Journal of Macromarketing

This article examines field-level processes that condition actors’ efforts to mobilize collective strategic action for institutional change in markets, showing how such efforts may unsettle existing arrangements while simultaneously laying the groundwork for new ones. Drawing on strategic action field theory, we analyze the transformation of the recorded music market from physical records to online streaming in the early 2000s. Conceptualizing markets as configurations of interconnected fields, we develop a process model of inter-field dynamics demonstrating how exogenous shocks in proximate fields reconfigure power relations and enable coordinated action. Our analysis traces how collective mobilization destabilized incumbent structures, how struggles over legitimacy facilitated organizational appropriation of emerging practices, and how temporary settlements consolidated a new market infrastructure. We contribute to macromarketing theory by specifying the mechanisms through which market-shaping unfolds across interconnected fields and by explaining why disruption often culminates in settlements that re-stabilize, rather than displace, incumbent power.

Fashion is an important aspect of life, and impacts people's sense of belonging, well-being, self-esteem, behaviour, cognition, and emotions. However, there is a lack of understanding of how current “youthful” fashion impacts the well-being of middle-aged female consumers. This study examined the mediating role of ageing anxiety, appearance anxiety, and the moderating effects of an interest in fashion, as well as fashion spending power and age on the relationship between satisfaction with fashion clothing choices and well-being. Survey responses were collected from 252 middle-aged women residing in the United Kingdom (UK). The results showed that satisfaction with fashion clothing choices was a significant predictor of well-being, and this relationship was partly mediated by social avoidance behaviour. The model explained 19% of the variance in middle-aged women's well-being. The content analysis of open-ended responses asking about challenges middle-aged women face when shopping for clothes revealed that size, fit, and style were the main areas of concern. This cohort, overall, felt overlooked by designers, manufacturers, and retailers. Pushing middle-aged women from the market or hoping they will just fit into the “young” or “mature” category can lead them to disengage socially and from mainstream fashion brands. Therefore, it is important for the industry to reconsider its current provision and cater to the needs of this important consumer group.

This paper demonstrates the ethical tension between the American Marketing Association's normative definition of marketing, which emphasises creating value for customers and society, and the marketing of harmful products like tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods. These products contribute significantly to global public health crises, including non-communicable diseases and addiction. Using normative marketing theory, stakeholder theory, and ethics theory, the paper argues that promoting such products fundamentally conflicts with the AMA's definition of providing value for society. This contradiction reflects a systemic problem in aligning marketing systems and practice with the AMA's stated definition of social value. Accordingly, the paper challenges the moral legitimacy of market systems that commodify harm while claiming to deliver social value and calls for a reconsideration of marketing's purpose and boundaries in relation to harmful industries. The paper concludes with practical recommendations to realign marketing practice, policy, and education with the discipline's commitment to social value.

Crises are commonly treated as episodic disruptions that interrupt otherwise stable market processes. This framing casts crises as external shocks and resilience as a technical capacity to absorb and recover from them. In contrast, this paper advances a relational perspective in which crises are understood as intensified manifestations of structural fragility already embedded within market systems. Rather than anomalies, crises render visible the social, moral, and institutional arrangements through which value is routinely produced, maintained, and legitimized. We argue that crises function as relational–moral inflection points in which dominant value regimes are disrupted and renegotiated. This disruption foregrounds the socially constructed character of value and exposes the limitations of firm-centered and harmony-oriented approaches such as Creating Shared Value (CSV), which assume stable conditions, aligned interests, and commensurable values. We extend this critique by proposing a constructionist alternative—Creating–Shared Value (C–SV)—that situates value as plural, contested, and continuously co-constituted through networks of actors, practices, and institutions. To theorize how markets respond under such conditions, we develop a typology of exchange modalities—commodity, barter, gift, mutuality, and sharing—and map these onto different resilience orientations. We show how stabilization, adaptation, and transformation are not discrete outcomes but interrelated moments in the ongoing reconstitution of market order. By reframing crises as constitutive rather than exceptional, and value as relational rather than objective, the paper contributes a systemic account of resilience that foregrounds legitimacy, relational infrastructures, and the moral foundations of exchange in times of disruption.

Consumer boycotts are often examined cross-sectionally as expressions of moral, ideological, or economic concern, yet such accounts can understate how boycott justifications shift as surrounding conditions change. This study develops the concept of the contingent boycott, conceptualizing boycotting as a staged process in which participation, withdrawal, and re-engagement are repeatedly justified in the absence of a clear resolution of the initiating controversy. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative digital discourse analysis of 11,000 + posts and comments from Weibo, Zhihu, and Rednote, the study compares Chinese consumer narratives across two boycott waves (2021 and 2024) linked to Xinjiang cotton and related corporate statements. The analysis identifies four stages: moral-nationalist mobilization, collective enforcement through social pressure, fatigue and delegitimation of boycott culture, and pragmatic reintegration accompanied by institutional delegation. Across stages, legitimacy criteria shift from moral stance-taking toward system-compatibility evaluations (affordability, availability, and perceived local embeddedness), while responsibility for accountability increasingly moves from consumers toward institutions. The findings advance macromarketing theory by positioning boycotts as cyclical negotiations of legitimacy and governance within market–society relations.

Macromarketing scholars have long explored connections between marketing, markets, and society, especially in contexts where consumption habits significantly impact environmental and social outcomes. Our work contributes to this discussion by investigating how social structures and ethical identities affect sustainable shifts in food consumption — particularly the transition from conventional meat to cultured meat (also known as clean meat or lab-grown meat). In the first of two studies with US consumers, we demonstrate that social class positively affects willingness to consume cultured meat, primarily for individuals with higher moral identity symbolization. In the second study, we find that higher-class consumers, compared to lower-class consumers, are more motivated to distinguish themselves, which explains their willingness to try cultured meat, particularly when they have high moral identity symbolization. These findings are valuable to macromarketing researchers, consumers, managers, and public policymakers.

