The Virtuous Circle: Hard Sustainable Science Versus Soft Unsustainable Science Within Marketing Functions of Fashion and Luxury Sectors and How to Prevent ‘Soylent Green’ from Happening

Abstract

Not merely a business function, the view that marketing is being informed from science is increasingly gaining gravitas. However, the notion of ‘scientific marketing’ seems somewhat paradoxical and in considering marketing as a science, one enters into a deeply subjective and intricate matter. In considering this notion from a simplistic standpoint, it is clear that there are two distinct categories in which marketing falls into. Strongly influenced from marketing research, and equally from the intuitively creative proposals that arise from such research, one can deduce that scientific marketing incorporates both hard and soft sciences. However, this is where such a complex notion arises. Considering of how marketing is informed by phenomena such as culture, management and personal preference and relating this to the multitude of disciplines held by science, such as biology, psychology, neuroscience and sociology; one begins to understand what a vast and complex concept scientific marketing is. This piece seeks to analyse and clarify how marketing activities are informed by both hard and soft sciences in the light of the fashion and luxury sectors. This chapter will examine and evaluate how such complexities in scientific marketing aid and hinder this particular business function and then seeks to how the future of marketing in the fashion and luxury sectors will be informed by this scientific approach. The luxury and fashion industry caters to both sustainable and non-sustainable consumptions. In this chapter, we explain some definitions such as natural, organic, bio and synthetic. We examine what has led to the entropic syndrome from energy consumption to pollution, the real ‘umweltschutz’ has begun industry cases and interviews show the technicalities from production and consumption, enhancing some problematic elements with facts and data, dealing with problematic elements in clothing supply chain such as raw materials, water, energy, climate change, waste, chemicals emissions, disposal or biodegradation, on the one hand. On the other hand, a specific section of this chapter is analysing the industrial face of textiles and clothing, with references to the food, perfumes and cosmetics industries: industrial ecology in textiles, problematic areas and solutions. Definitely not a simple optimistic Stairway to heaven.