environmental degradation,
depleting resources, and the socio-economic disparities that characterize persistent
world hunger and poverty. A vital aspect of this challenge is to stop or reverse unsustainable
production and consumption that have hitherto been pursued as part of market-driven
business activity. Marketing, through its market-driven consumption-oriented practices,
may have knowingly or unknowingly promoted these unsustainable production-consumption
practices. Therefore, it needs to change its orientation from merely being responsive
to consumer and market needs into a more responsible approach that drives markets
for sustainable products and services and builds sustainable societies. In this paper,
we review how sustainable marketing considerations have grown but not to the extent
of becoming the driver of markets and business practices that meet sustainability
goals. To this end, we present a framework for driving sustainable consumption through
corporate marketing strategy and relevant government interventions. We highlight four
strategies of corporate marketing and four types of government intervention for sustainable
marketing.