Marketing scholarship increasingly invokes societal impact as a marker of relevance and legitimacy. Yet despite this rhetorical shift, marketing theory remains marginal in many public, regulatory, and policy debates shaping societal futures. This commentary examines this disconnect by interrogating how impact is conceptualised within marketing scholarship. It argues that impact is often treated as an assumed outcome of studying markets rather than as a contingent, institutionally mediated process. Through a critical examination, the paper introduces impact integrity as a normative and epistemic orientation toward marketing knowledge. Impact integrity foregrounds reflexivity, translation, and accountability, directing attention to how marketing ideas circulate, gain legitimacy, and intersect with structures of governance and power. The paper concludes that without greater theoretical clarity about impact, marketing risks overstating its societal contribution while remaining institutionally peripheral. Reframing impact as something that must be earned offers macromarketing a more credible basis for engaging with societal transformation.

Marketing scholarship has long drawn on “Broadening the Concept of Marketing” by Philip Kotler and Sidney J. Levy (1969) call to broaden the concept of marketing beyond commercial exchange. While this intervention significantly expanded the field's scope and relevance, it also encouraged the widespread diffusion of marketing logic into social, political, and cultural domains with limited reflection on its broader consequences. Under contemporary conditions characterized by digital platforms, behavioral influence technologies, and ecological constraints, the question is no longer whether marketing should expand, but how such expansion should be understood and evaluated. This study revisits the broadening thesis as a conceptual refresher rather than a historical critique. Drawing on macromarketing, sustainability, and political economy perspectives, we argue that marketing should be understood as a socially consequential system that not only responds to preferences but also helps shape values, agency, and imagined futures. We propose a normative–sustainability framework that advances four propositions: marketing participates in value formation; consumer agency is contextually conditioned; marketing expansion requires ethical and ecological limits; and marketing plays a role in shaping future-oriented expectations. By reframing marketing as a responsible and consequential social force rather than a purely instrumental practice, the study clarifies the continuing relevance of the marketing concept for debates on sustainability, governance, and societal well-being.

This special issue of the Journal of Macromarketing investigates the transformative impact of digital technologies on marketing systems and broader societal outcomes, moving beyond the scope of firm-level innovation. The issue features three articles: one examining biodigital influencers in tourism; another analyzing data-driven patterns of global prosperity through the Legatum Prosperity Index; and a third exploring how market type moderates the relationship between privacy and customer welfare. Collectively, these contributions enrich macromarketing scholarship by employing interdisciplinary approaches and critically evaluating growth-centric assumptions. The editors advocate for future research in areas such as data governance, algorithmic ethics, and the far-reaching societal effects of technology-enabled marketing systems.

This study aims to fill a significant gap in the existing literature by thoroughly examining the relationship between privacy and customer welfare across different market types at the macrolevel, with a specific emphasis on the B2B (Business-to-Business) and B2C (Business-to-Consumer) sectors. While prior research has often assumed a uniform positive impact of privacy at the individual and micro levels, this study seeks to uncover potential disparities in this relationship. Using an expansive panel dataset from FactSet comprising 620 listed firms globally during the 2022 research period and employing the comprehensive welfare and privacy metrics developed by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), this study conducts cross-sectional analyses through regression-based modeling, revealing that privacy positively influences B2B customer welfare but lacks a notable effect on the B2C sector. While establishing the critical moderating role of market types on the relationship between privacy and welfare contributes significantly to research, this analysis underscores the pressing necessity for tailored regulatory frameworks in both sectors. It advocates for flexible policymaking and collaboration with stakeholders to effectively promote customer welfare while striking a balance between privacy protection and welfare promotion.

Harnessing advanced analytics to address global challenges could become a hallmark of macromarketing research. But currently, such harnessing is rarely done because of the scarcity of country-level data resulting from conceptualizations and methods that are rigorously developed. This study investigates the conceptualization and methods of the Legatum Prosperity Index (LPI), which offers researchers a comprehensive measurement of country prosperity across 67 dimensions that generally align with the people, planet, and profit of sustainability. We employ both univariate and multivariate statistical techniques to verify the reliability of the LPI data, which serves as a foundation for grouping countries into configurations that uncover patterns and similarities among them. Using multivariate clustering analysis, we identify an important configuration of countries (characterized by either (1) global isolation, (2) rent-seeking, or (3) affluence) which provides insights into why some countries face challenges in their development. Our research presents evidence for the potential of the LPI as a conceptually and methodologically sound source of data for macromarketers seeking to apply sophisticated analytics. Our methods for evaluating the LPI can be applied to other emerging data sets of global quality of life or social progress.

The emergence of influencer marketing has brought about a significant shift in how brands engage with consumers. The innovative use of human-like “biodigital” influencers has significantly increased because they offer unique advantages over traditional human influencers. This research aims to clarify the influence of such biodigital influencers on tourism marketing and the implications of this technological shift in the social media marketing system (SMMS). A face-to-face international qualitative study among 55 professionals across 31 countries explored the potentiality of biodigitalisation in tourism marketing. Results indicate that the main perceptions toward biodigitalisation range between optimism, caution and scepticism, without notable adverse impacts on corporate economic and social macromarketing. The predominantly favourable view of biodigitalisation indicates that investors, tourist managers, and marketers should consider biodigitalisation as a strategic technological advancement to enhance their innovative and transformational potential.