Why aren't they listening to us? Exploring Marketing literature's (lack of) presence in the most influential summary of climate change science

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment report is the summary of science relied upon by the UN and national governments to understand the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change. The report from Working Group three examines how to mitigate climate change and explicitly addresses consumer behaviour and (over)consumption. Despite its importance, and examination of many topics of interest to marketing scholars, only 0.2% of the report’s citations are from marketing journals. Using content analysis and keyword searches on three literatures, this paper presents initial explanations for this finding. The analysis highlights a mismatch between the data present (emissions and environmental impacts) and research type (applied with sectoral focus) in the report, and that in marketing sustainability special issues and marketing scholarship. It contributes by highlighting how marketing scholarship can potentially improve its impact and hence the quality of the report.