Re-conceptualizing consumption as if nature mattered: Insights from ecological economics

This is a study of how consumption is conceptualized with regards to nature. Using the multidisciplinary field of ecological economics and the work of one of the leading ecological economists Herman Daly, as a theoretical framework, this study finds that the standard mainstream neoclassical economic theory (which mainstream marketing theory is also informed by) has disconnected concepts such as consumption and production from nature and the physical world. Since this disconnection has happened only in theory, not in reality, a re-conceptualization of consumption as connected with the biophysical reality is suggested, one that starts with replacing the preanalytic vision of neoclassical economics with the vision of ecological economics, one that reconnects consumption and value with the environment and the physical world that sustains them. Without doing this, consumption will remain a misleading concept, making it ever more difficult for marketing to take issues of sustainability seriously and to create value for all stakeholders, or even for customers in the longer run.