The invention of the ecological consumer: A new history of green capitalism

This article reconstructs the history of the ‘ecological consumer’ as a discursive construct that took shape within U.S. marketing research in the early 1970s, tracing how it became part of the vocabulary through which business actors could conceptualise environmental responsibility. Rather than documenting the implementation of sustainability strategies, it examines how marketers developed analytical frameworks that rendered ecological responsibility intelligible in market terms. Situating this development within broader corporate responses to environmentalism and shifts within the environmental movement towards market-based solutions, the article shows how marketers recast ecological critique as consumer preference and market segmentation, positioning the ecological consumer as a category and a potential sales target. Thereby, they reframed corporate narratives from resisting environmental pressures to viewing them as profitable opportunities. Offering a cultural-ideological history of this moment in green capitalism, the article reveals actors, contexts, and ideas that laid the conceptual foundations for its breakthrough in the 1980s.