Building on a Long Needed Seminal Contribution

Though flattered by the invitation to comment on Laczniak and Shultz's seminal piece, the author did not feel qualified to evaluate either the specifics of the arguments advanced or the conclusions reached. What they said was essentially accepted as a given though the case was made for an accompanying, more reader friendly version of their material. That being so, and after some minor editorial observations are made, much of the remainder of this Commentary focuses on two related issues that seemed especially relevant:(1) Socially Responsible Marketing's role, along with that of Socially Responsible Consumption and Socially Responsible Public policy, both in and of themselves and within a micromarketing Utopia and (2) the fact that after years of relative neglect the concept of macromarketing management seems finally on its way to being resurrected. Four examples of how the complexities of Socially Responsible Marketing could be highlighted using a controversies approach are then presented.

How Subsistence Communities Reconfigure Livelihood Systems in Response to Climate Change: A Coupled-Systems Perspective

A defining societal challenge in the era of climate change is ensuring consumption adequacy in subsistence communities. To understand the intricacies of this challenge, we have conducted an ethnographic study of a low-income community that relies on subsistence fishing to maintain consumption adequacy. Based on our data analysis, we advance a conceptualization of subsistence livelihood systems that models the tight coupling among its three constituent subsystems: the market system, the social system, and the environmental system. These three subsystems are highly interdependent and operate in concert to maintain consumption adequacy. We then show how climate change-induced environmental disruptions threaten consumption adequacy by disequilibrating livelihood systems in subsistence settings, as well as unpack the self-directed adaptation and mitigation strategies employed by the community in response to the threat of consumption inadequacy. These response strategies create feedback loops to either preserve or attenuate the tight coupling among the three subsystems.

The Cultural Knowledge Perspective: Insights on Resource Creation for Marketing Theory, Practice, and Education

Marketing researchers and marketers have long focused on the importance of resources: organizations having enough raw materials, advertising budget, distribution and supply facilities, data, technology, money, connections, time, or employees. However, these only become valuable to the organization when people identify them as potential resources and then use them adeptly. In this conceptual paper, we argue that understanding the process of identifying and creating resources is essential to understanding organizational success. We introduce the Cultural Knowledge Perspective. The perspective refocuses attention on the process by which people use and extend their cultural knowledge to identify latent materials, materials that have resource potential, and the process by which cultural knowledge is used to activate latent materials to create actual resources. We bring together and build on disparate research in marketing, sociology, and management to show the importance of understanding how the cultural knowledge of marketers and consumers is deployed for resource creation. In doing so, we show how this perspective opens avenues for hiring marketing talent, product development, marketing communications, and marketing education.

Provisioning Firearms in Latin America: Historical Development and Societal Consequences

For hundreds of years, the systems provisioning firearms to Latin America states, insurgents, markets, and criminals have had important societal consequences. The constant supply of guns has accelerated widespread violence at an individual level that in the aggregate has facilitated colonial rule, brutal institutions of slavery, numerous insurrections and border wars and, in more recent times, drug trafficking and the social disruption of communities. Firearms also have enabled national independence movements, hunting for necessary sustenance, physical protection from animal and human predators, and the enjoyment of shooting sports past and present. This article provides an account of Latin American firearms provisioning from the time of European arrival and conquest into the twenty-first century and considers some of the many ensuing societal effects. Historical research, a key component of the macromarketing domain, provides a broader understanding of firearms and gun cultures in the region.

A Critical Framework for Examining Sustainability Claims of the Sharing Economy: Exploring the Tensions Within Platform Brand Discourses

The sharing economy represents a market-driven response to the perceived inefficient resource use arising from materialism, and as such, offers the possibility of a more environmentally sustainable form of consumption. However, the sustainability benefits attributed to the sharing economy remain contentious and fraught with paradox. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of three sharing economy brands (Lime, Rent the Runway and BlaBlaCar) we identify that sustainability discourses compete with claims arising from the espoused benefits of immateriality and platform brands’ desire for rapid growth. We identify and explore three platform brand discourses (disrupting unsustainable leaders, guilt-free choice, and non-commercial appeals) and their associated practices. In doing so we identify that tensions between these discourses and practices give rise to three sustainability-related contradictions: displacement of sustainable alternatives, hidden materiality, and creeping usage. Our findings contribute to our understanding of the sharing economy and its role in sustainability.

Constructively Engaging Exploitive Waste Management in India: The Case of Paryavaran Mitra and its Justice Motivated Effort at Empowering Rag-Picking Women

Constructive Engagement (CE) aims at developing sustainable and equitable marketing systems that ensure collective well-being. This paper reflects on an initiative that constructively engages with impoverished market actors, i.e., rag-picking women in India. It is endeavored by operationalizing Integrative Justice Model (IJM) principles while trying to tackle the issue of solid waste management. Our findings suggest that CE across the spectrum in the value chain is required to alleviate the conditions of disadvantaged market actors and improve their well-being. Our qualitative inquiry in rag-picking women’s lives and an initiative of social enterprise contribute to the ongoing conversation in macromarketing literature- (1) by empirically evidencing how the CE operationalizes the IJM and help redress the issues of social traps and internalities; (2) by uniquely connecting the macro issues of waste management with the issues of honesty, fairness, dignity and deserved justice in the neglected market transactions; (3) that IJM principles guide the constructive engagement process.

Microfoundations for Macromarketing: A Metatheoretical Lens for Bridging the Micro-Macro Divide

Macromarketing is often contrasted with micro-views of dyadic relationships, such as firm/customer interactions and transactional exchange. However, developing solutions for “wicked” social problems that are often viewed through a macro lens requires an approach that considers multiple perspectives at aggregated levels of interaction. We propose a framework for bridging the micro-macro divide by applying a metatheoretical lens, based on service-dominant logic and its service-ecosystems view. This approach highlights the importance of studying value cocreation practices as a microfoundation of macrostructures and highlights the need for studying institutions and institutional arrangements at varying levels of granularity. We argue for consideration of a meso-level, which is conceptually nested between micro-actions and macro-structures and allows researchers to investigate the emergence of markets as institutionalized, and potentially sustainable solutions. Exploring multiple levels of interaction can aid researchers and practitioners in understanding the complexity of wicked problems and cocreating solutions for major societal challenges faced in the world today.

Selling for the Social Good: A Commentary and Extension to Pedagogy Place

This paper describes an adaptation of “Social Marketing, Consumer Behavior, and the SDGs” available from the Pedagogy Place website to an introductory sales class. The extension provides an example of how the structure of a macromarketing project can be adapted to every part of the marketing curriculum—even personal selling. The project details how sales skills can be developed using experiential learning while simultaneously providing an opportunity to discuss macromarketing principles and use sales techniques toward sustainability goals and societal good.

Coming and Going in Loops: Participatory Modelling of a System with All its Complexity

Social marketing is currently involved in pursuing several important theoretical and methodological goals pertaining to wide-scale behavior change. The lack of complex system understanding via highly participatory processes and feedback loops is a major impediment for systemic behavior change. The purpose of this paper is to show how the implementation of participatory modelling to explore networks of feedback loops can empower social marketing in capturing system complexity. As a case study, a group of system stakeholders qualitatively modelled a cycling system in a city setting to uncover the system's core behavioral dynamics. This participatory modelling process revealed that the interactions within and between three feedback loops were mainly responsible for the cycling system issues. These feedback loops were: (a) output-based and autocratic decision-making, (b) an abundance of conflicted interests and (c) the reinforcement of a car-dominant paradigm in people's minds. The paper contributes to understanding the potential of participatory modelling for multi-level behavior change.