Alternative economies are built on shared commitments to improve subjects’ well-being. Traditional commercial markets, premised upon growth driven by separate actors pursuing personal material gain, lead to exploitation of some actors and to negligible well-being gains for the rest. Through resocializing economic relations and expanding the recognition of interdependence among the actors in a marketing system, economic domination and exploitation can be mitigated. We define shared commitments as a choice of a course of action in common with others. We empirically demonstrate the existence of shared commitments through an in-depth study of a spatially extended alternative food network in Turkey. Finally, we offer an inductive model of how shared commitments can be developed between local and non-local actors to bring new economies into being and improve the well-being of consumers and producers, localities, markets, and society.
Approaches to enhancing sustainability have largely focused on altering individual consumption behaviors. However, this focus on the individual consumer has been recently critiqued because the behavior of individuals is situated within wider socio-cultural contexts. Thus, the sustainability research agenda is shifting away from individual consumers towards understanding consumption practices, social networks, material infrastructures and organisations of various forms in which consumption is problematized and consumption choices are reflected upon and negotiated. These social spaces need to be understood if change is to be truly achieved. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in an Irish ecovillage, we examine how ecovillage members negotiate sustainable consumption at the everyday level. Analysis reveals how members of the ecovillage employ tactics that encourage reflexivity in the everyday. Specifically, these reflexive tactics work together to confront routine consumption, create alternative infrastructures that support sustainability, and foster critical engagement.
This exploratory essay identifies and examines a variety of religiously affiliated or inspired enterprises operating in otherwise secular marketplaces. While explicitly recognizing that some marketplace manifestations of religion can be controversial, even dysfunctional, it argues for the evident macromarketing relevance of this project. The approach for analyzing what this paper refers to as "religion-motivated enterprises" (RMEs) consists of (1) a nominal classification scheme to illustrate and categorize the diversity of RME examples; (2) some foundational principles shared among major faith traditions that provide a basis for an RME ethos; and (3) basic propositions that, with future empirical testing, may explain the contributions of these organizations to improved market performance. Our commentary includes environmental factors that prompted the establishment of many RMEs, the nature of their sustainability, and the importance of mission statements to their operations. Finally, we identify opportunities for additional research and summarize the macromarketing contributions of this article.
Sustainability research in the macromarketing literature has been largely limited to exploring sociocultural values and norms, business practices, public policies, and economic conditions. Although the concept of ‘values’ constantly recurs in the literature, religious perspectives have received little attention. By presenting an alternative interpretation of what have traditionally been construed as anthropocentric religions, this study highlights the underutilized potential of religions as effective vehicles for initiating cultural transformation towards sustainability. The article calls for contextualized approaches to ecological sustainability that take into account the values and worldviews of target communities, which are often shaped by religious systems. The article concludes that including religions in the sustainability discourse can benefit macromarketing theory and practice in a variety of ways.
This paper explores the institutionalization process of complementary currencies; understanding the institutionalization of alternative economies is key in order to assess their sustainability. Drawing from neo-institutional theory, the paper examines the objectification processes in a sample of Spanish and Greek recently formed time banks. The paper focuses on the rationalization stage, i.e. when rules, practices and symbols are embedded in the organization, and studies how symbols and norms establish the framework for social interaction and make the common space of action visible. The main finding of this paper is that timebanking is subject to multiple logics, both inter and intra time banks. These logics lead to adopt different organizational forms, promote disparate forms of actorhood, and adopt different pricing and accounting systems. Yet, these objects are not aligned with one another, and tensions between the symbolic and the functional are found. Institutionalization is not yet complete as there are still missing blended models that bridge multiple logics.
Fragmented marketing debates concerning the role of alternative economies are attributable to the lack of a meaningful macromarketing dimension to which alternative economic practices can be anchored. This research frames an evaluation of existing macromarketing developments aimed at reformulating the mindless pursuit of economic growth. Raising concerns with the treadmill dynamics of marketing systems, three different approaches - green growth, a-growth and degrowth - are critically evaluated to: (a) introduce degrowth as a widely overlooked concept in the macromarketing literature; (b) expose how each perspective entails a specific organization of provisioning activities; and (c) foreground the role of alternative economic practices beyond the growth paradigm. We conclude that socially sustainable degrowth is the missing voice within macromarketing debates that lie central to elucidating the future direction of alternative economic practices.
Three distinct literatures address social change: social entrepreneurship, community action research, and social marketing. While these activities have a shared goal to create social change, each orientation approaches their activities from a different perspective. The current work explores how macro-social marketing efforts can benefit from alternative orientations to enhance enduring social change. Social entrepreneurship highlights the importance of enduring resources and considering scalability. Community action highlights the importance of obtaining legitimacy and buy-in from multiple entities in the social change system. Social marketing highlights the importance of an end-user perspective and the application of behavioral theories to create systematic change. This work describes a case study in the Kenyan education context to highlight the value of this approach.
Although social marketing is regarded as an effective consumer-oriented approach to promoting behavioral change and improved well-being for individuals and communities, its potential for generating societal change is still under-researched. This article examines government-led macro-social marketing in Vietnam, a country where the national government is interested in using social marketing to engender societal change. Using a search strategy, we identify four macro-social marketing programs that target smoking cessation, helmet use, drunk driving prevention, and nutrition. These programs have achieved meaningful outcomes but are facing some critical challenges. We argue that policy change can become an important component of social marketing intervention but that it may not be sufficient to create societal change in Vietnam. Measures are required so that policies are implemented. Furthermore, social marketers need to consider the social and cultural environment that enables societal change to occur.
This research explores how marketplace dynamics affect religious authority in the context of Neopagan religion. Drawing on an interpretivist study of Wiccan practitioners in Italy, we reveal that engagement with the market may cause considerable, ongoing tensions, based on the inherent contradictions that are perceived to exist between spirituality and commercial gain. As a result, market success is a mixed blessing that can increase religious authority and influence, but is just as likely to decrease authority and credibility. Using an extended case study method, we propose a theoretical framework that depicts the links between our informants’ situated experiences and the macro-level factors affecting religious authority as it interacts with market-mediated dynamics at the global level. Overall, our study extends previous work in macromarketing that has looked at religious authority in the marketplace) and how the processes of globalization are affecting religion.
