Better Marketing for a Better World

Special Issue: Journal of Marketing

Special Issue Editors: Christine Moorman (Duke University), Rajesh Chandy (London Business School), Gita Johar (Columbia Business School), and John Roberts (University of New South Wales)

Marketing has the power to improve lives, sustain livelihoods, strengthen societies, and benefit the world at large. At the same time, marketing can have a dark side—it has the power to hurt consumers, employees, communities, markets, institutions, and the environment that surrounds us. This Special Issue of the Journal of Marketing seeks to bring together wide-ranging research to assess, illuminate, and debate whether, when, and how marketing contributes to a better world.

The focus of this Special Issue on a “better world” emphasizes the impact of marketing beyond just what is good for the financial performance of firms—it emphasizes marketing’s role in the welfare of the world’s other stakeholders and institutions.

Research questions for the Special Issue include:

1. Do marketing activities (e.g., the marketing mix, marketing training, leadership, partnership/channel management, controls and incentives, or customer-focused cultures) contribute to a better world? Where, when, how, or why do they do so?
2. Under what conditions might marketing lead to worse outcomes for some or all stakeholders? How can policy, regulation, or activism-based initiatives improve marketing’s contribution in this regard?
3. How can marketing approaches that already generate positive outcomes be made more efficient and/or effective? Conversely, how can the negative outcomes of some marketing approaches be reduced?
4. When and how does marketing foster positive versus negative externalities and how can negative externalities be ameliorated?
5. How can firms, governments, non-profits, NGOs, and other societal stakeholders work to create win-win situations that benefit commercial as well as non-commercial stakeholders?
6. What marketing technologies and practices can be used to nudge consumers, managers, markets, communities, and societies to contribute to a better world?

See the complete Call for Papers for more details on research questions, submission details, and sessions at upcoming conferences.

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