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Addressing vulnerability: what role does marketing play?

Lilliemay Cheung (UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia)
Janet R. McColl-Kennedy (UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia)

Journal of Services Marketing

ISSN: 0887-6045

Article publication date: 28 August 2019

Issue publication date: 22 November 2019

1263

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to critically explore the connection between social marketing and transformative service research (TSR), providing a conceptual framework and implications for both theory and practice. The research explores the role marketing plays in a political deterrence campaign and its impact on service systems in meeting the needs of refugees and asylum seekers.

Design/methodology/approach

This qualitative research is based on 24 in-depth interviews with service providers, and refugees and asylum seekers and a critical discourse analysis examining campaign materials including political press statements, news media articles and government policy documents.

Findings

This paper explores where social marketing and TSR intersect in their aims to promote social change. TSR calls on marketers to address vulnerability related to social issues such as poverty, forced migration and discrimination. The research provides evidence that service systems actors use practices of resistance to challenge dominant discourses in attempts to relieve suffering for refugees and asylum seekers.

Research limitations/implications

The authors contribute by extending the body of work that investigates how service systems can relieve suffering. The study also examines how marketing tactics and strategies underpin a political campaign designed to deter asylum seekers crossing sovereign borders. The research makes three important contributions. First, the research focuses on a significant international problem of better understanding how service systems can relieve suffering for refugees and asylum seekers. Second, it examines how oppositional discourses impact on service systems’ ability to create and sustain social change. Third, it investigates how service systems actors deploy practices of resistance to enact social change.

Originality/value

This research highlights the important role of engaging as consumer-citizens to address social change, particularly for vulnerable groups, such as refugees and asylum seekers.

Keywords

Citation

Cheung, L. and McColl-Kennedy, J.R. (2019), "Addressing vulnerability: what role does marketing play?", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 33 No. 6, pp. 660-670. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-09-2018-0271

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

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