This study examines the websites of two religious organizations representing opposing sides of the religious response toward environmentalism and climate change. This research seeks to understand how each side communicates with followers. Using rhetorical framing analysis, it is shown the religious right advocates a dominion stance and uses a romance genre filled with stories, contrast, spin, appeals to logic, and rhetoric of hope and fear. The religious left advocates a stewardship stance and uses a romance genre filled with stories, appeals to logic, and rhetoric of hope. Cultural cognition theory of risk perception reveals each side subscribes to opposing cultural worldviews of an ideal society. The hermeneutical analysis suggests that the debate is not a conflict over the science of climate change but instead is a conflict over cultural worldviews of an ideal society. This manuscript offers suggestions for macromarketing in confronting the conflicting views exhibited in this study.
This paper examines how entrepreneurs operating in underground markets come to see laws governing marketing systems as illegitimate and explores the role identity plays in motivating entrepreneurs to challenge existing institutions. Analysis of interviews with 27 cannabis dispensary founders showed that entrepreneurs came to reject medical cannabis prohibition as illegitimate after direct experience with both cannabis and traditional medicines convinced them the factual basis upon which prohibition rested was flawed. Perception of prohibition’s illegitimacy fostered entrepreneur identification as a member of a superior in-group constrained by an illegitimate institution. Pursuing opportunities in illegal markets then became a vehicle for entrepreneurs to enact valued identities by challenging and undermining prohibition. This analysis extends work on informal economy entrepreneurship by showing that dis-identification with formal institutions does more than enable entrepreneurs to recognize economic opportunities ignored by those working within institutional boundaries; it also opens existing marketing systems to decay by providing economic and psychological resources for dismantling the laws that govern them.
Social change through the use of social marketing has often grappled with the principle of "social good". Building on the tradition of Klein and Laczniak (2009, 2012) in applying Catholic Social Teaching (CST) to commercial marketing, this paper outlines the points of similarity and divergence of contemporary social marketing frameworks with CST. As social marketing theory and practice moves away from its marketing parent discipline roots, this paper argues that CST with its focus on human dignity, subsidiary and the common good provides an increasingly relevant and compatible framework with which to evaluate ethical issues emerging in the social marketing domain. There is potential for social marketers to draw on the intellectual work underpinning CST to inform social marketing practice in engaging in the delivery of social benefit independent of the religious tradition.
Despite predictions that organized religion would decline with modernization and economic development, some forms of Christianity are thriving, particularly evangelically-oriented churches in the Southern hemisphere. However, their doctrine and strategies are not without controversy. Megachurches, Protestant churches with congregations exceeding 2000 members often embrace marketing and preach a version of ‘prosperity gospel’ where material success is taken to be proof of spiritual blessing. North American in origin, this form of religious organization has expanded throughout South East Asia. In this paper, we use a case study of a megachurch in Singapore – City Harvest Church – to explore how their involvement in marketing and the marketplace is constructed. Using a discourse analytic methodology, our findings show how the church purposefully uses the normative dichotomy between the sacred and secular to frame the meaning of their involvement in the marketplace, targeting particular types of enterprising and professionally-oriented individuals to embody their mission. Further we show how this construction reflects the pragmatism, entrepreneurial and business orientation of Singapore. Our research suggests potential for further study of the way the relationship between religion, markets and marketing are constructed, using methods that incorporate an understanding of context.
Little work has been done on understanding the ways in which resistant consumers interpret the causes and responsible agents for structures of domination. Drawing on collective action frames, we examine how a consumer resistance movement defines both its antagonists (adversarial framing) and its advocacy strategies for response (prognostic framing). Discourses of resistant consumers are analyzed through the lens of power, since to explore these frames is also to study the question of who is perceived as the locus of power and how power/resistance is exercised to achieve the movement’s goals. A kaleidoscopic framing emerges that reveals multiple points and forms of resistance. To counteract the underlying attribution of responsibility (the materialistic ideology dominant in Western societies), consumers bring into play a repertoire of actions that enable them to construct both themselves and others as ethical persons. Based on these findings the research contributes to the literature on consumer resistance by broadening the most commonly held vision of power, namely, power as domination and control possessed by distinctly identifiable agents. This study, by contrast, provides evidence of discourses that assume power is exercised in a reticular, shifting, and productive manner, a vision of power that corresponds closely to that articulated in the work of Foucault and Arendt. An emphasis on this perception of power relationships in the realm of consumer resistance extends and enriches understanding of a movement’s dynamics, whilst also enhancing the movement’s capacity to change the materialistic ideology that it refuses to accept.
This research investigates ways American consumers utilize stereotyping to reconcile environmental and social values with the Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP). We examine stereotypes of two groups, consumers who are exceptionally concerned about environmental and social effects of their consumption and unconcerned consumers, as constructed by 22 informants who (1) have purchased products which could be considered green, humane, or socially responsible and (2) identify as "normal," "average," or "in-between" relative to the two groups. Adopting a socio-political approach to stereotyping, we examine informants’ conceptualizations of normal and abnormal beliefs, values, and practices and explicate four ways informants reconcile inconsistent values and norms. We contribute understanding of consumers’ DSP reproduction processes to previous work on the DSP, understanding of ways consumers use stereotyping to reconcile their values and behaviors to research on the infrequency of ethical consumption, and evidence supporting previous assertions that green consumption may be counterproductive to sustainability.
This research explores the macro-level influences of religion on the marketplace by showing how religion influences beliefs of dominion and stewardship, which subsequently influence marketplace attitudes and sustainable behavior. A survey of 1,101 adults was conducted, with results showing religious individuals express greater beliefs of dominion while non-religious individuals express greater beliefs of stewardship. Stewardship beliefs in turn positively influence one’s tendency to engage in sustainable behavior, while dominion does not. These beliefs also mediate the relationship between religiosity and behavior, though the effects of dominion are negative and weaker than those of stewardship. We also provide insight into whom consumers hold responsible for solving sustainability issues, with the non-religious placing responsibility on consumers and the religious placing responsibility on producers. We build off value-belief-norm and attribution theories to discuss how our findings contribute to sustainability in marketing systems and provide greater understanding of the intersection between religion and sustainability.
