Macromarketing insights ninety minutes at a time: A season with Forest Green Rovers, the world's greenest football club

Peterson (2016) in his first publication as the editor of the Journal of Macromarketing called for more research into marketing dynamics and practices functioning at a meso / place-based level. This paper responds to this call by embedding its research in the places and spaces of the World’s greenest football club, Forest Green Rovers (FGR). Through the application of visual ethnographical participatory research FGR is empirically explored as a place capable of educating, influencing and changing consumption choices to favour sustainability. The study offers a novel macromarketing perspective on the practices of a football club and demonstrates the potential of its ‘tangible symbols’ to stimulate sustainable consumption. It shows how specific ‘in place’ symbols of sustainability are perceived as normal and thus lack any real impact, while others such as vegan only food are more significant. It also indicates that the symbols of sustainability functioning at FGR play a role in reaffirming the authenticity and genuine commitment that the football club and its owner have to promote sustainability and veganism. Subsequently, the paper presents both empirical and theoretical contributions to macromarketing by demonstrating the workings of a meso level place to facilitate sustainable consumption and theorising a football club’s commitment to sustainability as a macromarketing phenomenon