I said something about Marketing being the spurting root of evil in the middle of another rant and Ubers comment stuck in my head - and so off I went to find out wtf.

I dug out a bunch of papers, did some research, you can imagine a cut scene montage of me scouring through journals for ethics articles which actually question the root ethicism of the profession of the people to whom these journals were being targeted, printing, stapling, reading, chucking over my should, drinking overpriced branded coffee, reading blogs, printing, punching, using treasury tags, reading art books on rock posters, printing, reading and eventually arriving back here.

The general gist of my findings are this - to quote O’Shaughnessy, J. and O’Shaughnessy, N. J. (2002) “Whatever influence marketing has had on the creation of a consumerism tied to the narrowest form of hedonism, it has been in the role more of a facilitator than of manufacturer. If someone were to insist that we name a single culprit, it would be the development of a strong value orientation that puts unrestrained freedom at the forefront.” A later response to the O’Shaughnessy’s by Andrew V. Abela (2006) takes issue with their points but doesn’t provide anything concrete. Abela notes “the existence of a causal relationship [between the development of consumerism and the rise of modern marketing] and its likely direction remain unclear”.

Marketing and consumerism took off at the same time. Which came first?

Ref:

O’Shaughnessy, J. and O’Shaughnessy, N.J. (2002) “Marketing, the consumer society and hedonism”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol.36 Nos 5/6, pp.524-47

Abela, A.V. (2006) “Marketing and consumerism a response to O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol.40 Nos 1/2, pp.5-16

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