Marketing and its Social Implications - Concerns and Initiatives

Companies adopt marketing practices to delight their customers, develop customer relationships, and generate revenues and profits. However, sometimes, companies focus solely on their selfish motives of growth and prosperity forgetting about customer welfare and welfare of the society. Marketers are criticized for such practices and the negative impact created on the society. The practices include high prices of products, high distribution costs, high advertising and promotion costs, excessive mark-ups, deceptive practices, high-pressure selling, questionable products, planned obsolescence, and poor service to disadvantaged customers. Marketers are criticized for creating false wants and materialism, scarcity of social goods, and cultural pollution. They are accused of harming and reducing competition. In this age of social marketing, companies should consider societal concerns of various stakeholders and maintain a balance between their own objectives of generating revenues and profits and long-term societal requirements. This will help in sustaining the society.

The inadequate approach of Directive (EU) 2019/771 towards the circular economy

The current social context (overconsumption, planned obsolescence, etc.) will be presented in this paper to illustrate the need for the European Consumer Law to be more aligned with sustainability objectives. To this end, the relatively recent Directive (EU) 2019/771 on certain aspects concerning contracts for the sale of goods will be analysed to conclude that it does not reflect any of the guidelines contained in the two Action Plans for the circular economy (2015 and 2020). Despite the fact that this Directive (EU) 2019/771 aims at full harmonization, a certain margin of manoeuvre is (fortunately) granted in favour of the Member States. Finally, a reference to the possibility of the market moving towards circularity (as there is now a greater demand for sustainable products) will also be made.

Product life-cycle – problems of product planned obsolescence and fast fashion

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an idea according to which enterprises take responsibility for the effects of their activities and undertake actions aimed at reducing negative effects and improving quality of life of a broadly understood group of stakeholders. In turn, marketing is a concept according to which all activities of enterprises are undertaken with the intention of satisfying consumer needs in the best possible way—by creating and modifying products and services. It would seem that they both—CSR and marketing, share the same goal—providing value to consumers in order to improve their quality of life. However, it can be seen that there is a whole scope of activities under the marketing instruments that primarily serve only to intensify sales. This would not raise any major objections if not for the fact that the occurrence of the demand for restitution is accelerated due to the planned shortening of the product life-cycle. This is in contradiction with the idea of CSR and sustainable development as well as sustainable consumption. So why is it a practice that does not cause widespread outrage and resistance from buyers? And how should it be dealt with? Two widely implemented strategies of manufacturers and retailers are described in that chapter: the 1st one is planned product obsolescence, the second—fast fashion. Retail chains follow the fast fashion trend—offering customers short, frequently changing product lines. However, seeing the effects of this type of strategies, it is possible to undertake a number of activities aimed at reducing the negative effects of these actions.

FROM PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE TO THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY IN THE SMARTPHONE INDUSTRY: AN EVOLUTION OF STRATEGIES EMBODIED IN PRODUCT FEATURES

Planned obsolescence can artificially increase sales by stimulating desire or perceived need. This can be done in many ways and some companies are releasing newer models sooner than necessary or engineering the product to fail after a certain amount of use. In recent years, we have observed a change in the pattern of planned obsolescence strategies employed by technological companies, shifting from aesthetic to technological obsolescence. The reaction to this model comes from social enterprises and grassroots movements addressing the circular economy and repairability. This paper illustrates these relationships in context, taking the mobile phone industry as a case study. We focus on product architecture and product features, as a reference point to discuss the embodiment of strategies, and the degree of control the consumer is given for repairing the product. Using netnography as a method to collect data in a digital-mediated environment, this paper highlights how planned obsolescence strategies are embedded in product characteristics and summarises their evolution. It concludes by opposing planned obsolescence strategies to circular economy principles to discuss more sustainable pathways for the smartphone industry.

Electronic Waste & The Production Of Space

The future of waste is electronics. The conditions of planned obsolescence combined with our throw away culture of capitalistic consumption has created the largest and fastest growing waste stream responsible for spatially transforming environments. Through the process of reclaiming precious materials contained within our dysfunctional electronics, urban mining becomes a form of resistance to the economics of consumption by recognizing electronic waste as a resource and turning its perceived detritus into value. If waste is central in the processes of capitalist urbanization, can architecture improve the condition of configuring industrial form to create ecology between e-waste, culture, and urbanity? Are there opportunities for e-waste and its architecture to have a public value and legibility in the city? Within this space of speculation, this thesis will explore the untapped architectural possibilities associated with the management of electronic waste and the production of space.