Macromarketing

Countries, companies, and customers are becoming increasingly concerned with sustainability. However, it is unclear how much increased cost, if any, companies are willing to tolerate for sustainability efforts at the rate of potentially lower profits. Plus, what are the customers’ sensitivities to the prices of products/services that are developed within the realm of sustainability initiatives (e.g., how much more can the products/services cost and still be viable)? Additionally, with 193 countries of the United Nations ratifying the Sustainable Development Goals, we know that countries are focused on sustainability, but can companies achieve positive sustainability effects on performance above what countries are doing? Consequently, what are the macro-micro dynamics in play for sustainability efforts? In a 10-country study involving 4,051 companies, we examine these macro-micro (country-company) dynamics, company costs, customer costs, and price sensitivities on the effects of sust...

The global refugee crisis reveals refugees and other forcibly displaced persons (FDP) are uniquely vulnerable consumers on a dynamic pathway precipitated by trigger events that have disrupted or fractured marketing systems requisite for safety and well-being, resulting in dangerous journeys to temporary or permanent settlements. The Syrian Conflict is introduced to contextualize the challenges along the pathway and to show that a more Humanitarian Marketing System, spanning time, space and other systems, brings opportunities for governments, NGOs and businesses to cooperate and to provide FDP with resources, which enhance connectedness, reduce vulnerabilities and suffering, illuminate good practices and enable FDP to flourish when resettled. The authors discuss research-opportunities to facilitate further understanding, to develop and repair marketing systems, and to enhance the well-being of FDP and other stakeholders of the crisis.

Macromarketing attempts to address issues that engage marketing and society and previous ethical scholarship has focused on distributive justice and on exchanges that occur in conventional markets. As our research highlights, however, the distribu-tive justice approach alone is insufficient for managing the complexities, ethical paradoxes, and out-of-market conditions associated with wicked, cross-national social concerns. In this article, we integrate macromarketing with the theory of the common good in order to provide a foundation for framing societal change that can encompass nonmarket value, stakeholder rights, collective social priorities, organizational responsibilities, and political action.

Humans have long interacted with animals. Recently, market-based responses to societal challenges, including loneliness and mental well-being include the use of animals. Considerable research concerning consumer–animal relationships has also examined the benefits (micro, meso, and macro) of human-animal interaction and companionship. However, much of this research is fragmented and lacks a broader organizing framework. It also suffers from an anthropomorphic bias, whereby the interests of animals are excluded. To address this, we provide a macromarketing perspective on consumer–animal relations and explore the interdependencies of consumer–animal relationships on consumer, animal, and community well-being. We introduce and apply the Interactive Well-Being framework to four contexts –ranging from private to public consumption spaces– that highlight the interdependencies and systems involved in consumer–animal relationships: (1) co-habitation with animals, (2) emotional support animal...

In order to understand the connection between development, marketing and transformative consumer research (TCR), with its attendant interest in promoting human well-being, this article begins by charting the links between US ‘exceptionalism’, ‘Manifest Destiny’ and modernisation theory, demonstrating the confluence of US perspectives and experiences in articulations and understandings of the contributions of marketing practice and consumer research to society. Our narrative subsequently engages with the rise of social marketing (1960s-) and finally TCR (2006-). We move beyond calls for an appreciation of paradigm plurality to encourage TCR scholars to adopt a multiple paradigmatic approach as part of a three-pronged strategy that encompasses an initial ‘provisional moral agnosticism’. As part of this stance, we argue that scholars should value the insights provided by multiple paradigms, turning each paradigmatic lens sequentially on to the issue of the relationship between marketin...

This paper reorients the conceptual architecture of marketing theory. It is proposed that marketing is the dynamic force that economists and sociologists seek to explain the centrality of habit in everyday life. Questioning the arguments proffered by these twin disciplines, we submit that these processes of habit formation are not ‘undesigned’ or ‘hidden’, but perfectly visible and articulated by theorists and practitioners alike. These debates are complex. We outline their ‘strategic logic’, tracking the constitutive function of the discourse of habit. We unravel the theorised processes of habit formation as these are emplaced at the subconscious level and conceptualised via the ‘subconscious self’. Theoretically, we account for these power relations by uniting the concepts of biopolitics and anatomo-politics in terms of ‘bio-anatomopolitics’. Marketing, therefore, must be considered a disciplinary vehicle oriented toward habit creation and the destabilisation of inertia.

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 ascen- dancy over nature. Next, using a socio-semiotic reading, it identifies and deciphers five types of brand narratives on sustain- ability – 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.

