Marketing (going for the overkill) and UN Sustainable Development Goals 2015 ..

Is there any relationship, adverse or beneficial, between Marketing and over-consumption  ??

What is the function of Marketing ? Marketing is more about developing and managing the demand for an innovative product or service which earlier did not exist in the market. Innovation brings a new product or service and marketing tries to reach it out to the world of customers, find the right customers for the right products or services at the right cost performance mix .

According to Prof. Theodore Levitt of HBS, Marketing invariably views the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse and satisfy customer needs. ie. Marketing has more to do with creating a demand for a product and getting customers to pay for it, than actually selling a product to the customer.

It s a pity, how many of these UN SDG goals are supported by
the Marketing function in an organisation ?

More often than not, we find this process of creating demand for a product or service, which is what Marketing is actually worried about, overshoots itself. It identifies a non-existing need, and develops the product and supply chain mechanism to help meet that need for a cost. This process of trying to satisfy a non-existing need by exploiting the resources of the physical world is in itself, against the environment. This non-existing need, created by Marketing, is in itself the start of an unsustainable lifestyle, as it exploits physical resources which otherwise would have remained in the physical world for future generations to consume.

How far can we resort to Marketing in the physical world ? or what constitutes environmentally sustainable marketing and what constitutes environmentally unsustainable marketing ? Where do we draw the line ?

Referring to the above Sustainable Development Goals formulated by the United Nations Forum for Climate Change as per the Paris Accord of 2015 - 2030 to limit the increase of global temperatures across the world to within 2 deg C, and to limit to 1.5 deg by 2099 AD, is Marketing acting against this need of the global community to limit consumption and splurge ?

Marketing plays an important role in establishing relationships between customers and the organizations offering to the market. The marketing function is also tasked with branding of the organization, participation in publicity activities, advertising and customer interaction through feedback collection. Timothy Mahea

Marketing is acceptable when it limits its actions to creating customer awareness. But what will happen if Marketing goes for the overkill, finding a  product or service that can harm the environment or otherwise, creating non-existential demand for that product / service and then going for the sale. It is not sustainable Marketing. And we need to stop such dangerous marketing practices for the better future of the world.

Marketing within existing and future customer demand is fine, but not making customers create artificial needs for the customer and make him spend and waste more where actually he does not have a genuine need.

George..