This study provides a review of religion-related research published in the Journal of Macromarketing (JMK) from 1981 to 2014. A systematic review of the journal identifies 19 key articles at the intersection of religion and macromarketing. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are utilized to review this body of work in terms of frequency, content, methodology, and authorship. Results reveal four categories of religion-related research in JMK: 1) the impact of religion on macromarketing issues, 2) the impact of macromarketing issues on religion, 3) religion as a theoretical perspective, and 4) religious groups/individuals as a research context. Opportunities for future research on macromarketing and religion are discussed.
Drawing upon the successes and criticisms of Fairtrade certification and labeling systems, this article considers how such successes may be replicated within Halal food supply chains. While the advantages of a trusted labeling system are evident, the highly complicated nature of Halal food production, driven by the heterogeneous religious requirements of its consumers, conspires to make the development of such a system both costly and impractical. Adopting Hunt’s (1981) concept of macromarketing and Layton’s (2007) definition of a marketing system, the article builds a conceptual model of the Halal food labeling marketing system. It presents a comparative analysis of the Fairtrade and Halal systems that can be viewed as push- and pull- driven respectively, and proffers suggestions for future research around the influence of consumer religiosity upon food production systems.
This study explores the role that social media serves in mediating and connecting religious communities and markets through a netnographic study of the search for halal food in the U.S. We find that social media websites can serve as important tools for overcoming obstacles to finding and verifying halal food sources, including barriers of physical access, authenticity, and quality. At a macro level, social media platforms have the potential to moderate the relationship between religion, the market, and consumption in a number of important ways, such as providing a venue for dialogues related to standards of commitment and faithfulness, serving as a community-based arbiter of standards, supporting identity constructions, and helping to overcome the marginalization associated with minority populations.
Interstoff (launched in 1959 by Messe Frankfurt) and Première Vision (launched in 1972 in Lyon) became "information dissemination gathering locations" for the fashion and textile industries all over the world. The two events mobilized the fashion prediction methodology as a key tool to impose themselves as the favorite information gatekeeper for the industry. Their goal was to complement the trading of goods with the exchange of adequate and strategic information for companies that were dramatically constrained by immediate global competition and rapidly changing seasonal models. As a result the two trade fairs progressively adopted a new information-centric model and contributed to maintain Western Europe as the central location for the dissemination of fashion trends worldwide. Messe Frankfurt also pursued an alternative geographical strategy. It did this by following the global relocation of textile manufacturing and setting up fairs around the world, particularly in China, before ultimately ending the Interstoff event in Frankfurt in 1999.
This article explores the notion of consumer empowerment in ethical consumption communities, known as responsible consumption communities (RCCs) in Spain. Although consumer empowerment has previously been discussed in the ethical consumer field, mainly in relation to notions of voting in the marketplace, it has yet to be explored thoroughly. In particular, the concept of empowerment should be moved beyond an individualized lens of analysis, acknowledging connectedness of persons. A combination of qualitative techniques was employed, including focus groups, in-depth interviews, observation, and documentary analysis. Our empirical case shows that consumer empowerment should be understood not in relation to consumption, but in relation to new forms of social organizing and experimentation that emerge around consumption.
This article provides the theoretical underpinnings for the concept of macro-social marketing. Macro-social marketing seeks to use social marketing techniques in a holistic way to effect systemic change, as opposed to individual level change. The article provides the conceptual roots of the concept derived from systems theory and institutional theory. It starts by explaining what types of macromarketing issues – dubbed here wicked problems – can be approached using macro-social marketing. Systems theory is then used to explain the interconnectedness of wicked problems throughout the social and cultural systems, as well as the material environment and marketing system (Dixon 1984). Subsequent sections apply institutional theory to explain how systemic change can be brought about through the use of macro-social marketing, and discuss change at a broader conceptual level, as well as how this process then trickles down to individual organizations within the marketing system.
While the marketing literature has investigated the availability and affordability of food and food stores from various angles and in many different global contexts, a recent phenomenon that has only received scant attention in the marketing literature thus far is the appearance of food deserts in urban environments. Food deserts have been observed in Western markets (e.g., in the U.K. and the U.S.) with a literature base that originates in urban planning. This article represents the first attempt to introduce the food desert phenomenon to the marketing literature overall, and to the macromarketing context specifically. A definition of a food desert is created from a marketing perspective. The impact of emerging food deserts on market segments of vulnerable consumers, such as the elderly or mobility-impaired consumers, and the ensuing public policy implications appear particularly relevant to macromarketers. This study investigates the absence of food-sources in a context that may not appear as a likely candidate for this phenomenon, a transitional economy in Southeastern Europe, Croatia. Evidence for the existence of a food desert is provided through primary and secondary data, and public policy implications are discussed.
Recently, scholars have been calling attention to the macro-social and institutional structures shaping development and welfare. In this study we offer a socio-temporally situated understanding of quality of life (QOL) in a developing country setting and investigate the effects of macro structures on consumer well-being. Specifically, we focus on neoliberal development (led by the business sector, rather than led or directed by the government) and examine how a neoliberal transformation of the marketplace affects consumers’ QOL perceptions. The context of our research is Turkey, a developing country that has been an avid follower of neoliberal policies since the 1990s. We focus on three key macro-social developments that have been shaping Turkish society in the past decades – globalization, religion, and economic growth – and seek to understand how these forces influence consumers’ satisfaction with life. Our study contributes to the literature on development and QOL by first, showing the moderating effect of income, and second, introducing faith and global brands as important variables in conceptualizing QOL.
Marketing and consumer research literatures have been enriched through a growing interest of academics and practitioners for poverty research, which have mostly focused on describing the life and culture in poverty and the coping strategies of the poor. In this study, we go one step further, showing how low-income consumers’ reactions and coping strategies differ, in relation to the impact of the marketing institution on their lives. We thus contribute to the previous literature through investigating the interplay between internalization and resistance, in shaping consumers’ reactions to their poor conditions in particular, and to the marketing institution in general. Discourses produced by our informants reveal the significant use of religious beliefs by the poor in developing certain coping strategies and in the different stances they take towards poverty. We propose a framework to articulate this role of religion by identifying the resistance and internalization processes as a response to poverty.