Foundations of Marketing Thought: The Influence of the German Historical School goes beyond the shallow chronicle of textbooks and university courses that has characterized much of the literature dealing with the history of marketing thought.  Wittgenstein reminds us, “One keeps forgetting to go down to the foundations. One doesn’t put the question marks deep enough down”.  In this book we have drilled down deeply to the foundations of the marketing discipline in order to understand the ideas, assumptions, and values of early marketing scholars and the intellectual influences on them. The research for this book draws extensively on the archives of those institutions that gave birth to the marketing mind.

The #TransCrowdFund hashtag emerged as form of resistance, particularly as transgender individuals face increased risks of housing discrimination, healthcare discrimination, and employment discrimination. This study explores the practices and potential unintended consequences of social media-based crowdfunding initiatives among marginalized populations. Specifically, how do transgender individuals use social media for crowdfunding through the #TransCrowdFund hashtag on Twitter, and how do these practices potentially reinforce gender-based marginalization? By analyzing a corpus of 32,818 tweets from the #TransCrowdFund community, this study suggests marginalization is reinforced, albeit unintentionally, through #TransCrowdFund campaigns on Twitter. Preliminary findings identify three unintended consequences of transgender crowdfunding campaigns: reproducing a moral meritocracy of transgender needs, compromising consumers' transgender identities, and redistributing financial burden onto transgender consumers.

Σκοπός της ανακοίνωσης αυτής είναι να διερευνηθεί η κρατική πολιτική στο ζήτημα των εξοπλισμών μερικά χρόνια πριν το ξέσπασμα του Β΄ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου, όταν τα σύννεφα του πολέμου είχαν ήδη φανεί στον ορίζοντα, καθώς και η σημασία της ελληνικής βιομηχανίας για τον πολεμικό αγώνα της χώρας κατά τη διάρκεια του ελληνοϊταλικού πολέμου. Όντας η χώρα ήδη για σχεδόν μια δεκαετία σε συνθήκες «κλειστής οικονομίας», οι νέες προκλήσεις που έφερνε ο πόλεμος για την ελληνική βιομηχανία ήταν σημαντικές καθώς σχέδια, πρώτες ύλες, εξαρτήματα, ακόμη και αν ήταν διαθέσιμα, έπρεπε να περάσουν από το σύστημα του συμψηφισμού και την υποχρεωτική κρατική παρέμβαση. Οι κρατικές παραγγελίες από τα εργοστάσια ήδη πριν την έναρξη του πολέμου, οι επιτάξεις από τον κρατικό μηχανισμό και κυρίως από τις στρατιωτικές υπηρεσίες αρκετών, πολύ ζωτικών για την υποστήριξη του στρατού, επιχειρήσεων (σιδηροβιομηχανίας, κλωστοϋφαντουργίας κλπ.) και γενικότερα ο αντίκτυπος που θα φέρει στην οικονομία της χώρας και στην κοινωνία ο πόλεμος και η προετοιμασία γι’ αυτόν, αποτελούν τον κύριο καμβά και τα ιστορικά συμφραζόμενα μέσα στα οποία προσπαθώ να διερευνήσω το ρόλο που έπαιξαν σ’ αυτές τις προετοιμασίες οι ζωτικές για την ελληνική πολεμική μηχανή βιομηχανικές μονάδες. Η αρχειακή έρευνα επικεντρώνεται κυρίως στη σιδηροβιομηχανία ΑΒΕ Γκλαβάνης ΑΕ του Βόλου, η οποία αποτελεί ένα από τα ελάχιστα και σημαντικότερα παραδείγματα βιομηχανικών μονάδων που είχαν ενταχθεί αρκετά χρόνια πριν τον πόλεμο στο εξοπλιστικό πρόγραμμα της χώρας.

Most people today are born, grow, learn, work, and live in a world shaped by consumer culture, and this inevitably affects their search for religious and spiritual meaning in life. With this special issue, the Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion extends an invitation to scholars in the field of marketing, consumer research and related disciplines to contribute to the journal with their best work on the marketing and consumption of spirituality and religion.

This paper reviews 30 years of interdisciplinary scholarship that deals
with marketing history or the history of marketing thought. We have ranged across the humanities and social sciences to review the very best scholarship that these domains have produced which speaks to issues likely to concern the readers of the Journal of Marketing Management (JMM). These domains include: the history of marketing management, history of market research, history of market segmentation, product management history, retailing and channels
history, promotion history, advertising history, the history of marketing
thought, and marketing and the management of subjectivity, among others. Given obvious page limitations we have nevertheless tried to appeal to the paradigmatic span of the readers of the JMM. With this in mind, we have critically reviewed material that will be of interest to managerially oriented academics, as well as those who subscribe to consumer culture theoretics and critical marketing studies.

