Through our research, we contribute to the transition from meaningless to meaningful marketing practice. In short, we develop forms of marketing that do add value. Marketing that is no longer all about profit maximisation and economic growth but that enables us, humanity, to create a wellbeing economy by means of meaningful entrepreneurship.
The Unthinkable Marketing research group helps firms develop practical ideas for how they can pursue their commercial activities in a way that creates more instead of less wellbeing economy.
The central question that informs all our research in this regard is: What would marketing look like in an economy organised around broad-based prosperity? We want to visualise that kind of marketing, which is currently inconceivable to many, and so make it conceivable. There is an alternative. Concrete research programmes that contribute to this are: tackling greenwashing, developing alternatives to planned obsolescence, the use of insights from nature to make marketing more meaningful and developing collective innovation as a more effective alternative to the commercial market model in order to accelerate the introduction and acceptance of new bio-based products and services.