This article presents a simple analytic framework that can be used to write economic histories of the distributive trades where both retailing and wholesaling are systematically discussed. It is argued that a focus on the innovation of formats of distribution, in turn related to technological and organizational innovations and institutions, laws, rules and norms, is a fruitful approach when analyzing national histories of this economic sector and when making international comparisons. The framework is derived from previous historical studies, where a selection of ten major works is analyzed and discussed. The major strengths of the suggested framework are that it is firmly grounded in previous discussions, but also that it is simple, focused on important aspects, and adaptable to any place or any time.
The evolution of retailing has interested academics across a range of disciplines including economics, history, geography, and marketing. Due to its interdisciplinary appeal, the corpus of knowledge on retailing is composed of many disparate variables of analysis – from transaction costs and entrepreneurs, to environmental factors and the dispersion of stores. In consequence, the literature that attempts to explain retailing evolution presents as a patchwork, and extant theories remain disconnected because of their narrowness of focus. This literature review applies a macro and systems theory approach to the multi-discipline literature, and links together bodies of work that, until now, have remained conceptually unconnected. This provides a meta typology of six factors that could explain change in retailing: economic efficiencies, cyclical patterns, power inequities, innovative behavior, environmental influences, and interdependent parts of the system in co-evolution.
Advertising for investment products has changed over the past 50 years. Ads initially targeted investors as defined in standard finance: that is, as fact-seeking utility maximizers. Ad portrayals gradually changed to target consumers, defined as people pursuing diverse life projects. Verbal and factual appeals were supplanted by rhetorical, figurative, pictorial, and narrative appeals. Standard finance views such advertising as problematic, because it may be deceitful and misleading. Perspectives drawn from strategic marketing, in conjunction with behavioral finance, and also Consumer Culture Theory, help to explain why mutual fund ads violate expectations from finance. A macromarketing perspective goes further, explaining investment advertising as a historically situated human action subject to social forces. Finally, a societal marketing perspective uncovers moralistic underpinnings in the critique of mutual fund ads.
Consumers increasingly turn to online health communities for health information and social support. Yet, the type of value consumers derive from online health communities is not well understood. This study examines social support as the mechanism through which consumers co-create and experience different types of value. Cutrona and Russell’s typology of social support and Holbrook’s consumer value typology are applied to posts and threads obtained from two online communities for people with Parkinson’s Disease and ALS. Results demonstrate that online health communities give consumers the opportunity to create and experience forms of consumer value that would not otherwise be available in a traditional health delivery system. The results lend support to a re-conceptualisation of medical practice and health delivery for consumers with chronic conditions.
An assortment offered by a marketing system can be defined as a set of separable or distinguishable products, services, experiences and ideas, or aggregates thereof, assembled in response to or anticipation of customer demand. As marketing systems form and grow, assortment diversity often increases, raising concerns about excessive or inadequate customer choice. Changing assortment diversity may also point to deeper issues of emerging dominance and inequality, to concerns about marketing system resilience in the face of environmental turbulence, and to issues of access to vulnerable segments. After highlighting the contribution of Alderson in emphasising diversity in buyer and seller heterogeneity, we note the differences between offered, accessible, desired, acquired and accumulated assortments, and the difficulties in establishing categories or types in the measurement of assortment. Variety, disparity, balance, and association are identified as providing measures of assortment diversity. We then considers the ways in which such measures may be pointers to underlying marketing system characteristics, including the offer of too much or too little choice, problems of stability in the face of external or internal change, system resilience or capacity to adapt to change, and issues around assortment and quality of life. We conclude with suggestions as to further research into assortment diversity and marketing system characteristics.
Examining the critiques of the current fashion system and alternative approaches to fast fashion reveal a growing awareness of the negative implications of mindless fashion production and consumption. The purpose of this study is to understand how the fashion system driven by speed, change, product obsolescence, and aesthetic fads, can be challenged and repositioned to encourage greater sustainability. Slow fashion has been selected as a context to examine the emergence of an alternative system, as it develops a holistic understanding of what constitutes sustainable fashion. However, it is still unclear whether the slow fashion movement can eventually challenge the global dominance of fast fashion, as many trade-offs and conflicts are involved. We aim to contribute to previous scholarly work by shedding light on the motivating factors that encourage different actors to participate in the slow fashion movement and on the barriers that keep the network from mobilizing. We also offer possible remedies that we hope will be beneficial for scholars and practitioners working to build a more sustainable fashion system.
Today's consumers are more apt to enact the "politics of choice" rather than "politics of loyalty" as responsible members of society. This shift from being the consumer with the sole intent of pursuing self-interest to that of the normative "citizen-consumer" who practices consumption with an eye towards the greater good, denotes the overlapping aspect of consumption and citizenship in everyday practices. Through qualitative analysis the authors posit a conceptual framework of citizen-consumer orientation. The framework highlights the way citizen-consumers navigate constraints and tensions posed by the dominant food system (and mainstream lifestyle paradigm) through sustainability oriented, shared practices in naturalistic foodways. Shared practices are advanced as ways in which the individual burden of sustainable practices is reduced.
Two recent books, both by journalists, expose major weaknesses in marketing because of what is ignored in the standard treatment. The marketing story tends to end with the purchase of a good or service. But what is bought is eventually discarded and what happens when goods are thrown away is part of the marketing system, too. This part of the system is largely ignored. How much we actually throw away is alarming, mostly because we are unaware of it. Some of it enters the global recycling industry, but the vast majority goes into the trash sector. It may or may not actually get land filled. It may just float around in the oceans. We did not get to where we are by accident. Marketing and marketers helped in a big way. Macromarketers must help us understand the predicament we are in, and then help get us out of it.