At its most basic, we can understand critical marketing studies as interested in challenging the status quo, that is, it questions the way marketing activities are represented by academics and observers interested in legitimising the role of marketing in society (Tadajewski, 2010a). When scholars legitimise – when they justify and underline only the positive contributions made by marketing scholarship and practice – they present a partial and distorted image of the discipline and the practical effects of this group on the world around them. Critical marketing does not necessarily deny the contributions marketing can make to the quality of life some people enjoy. Rather, it asks us to consider all of the ramifications of marketing, including its praiseworthy and negative effects. 
Research adopting a critical marketing perspective has often been undertaken via close readings of key marketing concepts. Typically, the question being asked is whether they accurately represent what practitioners do in reality. Put differently, critical marketing accounts highlight the disparities and inequity inherent in the capitalist system. This representation of marketplace reality is juxtaposed against the ‘equality’ (Bagozzi, 1975) or ‘win-win’ (Gummesson, 1999) arguments all too frequently found in mainstream perspectives which claim that all benefit from marketplace exchange. These are false generalisations which do not stand up well when juxtaposed against the lived experiences of various groups (Falchetti, Ponchio, & Botelho, 2016). 
Nor are the marketing concepts being taught in business schools neutral ways of describing the world. They represent the views of specific interest groups constituted by people who have a reason for describing the world in certain ways and not others. Marketing concepts, like relationship marketing, present the activities of practitioners in positive terms. As such, we might want to view them as counterpoints to the accusations of manipulation that are frequently targeted at the discipline and practice. Indeed, academics are often explicit in presenting their work as a response to depictions of the discipline which position it as a detrimental force in the social world (O’Donohoe, 1994). 
So, marketing theory, the concepts which accompany it, and the practices associated with the subject, are all political, rather than neutral. They are fundamentally concerned with encouraging people to think about their existence in circumscribed ways. At the most basic level, the logic of marketing is driven by consumption. When we look at any textbook or mainstream journal article the refrain is almost identical.  Practitioners are praised for enabling people to access a vast array of goods and services; marketing’s role as a mechanism of information gathering and distribution is applauded; and its function in manufacturing demand (Webster, Malter, & Ganesan, 2005) is linked to job creation and contributions to gross domestic product (Wilkie & Moore, 1999). Those who represent marketing in this way are not nefarious characters. They are advocates for their beliefs. It is when this affirmation leads to the elision of the dark-side of marketing practice that we should be concerned. When we focus on the beneficial contributions of an academic discipline or industry practice, we often fail to pay attention to alternative ways of thinking about how the economic system could function; ways that hold out the potential to benefit more people, more equally, than present methods of providing goods and services. 
Questioning the role of marketing in society is an exercise in ‘ontological denaturalisation’ (Fournier & Grey, 2000). This grand term simply refers to the fact that we do not take the present representation of marketing or the current economic ordering of society as the only way we can think about it. When we denaturalise something, we make it seem less natural. We stop taking it for granted. We ask questions about how the economic system has taken the shape it has, how it was constructed, by whom, and for what purpose. Importantly, we focus on the issue of who benefits from existing marketing and distribution methods. This encourages us to think about the economic system in terms of power relationships. Given the present structure of the economic system, who is really in the driving-seat? Do consumers really direct producers? Do manufacturers really listen to the consumer and produce what they need and want? Or do they try to shape human behaviour by creating and stimulating desire?
Of course, asking questions about power relations can sound negative. To some extent this is accurate. When we look at the marketplace, critical research often finds that the consumer is not as powerful as mainstream scholars like to claim. Even so, the fact that we are seeking to engage in ontological denaturalisation means that we are effectively assuming that the power relations that shape producer and consumer behaviour can be changed. Critical marketing studies is therefore underwritten by an optimism that all too often passes unacknowledged. 
If our current reality (our ontology) is not predetermined, then alternatives are available and possible (i.e. we can make the world look unnatural and change subsequently becomes more desirable). In other words, the extant economic and marketing system is not, from the perspective of critical marketing, necessarily the best way of achieving our distribution and provisioning requirements. Accepting this, we must continue to treat marketing theory, its associated concepts and the practical activities of business people with a sceptical eye, asking whether they are preventing us from thinking differently or working in ways more consistent with the aim of achieving distributive justice for all. 
This chapter engages with mainstream concepts in marketing – the marketing concept, consumer sovereignty and exchange. We will leverage our understanding to offer a critical evaluation of their assumptions and effects in practice. As any new student is told, marketing goes back many thousands of years. As a university subject, its history is more recent. It is a product of the early twentieth century. When approaching the development of marketing we need to be on our guard. Misrepresentation is rife. It is frequently accompanied by a very positive narrative which basically refers to the various ways in which practitioners seek to assist the consumer. Reading these accounts, one would be hard pressed to understand why marketing practice has ever been presented in negative terms (i.e. as selling snake-oil or engaging in hard-selling). In this chapter we will remove our tinted glasses and look at the marketing system with fresh, critical eyes.

