Journal of Macromarketing

Introduction to the Special Issue on CCT perspectives on Macromarketing

This article provides a discussion on the use of an alternative paradigm towards a cross-fertilization of CCT and macromarketing. Researchers at the intersection of CCT and macromarketing can benefit from both research traditions’ relative strength: the deep sociocultural focus of CCT and the structural lens of Macromarketing. To facilitate this dialogue, the authors propose an innovative and inclusive approach to research design and data collection. More specifically, the action research paradigm that is driven by an agenda for an egalitarian participation into the social sphere, a multidimensional wellbeing, and a reflexive social change is introduced. The discussion on an action research-driven research design and methodology also builds upon the key insights of Macromarketing and CCT traditions and offers a detailed framework for researchers who wish to bring an alternative and fresh look into a CCT/Macromarketing alliance.

Research on financial vulnerability has largely focused on the relationships between the economic environment, consumer financial activities and indebtedness, limiting our understanding of the role assumed by interpersonal relationships that underlie this socially embedded phenomenon. Using the common Brazilian practices of borrowing–lending amongst family and friends as the research context, we show that these practices can be viewed as a gift guided by the logic of a moral economy. Our findings show that individuals resort to the market economy to maintain a moral economy of credit which can be a blessing (when the extension of financial help to important others alleviates financial vulnerability by negotiating the marketplace) or a curse (when extension of financial help to others leads to one’s own financial constraints). This study illustrates an inverted gift giving process whereby the recipients’ own indulgence is presented as a monadic gift in accessing the dyadic gift giving relationship.

This study examines the cultural experiences of subaltern migrants from Kerala, India to the Middle East. It draws upon the French pragmatic sociology with attention to convention theory to cast in sharp relief different interpretations of worth that influence subaltern migrants or vagabonds as Zygmunt Bauman has labelled them. This study shows that vagabonds use different regimes of worth and justification to resist domination and to shape their cultural encounters with host and home cultures. It explains how existing acculturation research lacks insights about worth and regimes of justification that hinder it from fully understanding the role of domination and cultural experiences of subalterns.

How does dull turn into cool? Every now and then new markets emerge and consumption that used to be mundane and insignificant transforms into something socially significant. Using the theoretical lens of cultural system transformation, this research set out to analyze how consumers, through their identity work, unintentionally transform a market by negotiating its symbolic boundaries and expanding its borders in relation to their social surroundings. The results showed that consumer identity work contributes to forming the market by providing it with new symbolic meanings (epistemic, entertainment and erotic), by extending it with new discursive and material content (through epistemic refinement), and by expanding it through the provision (active and unintentional promotion of the consumption field to confirm their own identity) of new consumers. This research added to at least three ongoing conversations in marketing research; (i) to the macromarketing research stream on marketing systems by taking a cultural system perspective and recognizing the subtle but transformative impact of symbolic consumer meanings and identity work, (ii) to the consumer culture theory (CCT) research stream on market formation by highlighting consumers’ unintentional change of a market through intense identity struggle in their immediate social circle, and (iii) to both above streams by highlighting what makes identity struggle distinct at a mundane rather than more controversial or extraordinary market.

Concern for sustainability crosses multiple areas of scholarly inquiry. At the macro level, sustainability research has focused primarily on institutional actors and systemic change efforts. At the consumer level, sustainability research has focused primarily on consumer product choice and post-use disposal. Employing a practice theory lens, this study examines how consumer practices during product use results in a wide variance in overall environmental sustainability impacts. Emerging practice configurations illustrate the ways rules as meaning, at both the macro level institutional regulations and micro level of cultural expectations shape consumer options. Practice configurations also illuminate the ways material marketplace resources, both stagnated products and innovations, provide opportunity for variance. Finally, the competence element of practice varies between a traditional consumer culture ethos and new practices vis-a-vis consumer resourcefulness. This study provides a contribution to the link between macromarketing and consumer culture theory in the centrality of enforcement of both governmental level regulations and consumer best practices for improved environmental sustainability.

The present paper assesses the usage of relational ontologies in the realm of macromarketing made available by consumer culture theorists. Our paper advances this movement by exploring the potential of relational ontologies to propel a more thorough methodological discussion and operationalization of relationality in macromarketing. To fulfill this task, the paper first identifies and discusses four perspectives that have provided stimuli for relational thought: the new mobilities paradigm, non-representational theories, practice theories and assemblage theories. Subsequently, the paper offers an organizing framework made of four steps (i.e., approaching, setting up, emplacing, and staging) in which the role of different relational perspectives is examined. Lastly, the paper sketches a hypothetical relational-inspired macromarketing study on the reputational capital of places as a way to encourage an applied discussion of this relational framework. By so doing, the paper seeks to better clarify the expected contribution of the different relational perspectives brought forward by CCT scholars to the realm of macromarketing, with a particular focus on methodological aspects.

This paper advocates for doing more research at the intersction of consumer culture theoretic and macromarketing perspectives. It provides an example of a project ideally suited for analysis of this kind, a study that would address how the features and marketing practices of social media platforms may be contributing to political polarization at the societal level.

William Redmond (2018) recently explored the systems context of market failure, the circumstance where exchange systems, including their interactions with the social environments in which they are imbedded, perform at less than desirable levels. This commentary adds to the retrospective provided in that article, also noting that some aspects of the systems perspective on market failure were recognized before that concept was widely recognized in the macromarketing literature.