This article discusses the "Lights in Darkest England" (LIDE) match campaign, rolled out by General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army in London’s East End 1891-1901. The purpose is to draw comparison between this campaign and the definition and principles of social marketing as they are understood today. A case study approach is used. First the Victorian match industry is described and then the Lights in Darkest England campaign is compared with the elements considered integral to an effective social marketing approach. The Lights in Darkest England match brand was not successful as a commercial enterprise based on sales of matches from the dedicated match factory. However, profit from match sales was not the main intent of this commercial endeavour. Rather, improvement in the harsh working conditions of Victorian match industry workers and the alleviation of phossy jaw were the key objectives. In this regard, the campaign was influential in the interplay between the marketing systems and society of the day. By examining the historical roots of contemporary social marketing a valuable contribution is made to the future development and sustainability of social marketing into the future.
This introduction to the first installment of a double special issue on "Sustainability as Megatrend" provides a summary of the nine articles presented here, against a backdrop of the importance the Journal of Macromarketing has placed on sustainability research. We wish to thank all of our authors for submitting their scholarship. With their contributions, the standing of this Journal in the sustainability discourse is guaranteed well into our futures.
This research, based on the French macro-context, explains sustainable discourses in advertising from 2007 to 2012, during which time the concept of sustainability developed significantly and became institutionalized at a national level. This article defines sustainability broadly and explains the issue of inequality, particularly gender inequality, as originating in various forms of ascendancy over nature. Next, using a socio-semiotic reading, it identifies and deciphers five types of brand narratives on sustainability – Prometheus, Gaia, the Labyrinth, an automated world, and a sublimated nature – and their corresponding gender ideologies. Finally, the article discusses how feminist thought helps interpret major issues within sustainable communication, which reproduces both the dominant sustainable paradigm and conservative gender representations despite the national institutionalization of sustainability and a rich tradition of French feminist thought.
Modern man’s unsustainable systems of production and consumption are symptoms of underlying problems in how we understand and relate to the material world. Socially constructed dualities between the social and natural sciences and between meaning and materiality have encouraged societies to indulge in magical thinking about the ability of material goods to deliver nonmaterial wellbeing, which in turn places marketing at the center of the destructive overconsumption of natural capital. This essay calls attention to a growing philosophical countertrend, neomaterialism, that is reshaping research in such a way as to collapse such false dualities. The new materialism, carried over to marketing practice, demands a meticulous, if not obsessive, attention to material things, their provenance, their agency and their downstream destinations, thus forming the basis of a more sustainable society.
Brands are one of marketing’s main foci. But while the American Marketing Association’s official marketing definition continues to evolve, its brand definition has remained stagnant for nearly 80 years. This article argues that the AMA’s simplistic trademark conceptualization of brands is increasingly out of touch with marketing theory and practice. Integrating the consumer culture, marketing semiotics, and General Systems Theory literatures, we re-conceptualize brands as semiotic marketing systems. This follows marketing systems being core to macromarketing. It also obeys marketing systems needing to contemplate their meaning infrastructures given today’s progressively symbolic markets. The antecedents, operation and benefits of this new systems approach to brands are discussed. Brands are re-defined as complex multidimensional constructs with varying degrees of meaning, independence, co-creation and scope. Brands are semiotic marketing systems that generate value for direct and indirect participants, society, and the broader environment, through the exchange of co-created meaning.
The recent article by Gurrieri, Previte, and Brace-Govan provides an earnest, existential challenge to both social and macromarketing in the health domain, as well as more generally. Their research deals with such serious issues as obesity, breastfeeding, and exercise. Yet, while the authors draw most impressively on theoretical thinkers and perspectives, they also misconstrue what they find and contend so one-sidedly that much of what is understood as social marketing becomes obviated and consumers are ironically situated in the hands of various food and medical interests. This commentary provides a much different reading of these issues. It critically deconstructs the authors’ view and then offers a quite divergent one that takes a more balanced, if paradoxical perspective regarding health issues. While health issues are complex, and a certain problematizing indeterminacy sometimes enters in when solutions are proposed and tried, the present critique delineates the necessary roles social and macromarketing can and indeed must play in the provision of good health for all.
Increased economic power has positioned China within the global elite, yet China’s legitimacy remains low with regard to hierarchies of taste. Drawing from Bourdieu and Elias, this article offers an account of the global dynamics of status contests, and the role played by cultural capital and notions of civility and vulgarity. Specifically, we examine how U.S., UK, and Chinese media represent Chinese consumption of fine wine, and particularly that of Château Lafite, in the 2000 to 2013 period. Our analysis reveals four major ways in which Chinese fine wine consumption is framed—as vulgar, popular, functional, and discerning—and highlights tensions between Western and Chinese terms of cultural legitimacy. The research uncovers nuanced dimensions to the "East/West" divide in terms of the grades of cultural capital, competing logics of valuation, and modes of civility at play. Macromarketing implications of fine wine consumption in a fragmented and complex market are discussed.
There are millions of "subsistence" entrepreneurs around the world, located primarily in developing countries, engaging in micro enterprise to eke out a survival living when other labor market options become unavailable. However, the vast majority of them are trapped in a "survival and maintenance" cycle. This article focuses on a phenomenon involving a subset of subsistence entrepreneurs who do manage to thrive and grow their enterprise. We label the phenomenon "transformative subsistence entrepreneurship," reflecting (1) significant positive change in their personal, social and economic well-being, and (2) significant positive influence on their immediate communities. Drawing on 18 in-depth qualitative interviews, we show how the phenomenon plays out and how transformative subsistence entrepreneurs carry out vital marketing activities in their local exchange contexts, rising above substantial life challenges and end up improving the economic capacities of their communities as well. We contend that the contributions of a network of such transformative subsistence entrepreneurs, each seen at a micro enterprise level of analysis, can accumulate and coalesce to emerge as the backbone of the informal economy at a macroeconomic level.
The accelerated pace of consumption in the Western world has led to an increase in clothing and textiles disposed of in the garbage rather than being reused or recycled. The purpose of this article is to increase understanding of how clothing and textile consumption can become more sustainable by demonstrating how members of a network view and deal with this problem. The study is based on meetings over one and a half years and on a survey. Different views on the problem as well as various solutions on how to increase reuse and recycling of clothing and textiles are presented, including means and challenges. A macromarketing perspective, involving different actors in society, is necessary in order to make consumption more sustainable and for finding long-term solutions. We argue that understanding symbolic consumption and the fashion system can contribute to the macromarketing study of societal development from a sustainable perspective.
