Search results

Drawing on the service-dominant logic and taking a multi-stakeholder brand value co-creation perspective, this paper aims to investigate whether positioning a place brand around sustainability helps or hinders stakeholders’ ability to co-create value for themselves and the brand.

This paper is based on a case study of Bristol’s city branding following its award of European Green Capital, drawing on 29 in-depth interviews with key informants from multiple stakeholder groups. These interviews are supported by secondary material and field observations.

The findings evidence a “tale of two cities”. When sustainability is used as a positioning device, tensions are identified across three elements of brand co-creation: brand meanings; extraordinary versus mundane brand performances; and empowerment and disempowerment in branding governance. These tensions create stakeholder experiences of both engagement and estrangement.

This paper is based on one case study and evaluates face-to-face stakeholder interactions. Future research could access further stakeholders, across multiple cities and also examine their digital engagement.

Positioning a brand as sustainable (i.e. green) requires strong commitment to other ethical principles in practice. Brand practitioners and marketers may benefit from advancing stakeholders’ everyday brand performances to reduce disillusionment.

Rallying around virtuous associations, i.e. sustainability, does not in itself facilitate the generation of value for stakeholders and the brand, but instead can illuminate power imbalances and tensions in stakeholder interactions that result in a co-destruction of value.

The paper aims to critically review the increasingly taken-for-granted view of social enterprise (SE) as inherently paradoxical and tackles the research question as follows: are the tensions experienced by SE and social entrepreneurs (SEnt) actually paradoxical and if not, what are the implications for theory and practice?

A paradox theory (PT) approach has been utilized to explore the implications, validity and helpfulness of the paradox perspective in understanding and managing the tensions that are inherent in SE.

Conceptualizing the primary tension of doing social good through commercial activity as a paradox is argued to be a limiting misnomer that conspires to reify and perpetuate the tensions that SE and SEnt have to manage. Drawing upon PT, the findings of the paper reconceptualize these tensions as myths, dilemmas and dialectics, which are subsequently used to develop a more complete ontological framework of the challenges that arise in SE and for SEnt.

Reconceptualizing the “inherent paradoxes” of SE as either dilemmas or dialectics affords a means of pursuing their successful resolution. Consequently, this view alleviates much of the pressure that SE managers and SEnt may feel in needing to pursue commercial goals alongside social goals.

The work presents new theoretical insights to challenge the dominant view of SE as inherently paradoxical.

This paper aims to further the authors’ understanding of brand communities, and their role in brand co-creation, through empirical and theoretical contributions derived from researching the marketing dynamics operating within a successful but atypical form of brand community, Fairtrade Towns (FTT).

The paper reflects a pragmatic application of Grounded Theory, which captured qualitative data from key “insiders”, with a particular emphasis on FTT steering group members and their role as “prosumers”. Data were gathered via ethnographic involvement within one town and semi-structured interviews with participants in others.

FTTs, as brand communities, demonstrate elements of co-creation that go beyond the dominant theories and models within the marketing literature. They operate in, and relate to, real places rather than the online environments that dominate the literature on this subject. Unusually, the interactions between brand marketers and consumers are not the primary source of co-creation in FTTs. Instead, factors usually identified as merely secondary providers of additional brand knowledge become key initiators and sources of co-creation and active “citizen marketer” engagement.

This study demonstrates how brand co-creation can operate in physical geographical communities in ways that are formal without being managed by conventional brand managers. It conceptualises FTTs as a nested and “glocalised” brand and demonstrates how steering group members facilitate the process of co-creation as prosumers. It empirically demonstrates how FTTs have evolved to become unusually complex brand communities in terms of the variety of stakeholders and the multiplicity of brands involved, and the governance of the localised brand co-creation process.

Sustainability principles have been practiced and researched in marketing for nearly five decades, but the challenges we face today are still significant. This context defines the purpose of this paper, which is to find, synthesize and critically evaluate the existing literature on marketing in a sustainability context from 1969 to 2019. The ultimate aim is to provide a unified body of literature on sustainability marketing and classify the extant literature.

The relevant articles from selected journals were identified and manually verified using the Scopus database. The SPAR- 4- SLR protocol provides the framework for the methodology. In total, 749 articles were eligible for inclusion in the study.

