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Top1. Introduction
Marketing concepts and efforts need to be rethought from a sustainability point of view as well as because the Covid-19 pandemic caused changes in consumer behavior.
In his article, Philip Kotler is arguing about consumerism and sustainability. He discusses the issue from two perspectives (Kotler, 2021). On the one hand, the companies need to promote demand and production to promote economic growth and lessen unemployment. On the other hand, more consumption leads to unsustainability, air pollution, climate change, and diseases. The outcome of the dilemma is considered to be either demarketing - marketing efforts to discourage demand and consumption (Kotler, 2021).
The ecological problems (pollution, resource exploitation, increasing waste, etc.) cause social and economic problems in the long-term (Ali & Puppim de Oliveira, 2018). The concept of Circular Economy tries to resolve this issue.
Another aspect is anti-consumerism that has a capacity to contribute more equal distribution of wealth. According to the Oxfam inequality report, the world’s richest 1% owns more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people (Oxfam, 2020). The pandemic has caused an economic crisis globally, which hits mostly poor populations. As a result, anti-consumerism activities can be raised running into dissatisfaction with brands that do not conquer the pandemic crisis.
Moreover, excessive consumption can be derived from unperfected products. This takes place when a consumer needs to buy several auxiliary products to use an actual product. For example, consumers need to buy adapters to connect old cables to new notebooks; or a company suspended production of cartridges for old printers, so consumers have to buy a new model although the old one is still working. Additionally, many companies do not offer their repair services, especially in low-income countries. Consequently, even when the equipment is slightly damaged, a consumer has to buy a new one. Such needs lead to increasing demand, and cannot be viewed as unnecessary consumption.
Ethical and responsible marketing throughout the life cycle of a product can solve many problems ranging from ecological issues to overconsumption. Thus, marketing should be transformed towards more ethical behavior to answer the ongoing changes in society globally.
The pandemic crisis caused business to revise their mission and values towards more society orientation rather than focusing solely on the maximization of stakeholder profit.
Even though it is possible to increase or decrease demand through marketing tools, ethical marketing is not a manipulation instrument. Consumers have knowledge and information as they are living in the information age. Thus, companies with unethical marketing can easily lose trust. On the contrary, companies producing sustainable, green, durable, perfect products will succeed in the market.
The research aims at analyzing the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on marketing. It examines the main challenges marketers faced due to the pandemic. The research seeks to explore the underpinnings and effects of the pandemic crisis on marketing and outline post-pandemic tendencies in this field. In order to achieve the research objective, the following research questions were specified.
RQ1: How marketing has been influenced by the pandemic?
RQ2: How is marketing strategy changing because of the pandemic crisis?
RQ3: What main challenges were marketing managers faced in Georgia?
RQ4: What main opportunities see Georgian marketing managers in the post-pandemic times?
The rest of the paper is structures as follows. First, the relevant literature is reviewed on marketing strategies and the current crisis. Second, the research methodology is developed based on qualitative investigation followed by the research results and the discussion section. Third, the conclusions are offered with implications for research and practice. Finally, the research limitations and suggestions for future studies are also presented.