The Batwa of Buhoma, Uganda, a remote hunter-gatherer community were evicted from their forest in 1992 in order to provide a sanctuary for the mountain gorillas. Based on individual and group interviews, this commentary provides a case study that describes how the Batwa now address their basic needs, and how they participate in the formation of subsistence markets and microenterprises. In positioning this study, four types of subsistence economies are identified: nature-based, nonprofit-based, market-based, and hybrid. In addition, different types of subsistence markets are identified, namely, within community and cross community markets. This then raises several questions for future research and for subsistence communities like the Batwa’s regarding how to achieve sustainability.
Recent legislation by the United States and European Union governments now mandates the provision of country-of-origin (COO) information at the point of purchase for a variety of meats, fruits, vegetables, and other assorted food products. To better understand the significance of these regulatory changes, two decades of existing COO food labeling research are synthesized, reviewed, and discussed. The implications for two primary sets of actors within aggregate marketing systems, consumers and practitioners, are then discussed from a macromarketing perspective. Based on the reviewed literature, the authors conclude that little generalizable knowledge about COO food labeling effects exists, and further identify a lack of sufficient theoretical application and development as a primary reason. Consequently, the exact impact of mandatory (and voluntary) COO labeling initiatives for consumers and practitioners still remains unclear and highly debatable. Thus, as these initiatives continue to make country-of-origin labeling more commonplace around the world, it is crucial that additional theory-driven research be conducted, especially from a macromarketing perspective, to foster more generalizable knowledge about the complex role of COO information in aggregate food marketing systems.
Foreshadowing the beginning of the Great Depression, George "Tex" Rickard succumbed to appendicitis in 1929. A leader and representative of sport marketing during the 1920s, Rickard altered the urban landscape in American cities by definitively showing that promoters could use sports in arenas (i.e., indoor) to help those venues be economically viable through the production of awe-inspiring spectacles. In this article, the authors critically examine sport marketing as a tool to help reframe the career of Tex Rickard and ultimately the development of Madison Square Garden III in the context of macromarketing. This historical and illustrative case study will also demonstrate that sport marketing is somewhat different than traditional marketing through an emphasis on media and community relations. Finally, we will show how Rickard made use of the traditional "marketing mix" (i.e., place, price, promotion, and product) to capitalize on the urban setting and other strategies employed to promote products and services.
This article begins by considering how current models of vulnerability do not adequately capture situations arising from physical, cognitive and behavioral impairment. Using specific examples and prior studies, three dimensions – ability to remediate, duration, and stability of the underlying challenge – are suggested to enhance our understanding of situations that lead to vulnerability. As these dimensions are explored, four categories are proposed for such situations: Straightforward Resolvable, Complex Resolvable, Straightforward Unresolvable, and Complex, Dynamic Unresolvable. These categories are leveraged in the discussion of the embodied consumer to develop propositions related to the likelihood someone will experience vulnerability in a given situation. We also address how the experienced vulnerability of one person ripples outward to create secondary vulnerability in his/her social network. After using these categories to understand how various impairments may lead to vulnerability, we then focus closely on how specific physical, cognitive and behavioral impairments limit market choice and market flexibility. Normative market expectations regarding the body and its cognitive capacity present fertile ground for exploring consumer agency and how actors relate to one another in the market. Theoretical propositions, as well as broader areas of inquiry, are developed to help identify areas for future research.
Livestock production has an enormous impact on climate change emissions, resource use, habitat loss, and the availability of staples for consumers in developing countries. Despite this, macromarketers have paid little attention to environmentally sustainable diets. Although researchers in health studies have identified the need to mainstream plant-based diets, they downplay the socio-cultural meanings associated with meat and vegetable consumption. We propose the challenge of change in eating habits reflects a classic agency-structure tension and draw on Kurt Lewin’s force-field theory to examine five forces for/against the mainstreaming of sustainable diets (human health, environmental sustainability, morality, identity, and institutional factors). Policy solutions are identified with particular attention paid to expanding the size of the health vegetarian segment.
Although today’s public markets echo ancient market forms, they incorporate many original aspects which merit scrutiny because: 1) they are connected to a dominant neo-liberal market functioning and structures; and 2) they illuminate important tensions that question how sustainability is practicable at a macro level. Taking an ecological perspective, we show that public markets bring certain benefits in relation to sustainability. Significantly, however, we illustrate how these perceived benefits are underpinned by three compromises or "trade-offs" that public markets also invoke and that operate at inter-social, inter-nation, and inter-gender levels. We argue that what may look sustainable on a local level can raise challenges to macro sustainability more broadly conceived. Our contribution is twofold. First, we offer an updated, comprehensive definition of public markets and discuss to what extent they may represent a megatrend. Second, we contribute to the literature on sustainability by conceptualizing the notion of ecological sustainability, which suggests that an overarching analysis of sustainability reveals possible internal trade-offs between its economic, social, environmental, and ethical constituents, which the case of public markets helps highlight
Promoting products and companies as both socially and environmentally sustainable is a core component in many contemporary marketing strategies and increasingly the concern of many consumers. While the effects of corporate social responsibility on consumer perception and firm performance have been widely investigated, research has yet to explore how and why these expectations themselves change over time. In this study, I use institutional theory and the theory of structuration from sociology to evaluate the shift in norms regarding environmental responsibility in the United States over a thirty-year period. A qualitative and quantitative content analysis of newspaper articles shows that environmental discourse has shifted from an emphasis on protection of the environment against toxic, modern encroachments, to a set of frames that emphasize the efficiency of technology and efficient use, if not improvement of, the environment. The stakeholders held responsible for protecting the environment have also changed from government actors to company and consumer stakeholders. These findings help to reveal the discursive underpinnings of CSR perceptions at a societal level and have implications for conceptualizing the legitimation of environmental corporate practice.
