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Consumers need to move to more sustainable/ethical behavior. Previous research has explored changing consumption with most studies concentrating on specific aspects of sustainable/ethical consumption. This study uses a full range of citizen defined ethical choices. Applying Rasch modeling to consumers' reports of ethically motivated consumption choices, a hierarchy of ethical choices is created. This hierarchy of ethical consumption choices allows the application of stages of change theory to progress consumers up the hierarchy of ethical choices, with implications for public policy, pressure groups and consumers.

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Brands are ubiquitous and adorn contemporary marketing systems. Modern branding practices spawn contradictory social mechanisms, value co-creation and value co-destruction. This paper considers the societal implications, including personal, psychological, social, ecological, and economic consequences of branding. It posits brand externalities as meaning-led discrepancies and symbolic spill-overs igniting mechanisms detrimental to the integrity of the social system. Brand externalities accompany the assortment of brands in contemporary marketing systems. We propose a taxonomy of brand externalities and elucidate societal consequences of branding upon brand exchange actors themselves, their immediate others, future others and general others. This stakeholder orientation sets a future research agenda and calls for redefining branding from the system’s perspective.