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Travels and vacations organised by a large number of people to certain destinations in certain periods cause some negative impacts on the destinations in question. The concept of overtourism, which has become a current issue especially with the anti-tourism demonstrations in certain destinations such as Venice, Barcelona and Dubrovnik as a result of the increasing tourism carrying capacity, has been drawing attention in recent years regarding the sustainability in the destinations. Popular destinations that are affected by overtourism try to develop some strategies in order to minimise the negative impacts of overtourism. One of these strategies is the demarketing strategy that is developed by the destination stakeholders towards the target group. In this chapter of the book, the significance of the concept of demarketing in terms of struggle against overtourism was revealed and how demarketing strategies applied to the marketing mix and different strategies were approached in tourism studies was discussed in detail by addressing the current literature. In addition, suggestions were proposed to the popular destinations that feel the negative impacts of overtourism and will be affected by overtourism also in the future concerning creating their own demarketing strategies and destination planning.

The growing tensions related to overtourism and its influences, such as environmental harm to nature and residents' well-being, loss of authenticity and visitors' satisfaction, have triggered a rethinking of destination marketing strategies. Many destinations consider stricter measures to cope with this situation. Among others, demarketing initiatives, which aim at discouraging demand, are discussed as an alternative strategic orientation. Demarketing is not a new concept, but in complex tourism destinations with many attractions, stakeholders and tourists, its potential remains mostly unexplored. This chapter presents findings from two tourism destinations: one on a national scale, New Zealand, and one on a regional scale, the Lofoten Islands, Norway. Our results show that destination demarketing mix strategies are emphasised by both destinations. In an overtourism situation, it is surprising that general demarketing has limited relevance. Instead, we find evidence for a mix of mainly selective demarketing, but also synchromarketing initiatives (redistributing demand spatially and temporally) and counter-marketing efforts (tourists' code of conduct). Decisions related to the implementation of a demarketing mix depend not only on destination management in general, but also on long-term, sustainability-oriented and dynamic processes where stakeholders negotiate how they can adjust visitor demands. We refer to such strategic work as ‘Stakeholder Integrated Demarketing Approach’ (SIDA). The chapter provides an original contribution to tourism academia and practices while opening avenues for future research, particularly with reference to a demarketing mix strategy and the feasibility of SIDA in times when demarketing could develop as a tool to mitigate overtourism.

Green demarketing, which promotes anti-consumption as a more extreme sustainability tactic, could help consumers and societies move toward healthier consumption patterns while building strong, long-lasting relationships with consumers. As even the most committed brands find the need to oscillate between demarketing and conventional marketing for survival, this research tests how the congruency of the campaign shown on a brand's home page (owned media) and a following retargeting ad (paid media) could impact perceived congruency and further downstream effects. In doing so, this research proposes that the media context (i.e. news or shopping browsing context) in which the retargeting ad is embedded could determine how much congruency of the demarketing campaign across owned and paid media matters.

An experiment with a 2 (home page content: green vs. demarketing) × 2 (retargeting ad content: product vs. demarketing) × 2 (browsing context: shopping vs. news) between-subjects factorial design was employed with an online panel of 430 participants. The participants first saw the brand's home page content, then were assigned to a website browsing context where the retargeting ad of the brand was embedded.

In a news browsing context, users perceived higher congruency when product retargeting ads (vs. demarketing) were shown after a green home page exposure and when demarketing retargeting ads (vs. products) were delivered after a demarketing home page. The elevated perceived congruency successfully led to higher ad argument and ad attitude. These differences were not present in a shopping browsing context. These results showed that the congruency between the home page and the retargeting ad for demarketing campaigns mattered more in certain media contexts (i.e. news browsing context).

The study closes the empirical gap in demarketing brand activism campaigns by demonstrating when and how congruency between multiple owned and paid channels for demarketing campaigns impacts consumer responses. This study provides evidence of how the match of the demarketing campaign shown on a brand's home page and a following retargeting ad could impact perceived congruency and further downstream effects of ad argument and ad attitude while considering different browsing context effects.

This paper aims to consider the role of demarketing in the specific context of the marketing of places, and to introduce a typology of place demarketing and related place marketing activity.

Following a review of the extant literature on place marketing and branding, place image and demarketing, the paper outlines a number of different types of place demarketing and more unusual place marketing strategies, with examples of each.

The marketing of places has grown in scale and importance, both as a practice and as an area of academic research, as places have had to become more entrepreneurial in an ever‐increasing competitive environment. Places are increasingly conceptualised as brands to be marketed, and a key emphasis of such activity is the creation of an attractive place image and/or the dilution of negative place images. This is reinforced in the academic literature. Counter to this “conventional wisdom”, this article conceptualises various types of place demarketing activity and related place marketing activities; namely “passive place demarketing”, “informational place demarketing”, “crisis place demarketing”, and also “perverse place marketing” and “dark place marketing”.