Once regarded as dens of iniquity, injurious to human health and social welfare, cities are increasingly seen as a savior for our species. The world is becoming ever more urban and the benefits of city living – ecological benefits, educational benefits, financial benefits, well-being benefits (Glaeser 2011) – are ever more widely recognized. Marketing too is embracing the urban imperative. Recent years have witnessed a surge in geo-branding and scape-based scholarship generally. This essay reflects on the proliferation of place marketing publications and draws macromarketers’ attention to a hitherto overlooked aspect of the literature. Namely, our propensity to personify places, to treat them as living things, as organic entities – as people, in effect – that grow, flourish and finally pass away. Metaphors also suffer from the ravages of time, as do ostensibly healthy academic disciplines like marketing.
Is sustainability a megatrend? If so, what does it mean to be a megatrend, and how can macromarketing advance our understanding of sustainability as a megatrend? This article makes three contributions to research on sustainability as megatrend. First, if offers a set of elemental criteria to understand the concept of a megatrend. Megatrends are complex in nature, whose understanding requires the skills and perspectives of macromarketers. Second, this article articulates two schools of thought in Macromarketing scholarship, a Developmental School and a Critical School. The former operates from the premise that marketing systems are important parts of the solution to the human condition, while the latter operates from the premise that they are part of the problem. Each concludes that sustainability is the megatrend of our time, but for different reasons. Finally, this article offers directions for macromarketing scholars, who are uniquely positioned to explore sustainability as megatrend.
The aim of this research is to show that though French public policy advocates sustainable development, it unwittingly deters non-institutionalized sustainable practices. To illustrate this paradox, this research focuses on bulky item collection and the urban gleaning to which it gives rise. A qualitative study shows that urban gleaning comes into conflict with the hygiene norm that pre-exists concerns about sustainability. To ease these tensions and authorize themselves to glean, gleaners draw on a repertoire of justifications around sustainability that condemns waste and attributes altruistic intentions to disposers. In turn, to put their items out on the sidewalk, disposers must negotiate tensions in relation both to the hygiene norm (not polluting public space) and to the sustainability norm (not throwing away items that could still be used by other people). To justify their act, disposers construct an image of gleaners, to whom they can "pass on" their possessions. This double process appears to create a new form of sustainable circulation through which objects are redistributed and which has important implications for macromarketing.
The ability of consumer judges to identify sustainable messages in environmental advertising and the effect of these messages is explored. A content analysis provides insight into these judges’ perceptions of the depth of environmental advertising messages. An experiment investigates the influence of sustainable messages and includes collection of cognitive response data to evaluate the cognitive dimension of sustainability messages. Content analysis results suggest that sustainability messages may influence how environmental advertisements are perceived. These findings are supported by the cognitive response data, which shows cognitive differences across advertisements, and the experimental manipulation that suggests sustainable ads may be more involving to consumers.
Sustainability research has coalesced around the notion that many environmental problems can be framed as social dilemmas in which conflicts often arise between consumers’ pursuit of individual, short-term and self-directed goals and their support for collective, long-term and socially-oriented interests. The need to address this challenge is simultaneously becoming more important and challenging for macromarketers and policy makers as the incidence of individualistic consumer traits (e.g., narcissism and self-esteem), already high in general population, continues to grow throughout Western societies. This article examines why and how such individualistic tendencies (here, narcissistic exhibitionism) may impact consumers’ pro-environmental behavior. This research identifies an underlying mechanism (i.e., altruism) for the proposed effect. The potential effects of manageable boundary conditions for this relationship are also proposed and tested across four studies.
Macromarketing has traditionally accounted for the influences of political, social, technological, legal, and economic forces on marketing. Equally powerful and prevalent, the ethical and equitable expectations resident in the environment have more typically been addressed at the more granular level of relationships. Here, the authors introduce these factors as a priori, macro-level environmental influences shaping consumer expectations for ethicality and the equitability of the exchange environment at the macro level. Empirical examination of the insurance industry reveals that consumers’ expectations arising outside of the contractual realm govern perceptions of actual or anticipatory exchange equitability, including the rationalization of otherwise unethical acts and their normative standing. The more complete model addresses the interplay of the macro- and consumer-level variables contributing to the perpetuation of a socially sanctioned, dysfunctional relationship.
Exporting presents one of the most viable ways to internationalize, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. In order to enhance national exporting activity, nations strive to implement various export-oriented policies including export promotion (EP) programs. Unlike mainstream inquiry, this article takes a public policy perspective by analyzing EP program firm-level allocation through the lens of distributive justice. The study conducts exploratory research with the goal of discovering the properties of the resource allocation policy behind specific Croatian financial aid-related EP program. Based on the findings from ANOVA and regression analyses, it is evident that exporters with larger resource capacities receive significantly higher EP funding, but fail to improve their export performance in the following year. These findings question the plausibility of current EP practices, which are discussed in the theoretical and public policy implications. In the end, the limitations and directions for further research are provided.
This article examines the interactive relationship between intangible, human capabilities (operant resources) and tangible, physical assets (operand resources) in an era of global interconnectedness. It does so within the context of service-dominant logic and the challenge of sustainability in a world of resource scarcity. Introducing object-oriented philosophy as an alternative framework, this paper challenges ideas about the superiority of certain kinds of resources while confronting a pervasive culture of demateriality in marketing and contemporary post-industrial theory – the idea that "stuff" does not count. The article offers a parsimonious model of a more holistic conceptualization of resources. It demonstrates the complex entanglement of operant and operand resources, finding that this entanglement is a precondition to marketing-related issues of natural resource selection, globalization, sustainability, and distributive justice.
This article reports an analysis of the Chinese discourse on McDonald’s during three historical periods: 1978-1991, 1992-2000, and 2001-2012. It finds that the Chinese discourse had gradually diversified in its content and agents involved. It argues that the evolving meaning of McDonald’s in China was a product of, and closely reflected, China’s pluralizing political and economic structure. The Chinese case illustrates that, to acquire a balanced and nuanced understanding of brand meaning, scholars should not only examine agency but also structure so as to avoid the pitfalls of either blind pessimism or naïve optimism.
Greedy Bastards, eager to achieve success in the business world, need helpful advice on steps toward climbing to the top. Drawing on the author’s 35-plus years of experience in teaching MBAs, the present treatise offers tips in the form of a self-help tutorial intended as an inspirational guide. In that spirit, the discussion covers pertinent aspects of business education; impression management (Dre$$ for $ucce$$); tips from travel services; ethics; borderline-legal corruption; unintended benefits such as obesity, traffic, cell phones, and impacts on popular culture – culminating in a Greedy Bastard’s Honor Roll of Civic Achievements.