This article examines the interplay of vodka branding and politics in post-Soviet Russia. The trajectory of vodka branding over the past three decades reflects shifts in politics and articulates changes in ideology, while setting the environment in which certain sociopolitical ideas unfold and become naturalized. The analysis suggests that the political economy and historical dynamics of a market system, and the societal standing of the commodity being branded, define and frame the potentialities of marketing meanings and their ideological inflections.

As has been widely acknowledged, Keith's (1960) paper that heralded the coming of the marketing revolution at Pillsbury has achieved seminal status within the marketing literature. Its historical narrative, on the other hand, has been repeatedly challenged: some doubt whether the marketing concept emerged as late as the 1950s and 1960s. Commensurate with this view, a variety of papers have documented key associated ideas such as customer centricity far earlier in the historical record, from the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries respectively. The purpose of this paper is to contest Keith's own claims regarding the marketing practices adopted during the so-called ‘marketing’ and ‘marketing control’ eras. Drawing from the FBI file kept on the activities of The Pillsbury Company, this paper documents the participation of Pillsbury in anti-competitive practices that started in 1958, just two years prior to the publication of Keith's important article, and concluded in the mid 1960s, with Pillsbury being charged and fined for their involvement with a price-fixing cartel. By revealing a parallel narrative to that presented by Keith, this paper thus revises our understanding of an important contribution to marketing thought, as well as highlighting the occasionally legally problematic nature of interfirm cooperation.

This paper introduces Critical Marketing Studies and makes a case for its inclusion in marketing education. A review of relevant literature is provided and a range of important topics for a Critically oriented course of instruction are proposed. After justifying the need for Critical Marketing Education and explicating how lecturing staff might pursue such a pedagogical strategy, a summary of ten DVD sources is offered. These would be highly valuable supplementary resources to illuminate the complex and dark-side nature of the marketplace. Links are made to appropriate literature sources, concepts and social theory to enable the interested scholar to combine theoretical, conceptual and brute empirical realism in their lectures. RESUMO Este artigo introduz Estudos Críticos em Marketing e elabora um caso para a sua inclusão na educação em marketing. Traz uma revisão da literatura relevante sobre o assunto e propõe vários tópicos importantes que podem ser abordados em um curso que seja ministrado sob uma perspectiva crítica. Após justificar a necessidade de uma Educação Crítica em Marketing e explicar como professores podem adotar essa estratégia pedagógica, um resumo de dez DVDs, que servem de fontes, é apresentado. Trata-se de recursos suplementares muito valiosos para destacar a natureza complexa e obscura do mercado. São feitas indicações de fontes apropriadas da literatura, conceitos e teoria social que permitem que professores interessados possam combinar questões teóricas, conceituais e realidade empírica em suas aulas.

La mercadotecnia y la publicidad han actuado como mercenarios del capital, conscientes de su poder de influencia en el consumidor y la sociedad, pero ignorando los impactos negativos de su ejercicio. Los tiempos cambian, ahora la sociedad está interesada en ser más responsable con el ser humano y con el planeta. Esto también impacta a las mencionadas disciplinas, influyendo en los temas de estudio y práctica de la profesión, ya sea en la mercadotecnia comercial o en la mercadotecnia social.  El consumidor es un factor poderoso en este cambio de consciencia. El macromarketing, nos da una idea de cómo se generan estos cambios, así como de los alcances y trascendencia que tiene la mercadotecnia en los intereses de la sociedad.  ¿Cómo puede ser un profesional del marketing y la publicidad una factor de cambio social? De eso hablaremos en este escrito.

In order to understand the connection between development, marketing and transformative consumer research (TCR), with its attendant interest in promoting human well-being, this article begins by charting the links between US ‘exceptionalism’, ‘Manifest Destiny’ and modernisation theory, demonstrating the confluence of US perspectives and experiences in articulations and understandings of the contributions of marketing practice and consumer research to society. Our narrative subsequently engages with the rise of social marketing (1960s-) and finally TCR (2006-). We move beyond calls for an appreciation of paradigm plurality to encourage TCR scholars to adopt a multiple paradigmatic approach as part of a three-pronged strategy that encompasses an initial ‘provisional moral agnosticism’. As part of this stance, we argue that scholars should value the insights provided by multiple paradigms, turning each paradigmatic lens sequentially on to the issue of the relationship between marketing, development and consumer well-being. After having scrutinised these issues using multiple perspectives, scholars can then decide whether to pursue TCR-led activism. The final strategy that we identify is termed ‘critical intolerance’.