CALL FOR PAPERS: Special Issue on Moral Foundations and Consumer Behavior

Journal of Consumer Marketing

Special Issue Co-Editors: Melvin Prince and Attila Yaprak

Background

A scattering of psychological studies have begun to take on a cross-cultural flavor, addressing whether cultural values influence moral attitudes; the cultural conceptions of morality; better understanding different cultural groups’ moral consciousness; and the linkages between identity and moral foundations (see, for instance, Belk, Devinney, and Eckhardt 2005, Vauclair and Fischer 2011, Vauclair, Wilson, and Fischer 2014, and Reed, Forehand, Puntoni, and Warlop 2012). However, questions about morality, moral judgement, and moral foundations have not received sufficient attention in the marketing literature, particularly as these function and evolve in consumer behavior contexts. This is surprising since, in principle, morality represents a significant foundation of consumers’ self-concepts, an important ingredient of their attitudinal and value profiles, and an essential driver of their purchase intentions. This void is especially abysmal in cross-cultural contexts, where differences in the meanings of what is moral and what is not and the hierarchical ordering of moral values should tell important consumer purchase behavior stories.

Purpose and Nature of the Special Issue

The purpose of this special issue is to contribute to filling this void. Specifically, we aim to assemble a compendium of invited and submitted papers that are conceptual and empirical in nature, one- and multiple-country in scope, and single- and multi-disciplinary in range. We hope to build a collection of contributions that will help augment conceptual development on this issue, while also making suggestions for enhanced managerial practice. While we will give priority to conceptual and/or empirical-research-based contributions, we will also welcome case-method-based submissions. Additionally, we will welcome submissions from scholars located in all world regions.

We hope to evaluate submissions through an editorial and a blind-refereed process and consult with this Journal’s Editor before composing the final volume. We expect to enlist a rich panel of reviewers from both the psychology and social psychology disciplines and from the marketing and the consumer behavior fields. We expect the review process to take about six to seven months and two revisions, on average.

Topics

Some of the topics we will highlight in promoting the special issue include:

• The role of moral foundations and the shaping of consumer identity and purchase behavior
• Whether or not moral identities are consistent or malleable traits, as well as the range and hierarchy of moral identities and how their relative influences affect purchase behavior
• Conceptual and empirical contributions to the definition, boundaries and nature of moral identities and moral judgments, including competing explanations, and how these conceptualizations affect purchase choices
• The roles of morality and moral judgements in the shaping of attitudes toward in- and out-groups, and their interactions with consumer ethnocentrism, consumer cosmopolitanism, consumer dis-identification, and consumer affinities toward products and places
• The roles of moral foundations in the shaping of the content and structure of individual and societal value profiles and how these affect consumer behavior
• The roles of moral foundations in consumers’ marketing response behavior and in their building of relationships in their individual and social worlds
• The linkages between consumers’ moral and social identities and the roles of these in identity-based consumer behavior, such as in consumers’ motivations, self-regulation, social cognition and self-concepts, and the impact of these identities on the evaluation of local, hybrid, and global products and brands

Timeline

We project that the special issue will be published in early 2019 after a review period of about nine months during 2018. We will announce our search for contributors to the special issue in the May-June, 2017 period and have a submission deadline of January 31, 2018. Submit your special issue manuscript through: mc.manuscripcentral.com/jcmktg.

References

R. Belk, M. Wallendorf, and J. F. Sherry, Jr (1989), “The Sacred and the Profane in Consumer Behavior: Theodicy on the Odyssey”, Journal of Consumer Research, 16 (June), 1-38.

Nielsen, L. and S. L. T. McGregor (2013), “Consumer Morality and Moral Norms”, International Journal of Consumer Studies, 37, 5, 473-480.

A. Reed, M. R. Forehand, S. Puntoni, and L. Warlop (2012), “Identity-Based Consumer Behavior”, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 29, 310-321.

C. M. Vauclair and R. Fischer (2011), “Do Cultural Values Predict Individuals’ Moral Attitudes? A Cross-Cultural Multilevel Approach”, European Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 645-657.

C. M. Vauclair, M. Wilson, and R. Fischer (2014), “Cultural Conceptions of Morality: Examining Laypeople’s Association of Moral Character”, Journal of Moral Education, 43, 1, 54-74.

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