Beyond greenwashing: Addressing 'the great illusion' of green advertising

Béatrice Parguel () and Johnson Guillaume ()
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Béatrice Parguel: DRM - MLAB - Dauphine Recherches en Management - MLAB - DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Johnson Guillaume: DRM MOST - DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: This article critically reviews how marketing research has investigated green advertising and greenwashing over the past three decades. First, we present how the mainstream literature initially considered green advertising primarily as a branding project, until the greenwashing debate emerged in the 1990s and became the key focus of marketing research on climate change in the late 2000s. Adopting a more critical stance, we then argue that the unanimous and uncritical condemnation of greenwashing in the marketing academic literature actually helps to perpetuate the legitimacy of green advertising, and so prevents challenge to the foundations of the neoliberal agenda. We call this phenomenon the "great green illusion."

Keywords: green advertising; greenwashing; CSR; regulation; self-regulation; neoliberalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-his, nep-hme and nep-mkt
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03425494v1
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Published in Revue de l'Organisation Responsable, inPress

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03425494

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