This paper provides a unique counter to the “conventional wisdom” of place marketing by introducing the concept of place demarketing and perverse and dark place marketing which more explicitly accentuate the negative, rather than accentuating the positive which is the norm in this marketing context. A typology of such activities is introduced and the implications for place brands are considered.

This paper seeks to assess the strategic rationale and the effectiveness of government “demarketing” campaigns in the areas of smoking, binge drinking and private car usage.

A survey of 257 young people in Northern Ireland was carried out, seeking their opinions on the effectiveness of current demarketing campaigns.

Government demarketing initiatives are generally seen as ineffective, except for the banning of smoking in enclosed public places. Punishing disorderly behaviour caused by excess alcohol and making private driving more expensive are thought to achieve a certain degree of effectiveness.

The UK Government has put considerable effort into demarketing campaigns of this kind, with limited success. The need to rethink strategy and implementation is particularly urgent with regard to drinking behaviour and its consequences, because the government appears to be sending out mixed messages through its communications and its actions. Although continued pressure on smokers appears to be bringing results, the effectiveness of individual initiatives is variable. Lessons may be transferable to other areas of demarketing specifically and social marketing in general.

The paper reports the views of young people, who are the main targets of most campaigns of this nature, and are future smokers, drinkers and drivers if they have not established those behaviour patterns already.

If the events of late 1973 have been the catalyst for an accelerated transition from the age of low‐cost oil, they have also demonstrated, on the one hand, the feasibility of demarketing as an advantageous optional strategy for the oil‐exporting countries and, on the other, the inevitability of demarketing as an appropriate strategy to cope with the new situation in the oil‐importing countries. Writing in 1971, Kotler and Levy asserted that the marketer's task is not blindly to seek increases in sales; rather, it is “to shape demand to conform with long‐run objectives”, including “that aspect of marketing that deals with discouraging customers in general or a certain class of customers in particular on either a temporary or a permanent basis”, i.e., demarketing. Kotler and Levy could not have hoped for a better situation to prove the soundness of their ideas than the present oil crisis.

The increasing emphasis on sustainable practices requires innovative strategies and responses from the marketer. The fundamental purpose of marketing is re‐viewed in the light of growing demands for quality of life and the sustainability of resource use, and responsibility to society for the actions and effects of firms.

The discipline of marketing assumes its importance from establishing an interface with the consumer and the society at large. The idea of growth and increasing demand is implicit in marketing. The growing recognition of a fundamentally resource‐constrained environment requires a much guarded response from the marketer. Faced with the current situation of depleting resources, an ambience of increasing sensitivity to environmental issues and increasing demand of the consumer for a safer planet, how will the marketer justify pushing the product through the pipeline and on to the consumer? In the future it is reasonable to expect marketing processes to create or maintain demand and marketing to ration or reduce demand. The present study is an attempt to understand how demarketing may be used to further the sustainability agenda. It is an in‐depth review of literature has been undertaken to establish linkages between demarketing and sustainability.

The possibility of using demarketing as a marketer's response to sustainability concerns is clearly established and areas of further research are highlighted.

The paper opens up the debate on a subject that is clearly going to be high on the agenda for years to come.

The call for consumption reduction behavior has been getting more attention from scholars and practitioners. However, the consumption reduction often receives backfire from consumers because it does not follow the business philosophy of demand creation. Thus, this research dissolves this issue by using a holistic corporate social responsibility (CSR) approach regarding sustainable development.

A conceptual model was developed to represent the proposed relationships among the related variables. The current study employed an online survey to collect data from 341 international program students of three prominent universities in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The findings indicate that the perception of the holistic CSR negatively impacts perceived corporate hypocrisy, triggering in turn brand credibility, resulting in brand advocacy and mindful consumption behavior.

This research forms a holistic CSR including economic, environmental and societal dimensions and proposes that the holistic CSR triggers brand advocacy and mindful consumption behavior representing consumption reduction behavior via the mediating roles of perceived corporate hypocrisy and brand credibility. These findings contribute to theoretical and managerial implications in CSR practices with the aim of consumption reduction.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview and evaluation of the European Commission “HELP – for a life without tobacco” campaign.

Data collected via a web and a telephone survey is used to evaluate the campaign.

The findings reveal how a campaign targeted at individuals can lead to social change through involvement with key stakeholder groups including NGO's and the public at large. At an individual level the campaign was received favourably with overall high levels of awareness and engagement with the message. The associated web site was thought to contain trustworthy information and persuasive arguments about the dangers of smoking and passive smoking.

The originality of this paper lies in providing an example of social advertising across a large number of countries. Furthermore, this case study adds to the literature on demarketing, highlighting that demarketing can take place across two levels both at the citizen level and at the governmental level.