Lahlou, Saadi (2009). Social Psychology, Marketing, and Re-installing the World. Keynote speech. EMAC 2009: Marketing and the core disciplines: rediscovering references. 38 th annual Conference of the European Marketing Academy. Nantes, 26-29 may 2009. Social Psychology, Marketing, and Re-installing the World. Saadi Lahlou London School of Economics and Political Science s.lahlou@lse.ac.uk Social Psychology has always contributed to Marketing. But this talk will not focus on reclaiming imports in a pro domo sua plea. I will take advantage of the fact I am addressing this large and influential audience of Marketing specialists to disseminate a vision for a more sustainable world, a way Marketing could help with de-growth and more sustainable ways of life, in contrast with a consumption- encouraging and brand support approach that has been mainstream in the past decades; and suggest a transition path using sociability as a value. But as it would be impolite to completely hijack this time slot, I shall first provide you with some social psychological take-away: 1 - a new technique, the Subcam 2 - the installation theory, a framework for analyzing complex socio-technical systems “Installation theory” describes the evolution of our societies. This framework was created with action in mind: it is usable for governance, design, and more generally for those who want to change the World. It will show where Social Psychology as a specific discipline fits into the larger picture. Finally, I shall advocate for a new ethical stand in using the power of Marketing to implement de-growth Social Psychology and Marketing Because Marketing is interested in persuasion, changing attitudes and provoking specific behaviours, it has always used psychological theories, and more specifically theories coming from Social Psychology. Among these, for example theories of Influence (Ash, 1952), Norms (Sherif, 1935, 1936), Attitudes (Thurstone, 1928; Likert, 1932; Allport, 1935; Heider, 1946; Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980), Persuasion (e.g. Hovland & Weiss, 1951 among many others), Social Representations (Moscovici, 1961, Abric, 1984, Lahlou, 1998), Dissonance (Festinger, 1954, 1957, Brehm & Cohen, 1962), Active Minorities (Moscovici, 1979), Categorization (Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963); Commitment (Kiesler, 1971; Joule & Beauvois, 1998), to name only a few. And this from the early ages. As early as 1928, the famous work of Edward Bernays on Propaganda, one of the many ancestors of Marketing -although not the most politically correct and claimed today- explicitly refers to several social psychologist’s work in order to address and influence the masses to sell them products, for example by manipulating the nature of the source of information to for better influence in claims. And I will come back later to Lewin’s famous studies in the 1940’s on how to persuade American consumers to eat glandular meat (Lewin, 1943, 1952). Apart from theories and experiments, Social Psychology also brought many a technique which is now used in Marketing, especially in the consumer research side: to name the most prominent, in-depth interviews, focus groups, attitude scales, laboratory experiments on choices.