The research findings are presented in the form of article categorization into 11 thematic categories. The thematic categories outlined previous studies' trend and contribution characteristics under the individual category, illustrating their implications.

The literature review aids in understanding the current state of research and piques researchers' interest in sustainability marketing. The findings of the study will be a valuable resource for future scholars, managers and policymakers.

This study contributes to the existing literature by providing valuable insights from previous research on the research trend in sustainability marketing and by providing a recommendation for future research avenues. After a long hiatus, this is the most up-to-date comprehensive article, providing a general overview of research trends.

There appears to be a common misconception within financial services marketing that the field of sales promotion is somehow irrelevant. Demonstrates that although some sales promotion tools are inappropriate for financial services, there are others which offer considerable opportunities for effective marketing communications. Focuses on one promotional technique which has had an increasingly visible impact within financial services in recent years – the promotional competition. Uses a survey covering 57 competitions to demonstrate the extent, nature and implications of their use to promote financial services.

“Below‐the‐line” sales promotion as part of the communication mix is virtually ignored within the services marketing literature, in comparison with personal selling and “above‐the‐line” advertising. However, “below‐the‐line” techniques have been growing in their extent, credibility and sophistication during the last two decades. They have now reached the point where they deserve consideration in relation to other areas of marketing practice beyond their fast‐moving consumer goods (FMCG) origins. The different tools which make up the promotional toolkit have also reached a point where they deserve individual consideration instead of being bundled together. Seeks to demonstrate how one such tool, the promotional competition, represents a significant opportunity for services marketers. Reviews the literature relating to sales promotion to build a case for the suitability of competitions for services marketing, and presents the findings of a survey of 188 services‐sponsored competitions to explore the nature and extent of competitions′ use in practice.

Given the ways in which the research pressures on university staff are becoming seemingly ever greater, an issue of the European Journal of Marketing that is given over to a survey of the kinds of research initiatives which are currently being carried out is timely. The study which provides the basis for this was conducted between December 1994 and February 1995, with questionnaires being sent to staff in universities throughout Europe. At the time the final selection was made, a total of 150 responses had been received from 18 countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relevance and implications of the issue of climate change to marketing communicators in both the private and public sectors, and some of the challenges involve in developing effective climate change communications.

This paper uses a combination of findings from secondary sources combined with some specific key insights drawn from primary research.

Effective communication on climate change which is capable of motivating changes in consumer behaviour (rather than simply raising awareness further) will depend upon: the relevance of climate change to consumers' lives and the relationship to their consumption behaviours being made clear; targeting strategies which take account of differences amongst key consumer segments; and developing a message which motivates rather than overwhelms consumers whilst avoiding any perceptions of “greenwashing”.

This paper explores a number of practical aspects of the challenges faced by commercial marketers seeking to engage with consumers about climate change, and it illustrates the potential for the transfer of knowledge and insight with social marketers working in the public sector.

The paper is original in its analysis of the multi‐faceted challenge of climate change as an important but challenging subject for marketing communications efforts, and in exploring the potential for the transfer of knowledge and insight between marketers in the public and private sectors.

To review the history of “green marketing” since the early 1990s and to provide a critique of both theory and practice in order to understand how the marketing discipline may yet contribute to progress towards greater sustainability.

The paper examines elements of green marketing theory and practice over the past 15 years by employing the logic of the classic paper from 1985 “Has marketing failed, or was it never really tried” of seeking to identify “false marketings” that have hampered progress.

That much of what has been commonly referred to as “green marketing” has been underpinned by neither a marketing, nor an environmental, philosophy. Five types of misconceived green marketing are identified and analysed: green spinning, green selling, green harvesting, enviropreneur marketing and compliance marketing.

Provides an alternative viewpoint on a much researched, but still poorly understood area of marketing, and explains why the anticipated “green revolution” in marketing prefaced by market research findings, has not more radically changed products and markets in practice.

Helps readers to understand why progress towards a more sustainable economy has proved so difficult, and outlines some of the more radical changes in thought and practice that marketing will need to adopt before it can make a substantive contribution towards greater sustainability.