The Myth of Green Marketing: Tending Our Goats at the Edge of Apocalypse

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

Toby Smith concludes that “we have been too long held ransom to
productivist hegemony. The ecological crisis is multifarious and seems
overwhelming in its implications. Broad radical structural change is
required. This is unlikely to happen.”

This volume is a highly academic work in the field of marketing
analysis. On the way to the rather bleak conclusion above, the author
leads the reader through a convoluted and detailed introduction to the
theoretical background of the subject and then an analysis of why green
marketing has not had a significant environmental impact. A lack of
political, economic, and social will to change is one of the reasons for
this failure. Corporate expertise in the manipulation of the consumer
through advertising is another. As Smith argues, “Consumers are lulled
into complacency by the mistaken belief that they are actually doing
something.”

The Myth of Green Marketing is not an easy read. At the outset, the
author defines a vocabulary that the reader has to remember and
incorporate as he or she reads. General readers and, indeed, most
undergraduate students will have difficulty comprehending this book.
Recommended for academic libraries that support research programs in
marketing and environmental studies.