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Blockchain is an emerging technology that started in the cryptocurrency sphere with bitcoin but expanded to include numerous applications. This chapter provides an overview of the book. It begins by identifying the three main components of a blockchain. Next, it discusses the book's purpose, distinguishing features, and its intended audience. The chapter then outlines the book's structure, consisting of 22 chapters divided into four main parts. It offers a brief synopsis of each section and chapter. Finally, it ends with a summary and conclusions.

Seeking ways towards a sustainable future is the most dominant socio-political challenge of our time. Marketing should have a crucial role to play in leading research and impact in sustainability, yet it is limited by relying on cognitive behavioural theories rooted in the 1970s, which have proved to have little bearing on actual behaviour. This paper aims to interrogate why marketing is failing to address the challenge of sustainability and identify alternative approaches.

The constraint in theoretical development contextualises the problem, followed by a focus on four key themes to promote theory development: developing sustainable people; models of alternative consumption; building towards sustainable marketplaces; and theoretical domains for the future. These themes were developed and refined during the 2018 Academy of Marketing workshop on seeking sustainable futures. MacInnis’s (2011) framework for conceptual contributions in marketing provides the narrative thread and structure.

The current state of play is explicated, combining the four themes and MacInnis’s framework to identify the failures and gaps in extant approaches to the field.

This paper sets a new research agenda for the marketing discipline in quest for sustainable futures in marketing and consumer research.

Approaches are proposed which will allow the transformation of the dominant socio-economic systems towards a model capable of promoting a sustainable future.

The paper provides thought leadership in marketing and sustainability as befits the special issue, by moving beyond the description of the problem to making a conceptual contribution and setting a research agenda for the future.

Food insecurity and poor access to healthy food is known to compromise tertiary studies in university students, and food choices are linked to student perceptions of the campus food environment. The purpose of this study is to describe the prevalence, demographic and education characteristics associated with food insecurity in a sample of Australian university students and their satisfaction with on-campus food choices.

An online, cross-sectional survey conducted as part of the bi-annual sustainability themed survey was conducted at the University of Tasmania in March 2020. A single-item measure was used to assess food insecurity in addition to six demographic and education characteristics and four questions about the availability of food, affordable food, sustainable food and local food on campus.

Survey data (n = 1,858) were analysed using bivariate analyses and multivariate binary logistic regression. A total of 38% of respondents (70% female; 80% domestic student; 42% aged 18–24 years) were food insecure. Overall, 41% of students were satisfied with the food available on campus. Nearly, half (47%) of food insecure students were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the availability of affordable food on campus. A minority of students were satisfied with the availability of sustainable food (37%) and local food (33%) on campus.

These findings demonstrate a high prevalence of food insecurity and deficits in the university food environment, which can inform the development of strategies to improve the food available on campus, including affordable, sustainable and local options.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of digital platforms on the contemporary visual art market. Drawing on the theoretical insights of the technology acceptance model, the meaning transfer model and arts marketing literature, the authors conceptualise the role of user participation in creating the meaning and value of contemporary artworks in the online art market.

The authors conduct a qualitative study of Saatchi Art as an instrumental case for theorising. It is an online platform for trading visual artworks created by young and emerging artists. The data for this study were collected through direct observation and documentary reviews, as well as user comments and buyer reviews from Saatchi Art. The authors reviewed 319 buyer comments Art and 30 user comments. The collected data are supplemented with various secondary sources such as newspapers, magazines, social media texts and videos.

The growth of digital art platforms such as Saatchi Art provides efficiency and accessibility of information to users while helping them overcome the impediments of physical galleries such as geographical constraints and intimidating psychological environments, thereby attracting novice collectors. However, users’ involvement in the process of valuing artworks is limited and still guided by curatorial direction.

The first limitation of this research is that the data in this research cannot capture interactions between users, though users’ intention to use Saatchi Art is affected by the social influence of other users. Second, this research has not examined artists as users of digital art platforms and their interactions with other types of users. Artists’ intention to use the online platform might be underlined by enhancing their status in the peer group or seeking legitimacy in the field by following other artists and getting recommendations from important referents.

The outcomes of this research suggest that newcomers in the online art market should acknowledge that users’ intention to use the online art platform is determined by not only technological usefulness of the website but also the symbolic capital of the information provider.

User participation in the online art market is guided by curatorial direction rather than social influence. This confirms re-intermediation of marketing relationships, highlighting the role of new intermediaries such as digital platforms in arts marketing.