Journal of Macromarketing

Alternative economies respond to the precarious conditions underpinning the everyday lives of individuals, and their lack of access to and scarcity of resources and competences. Recently there has been increasing interest in the field of macromarketing towards such alternative forms of exchange and marketplaces. Nonetheless, current studies of alternative economies remain fragmented. The objective of this special issue is to advance our understanding of alternative economies and stimulate future research within this domain. Seven articles are included in this special issue of the Journal of Macromarketing. Each article presents forward-looking research exploring one of three aspects of alternative economies: (1) the paradigms used within alternative economies, (2) the institutional logics that guide action within these systems and (3) the implications to individuals, localities, markets, and society. The editors of the special issue briefly introduce the topic, provide a definition of alternative economies, offer an overview of the articles and their contributions, and direction for future research bringing together alternative economies and macromarketing.

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.

The dominant social paradigm (DSP) defines the basic belief structures and practices of marketplace actors and is manifested in existing exchange structures. Sustainability – a so-called megatrend – challenges the DSP by questioning its underlying assumptions, resulting in tensions or conflicts for different marketplace actors. This study examines a specific case of an alternative market arrangement that bridges tensions between the DSP and environmental concerns. Ethnography in the context of retail food waste disposition reveals tensions experienced by several marketplace actors – namely consumers, retail firms and regulators – and investigates an alternative market arrangement that alleviates those tensions by connecting the actors and their practices in a creative new way. We identify complementarity as the underlying mechanism of connection and resolution. Compared to previously identified alternative market arrangements that are either oppositional or parallel to the DSP, complementarity opens another path toward greater environmental sustainability through market-level solutions.

The introduction of money into previously non-monetary, alternative economies can lead to many socio-cognitive tensions, if money is perceived as having been imposed from the ‘outside’, and disconnected from traditional ways of life. In this paper, we employ the lens of institutional theory to frame the phenomenon of money-use in remote Indigenous Australia. Through an immersive study in two remote communities, we develop themes of socio-cognitive tensions that arise as a result of disparity in exchange logics governing marketplace exchange in monetary marketplaces vis-a-vis historically non-monetary alternative economies. We draw upon emergent insights, and derive macro-marketing implications for the design of marketplace-literacy education, aimed at alleviating these tensions and enhancing well-being.

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.

This study examines how object circulation—the recurrent transferring of objects among members of a group—can be used to foster a hybrid value regime in alternative economies. Prior research notes that alternative economies harbor multiple conceptions of what is valuable, suggesting that hybridity can help sustain alternative economies. This study mobilizes ethnographic and netnographic data to examine the circulation of singularized objects in a religion-based alternative economy in Brazil. It focuses on value creation through object circulation to shed light on the constitution of value regime hybridity. Findings explain how the governing institution in this economy—the church – fosters a hybrid value regime through promoting the creation of multiple types of value outcomes and incentivizing their intertwining. We discuss how value regime hybridity reduces tension and criticism directed at the alternative economy and promotes resource dependence among heterogeneous participants.

Alternative markets are often described as exchange systems for people who wish to escape the capitalist markets. In this article, we argue that alternative markets may also emerge in a context of economic constraint, in which people have restricted access to mainstream markets. In order to survive, they have to find alternative ways of obtaining goods and services. To understand the emergence and characteristics of the constrained type of alternative market, we examine the bartering systems established in Greece in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the imposition of austerity measures by international and European institutions on the country’s economic system. This study offers theoretical insights for the literature on alternative markets by conceptualizing bartering systems as a complementary market to the capitalist markets.

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.