Drawing on my empirical research with consumers and businesses, I will explore the tensions between marketing, consumption and sustainability. The concept of the ethical consumer will be examined, including the conflicts and challenges people face in everyday life as they strive to be responsible citizens in their shopping behaviours. My research has identified how complex ethical consumption decisions are, and this lecture returns to my earliest scholarly interest in the context and nature of embryonic ethical consumerism, at a time when few academics wrote about marketing ethics, and even fewer studied ethical consumer behaviour. In this lecture, I will update this in line with increasingly vocal trends in marketing literature regarding ethical consumption, sustainability, political consumerism and social marketing. Coinciding with our biggest consumption festival of the year – Christmas – I will explore why it is that motivating the ethical consumer requires appealing to concerns that are already rooted in their daily practices.

BIOGRAPHY

Professor Marylyn Carrigan obtained a first-class degree in Marketing from the University of Strathclyde, completing her doctoral thesis at the University of Birmingham, where she gained her first Chair in 2011 after working at the Open University. She is now Director of Research for Keele Management School, and Professor of Sustainable and Ethical Marketing.

Her research studies consumer ethics, pioneering work on the implications of attitude-behaviour gaps for ethical consumption. Her recent research explores consumption reduction and resistance motives, cross-cultural ethical consumption, and broad ethical and sustainable consumption challenges in household and community contexts, including the luxury fashion and food sectors.  She has received grants from the ESRC, British Academy and the Academy of Marketing, has published extensively, and serves on the editorial boards of several management journals. Marylyn has also been a member of the Standards Committee for the Responsible Jewellery Council, and an advisor to Fairtrade Gold.

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