The peacock's tail and the case of the stolen shoes: Unexamined materialism revisited by virtuous marketing and servant leadership

Evolutionary biology and sexual selection theory have contributed a new perspective to our understanding of conspicuous consumption, famously embodied in ' the peacock's tail'. The paper uses this as a framework to look at a cruel case of materialism where poor people exposed to heavy advertising for a particular athletic shoe committed crimes to obtain these coveted shoes. The paper explores how servant leadership and other virtues in marketing management, along with' the peacock's tail', can assist us to better handle this type of materialism