"New science" has profound implications for business. Industrial capitalism can no longer power prosperity. The mass society worldview is giving way to individualisation. The "standard enterprise logic" is challenged. Marketing has operated as an attention technology for sellers competing to capture customers. However, in an intention economy buyers are a scarce commodity, and it is intentions that drive production for specific needs. Change in marketing is overdue. Despite increased social disharmony and the mounting evidence of looming environmental disasters, progress is stagnant, often negative, as marketing exacerbates the problem by misallocating negative value goods. The commonality in the contemporary crises of financial meltdown, human-made climate change, economic inequality, distrust of government, and the social corrosion of consumerism is the moral limits of markets in civic society. Sustainable living provides the higher purpose of marketing: well-being and human flourishing. Sustainability is a socio-cultural, inherently ethical, respectful, intellectual construct for a life of careful and equitable resource use within limits and inter-dependencies. It is not the antithesis of competitive business, indeed business can flourish by competing on, and being rewarded for, the accomplishment of enduringly valuable outcomes. Sustainability is a transcendent societal "mega"-megatrend.
In this introductory editorial we briefly discuss anti-consumption research and society, the focus of this special issue of the Journal of Macromarketing. We then introduce the four peer reviewed articles and two invited commentaries that comprise the special issue, and conclude with future research opportunities.
How society affects public welfare and businesses via boycotts has become increasingly important in a connected world. Yet, research on the topic remains scant and focuses mostly on why consumers boycott. This study moves beyond motivations of why consumers participate in boycotts, and examines instead, why individuals are not willing to boycott. This is important because the accounts for non-participation may not be the exact opposite of the reasons to participate. Informants’ reasons for not boycotting were classified into three broad themes: "out of sight, out of mind," "urge for freedom and self-defence," and "counterarguments – scepticism or accounts." The hermeneutic analysis provides a framework for understanding boycott failures.
Consumer adoption of renewable energies is an important step towards less carbon-intensive and more sustainable energy systems. But despite growing ecological awareness and articulated preferences for green products, renewable energies face slow rates of diffusion in consumer markets. This has been hard to explain given consumers’ favorability to the concept of products that lower one’s impact on the natural environment. This study uses data from 254 homeowners in Ireland to investigate the psychological process of adopting a renewable energy system – solar energy panels. Applying Behavioral Reasoning Theory (BRT), this research examines a proposed model in which reasons both for and against adopting solar panels mediate the relationship between consumers’ attitudes, values and adoption intentions. Results suggest the model is generally supported with both reasons for adoption and reasons against adoption having countervailing influences in the psychological processing of adoption intentions. These findings suggest that researchers and marketers should include mediating constructs, such as (i) reasons for adoption, (ii) reasons against adoption, and (iii) attitudes toward a technology when attempting to explain how consumers think about the adoption of renewable energy systems.
Contemporary artists deal with many forms of social interaction, including consumption. In this commentary, I walk the fine line between art and fashion, distant sisters in history. Referring to fashion projects presented at dOCUMENTA(13), I show that art’s aesthetic language may speak against fashion’s ultimate commercial meaning. The aesthetic perspective is important because reasons against consumption are not merely intellectual. They include many emotional and symbolic forms of knowing, in this case about self-degrading styling concepts that are possible only through unsustainable production by global fast fashion retailers such as H&M, Zara, and Forever 21 and other cheap fashion brands. Referring to art critics’ assessments and aesthetic theory, I interpret my observations through theories of anti-consumption. Included is a review of Elizabeth Cline’s critical book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion that reveals some of the motifs of the fast fashion industry resonating in contemporary artworks and investigates opportunities to reject, resist, and reclaim fashion.
The carrotmob—often defined as an inverse boycott—is a new, fast-diffusing form of pro-environmental consumption focusing on societal issues. Organized by activists, consumers swarm a predefined store and collectively buy its products. In return, the company engages in pro-environmental actions. This is the first study that empirically analyzes consumer attitudes toward carrotmob and participation intention. The article compares the drivers of carrotmob and anticonsumption (e.g., ecological consumer boycotts). Both forms of consumer activism are triggered by ecological concern. However, carrotmobbing differs because participants do not have to sacrifice their preferred consumption patterns. Study 1 (n = 437) demonstrates that willingness to make sacrifices moderates the impact of ecological concern on attitudes toward the carrotmob. Study 2 (n = 153) establishes external validity by modifying the carrotmob target. As expected, the carrotmob is an alternative consumption option attractive for consumers unwilling to make sacrifices in expressing their environmental concerns.
This article explores the normative barriers to anticonsumption practices and highlights that not-for-profit organizations have an important role to play in facilitating the rejection of consumption. The study is based on thirteen phenomenological interviews with individuals who engaged in one month of alcohol abstinence and illustrates three cultural barriers to rejecting alcohol consumption, namely: the collective obligation to participate in entrenched sharing practices, the collective expectation to reciprocate in gift-giving practices of alcoholic commodities, and the identification of abstinence as deviant nonconformity. The study also discusses the role of nonprofits as change agents within society, emphasizing their ability to mobilize disenfranchised groups, give voice to unpopular causes and facilitate community building that breeds trust and cooperation.
Anti-consumption studies are gaining in popularity, but doubt remains as to whether they can add anything unique to consumer research and marketing that other similar topics cannot. This article attempts to explain the distinctive nature of anti-consumption and how it can contribute to the understanding of marketing beyond other related phenomena, such as ethical consumption, environmental consumption, consumer resistance, and symbolic consumption. Drawing upon reasons theory, the article contends that the "reasons against" consumption are not always the logical opposite of the "reasons for" consumption and there are important differences between phenomena of negation and affirmation. By focusing on the reasons against consumption, anti-consumption research acts as a lens that scholars and practitioners may use to view similar phenomena in a new light. The article illustrates this point by offering anti-consumption as an overarching perspective that spans a range of behavioral and thematic contexts, thereby revealing its unique contribution to marketing.