“Choose nature. Buy less.” Exploring sufficiency-oriented marketing and consumption practices in the outdoor industry

Abstract

The outdoor industry is highly exposed to the impacts of climate change and resource scarcity since its business models generally rely on an intact ecosystem. Companies in the outdoor apparel and gear industry actively implement sustainability strategies based on efficiency, consistency, and more recently also sufficiency. Sufficiency aims at an absolute reduction of consumption levels and entails strategies such as decreasing purchases, modal shifts, product longevity, and sharing practices. Outdoor companies increasingly use marketing to advocate sufficiency-oriented consumption. This exploratory study investigates outdoor companies’ sufficiency-promoting marketing strategies and activities. The study includes primary and secondary data of six outdoor companies. The analysis focuses on the companies’ sustainability visions, their marketing objectives and channels, and their marketing mixes. Following a social practice theory approach, we found evidence that our case companies supported all forms of sufficiency-oriented consumption practices with a strong focus on product longevity. Another central finding of our study is the emphasis placed on product and promotion policies to foster sufficiency-oriented consumption practices. Solely relying on these strategies will not suffice, however, to change unsustainable consumption practices. Achieving that change requires at least two further steps. First, companies will have to find an answer to the conflict between promoting sufficiency-oriented practices and economic growth. Second, the companies should start understanding consumption as a social practice, which would open new opportunities to create and steer their communities of practices. By changing elements or links of practices and attracting new members to their communities, companies in the outdoor industry can be drivers towards more sufficiency-oriented consumption practices. Further research should assess the impact of sufficiency-promoting marketing on consumer practices to estimate its potential for sustainable change.