Marketing, Consumption Ethics and

The CEO of an association of peanut farmers in Malawi celebrating a fair trade sales agreement, which included a $110 per ton premium, with supermarket executives from the United Kingdom in 2006.

Photo credit: U.S. Agency for International Development

The relationship of consumption ethics and marketing is an important focus in sustainability. The tendency of businesses to market products that consumers may not need or to market products produced by questionable practices are two common areas of concern. Much of the focus on consumption ethics turns toward individual consumer choices. Frances Moore Lappé's Diet for a Small Planet was a popular, early-1970s call to rethink individual consumption habits.

However, focus on the capitalist system and marketing's role in consumption has also been popular. John Kenneth Galbraith, in his ...