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This study aims to delve into the lived experiences, challenges and visions of women entrepreneurs in Jordan, placing a magnifying glass on those spearheading or co-pioneering start-ups. It aims to understand the myriad factors that influence their entrepreneurial journey, from motivation to the future of their niche.

Adopting a qualitative lens, this study is anchored in semi-structured interviews encompassing 20 Jordanian women entrepreneurs. Following this, thematic analysis was deployed to dissect and categorize the garnered insights into ten salient themes.

The study reveals that personal experiences and challenges are pivotal in directing these women towards niche markets, aligning with the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Tools such as digital instruments, customer feedback and innovative strategies like storytelling and augmented reality are integral to their entrepreneurial success, resonating with the resource-based view (RBV). Additionally, challenges like cultural barriers and infrastructural limitations are navigated through adaptive strategies, reflecting the resilience inherent in these entrepreneurs. Networking, mentorship, embracing technological advancements and implementing sustainable practices are highlighted as crucial elements underpinned by the social identity theory (SIT).

Contrary to the extant body of research, this study provides new insights into the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in Jordan, highlighting the practical relevance of theories like TPB, RBV and SIT for both policymakers and the start-up community in niche markets.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked interest in various areas, including marketing. However, this exhilaration is being tempered by growing concerns about the moral and legal implications of using AI in marketing. Although previous research has revealed various ethical and legal issues, such as algorithmic discrimination and data privacy, there are no definitive answers. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating AI’s ethical and legal concerns in marketing and suggesting feasible solutions.

The paper synthesises information from academic articles, industry reports, case studies and legal documents through a thematic literature review. A qualitative analysis approach categorises and interprets ethical and legal challenges and proposes potential solutions.

The findings of this paper raise concerns about ethical and legal challenges related to AI in the marketing area. Ethical concerns related to discrimination, bias, manipulation, job displacement, absence of social interaction, cybersecurity, unintended consequences, environmental impact, privacy and legal issues such as consumer security, responsibility, liability, brand protection, competition law, agreements, data protection, consumer protection and intellectual property rights are discussed in the paper, and their potential solutions are discussed.

Notwithstanding the interesting insights gathered from this investigation of the ethical and legal consequences of AI in marketing, it is important to recognise the limits of this research. Initially, the focus of this study is confined to a review of the most important ethical and legal issues pertaining to AI in marketing. Additional possible repercussions, such as those associated with intellectual property, contracts and licencing, should be investigated more deeply in future studies. Despite the fact that this study gives various answers and best practices for tackling the stated ethical and legal concerns, the viability and efficacy of these solutions may differ depending on the context and industry. Thus, more research and case studies are required to evaluate the applicability and efficacy of these solutions in other circumstances. This research is mostly based on a literature review and may not represent the experiences or opinions of all stakeholders engaged in AI-powered marketing. Further study might involve interviews or surveys with marketing professionals, customers and other key stakeholders to offer a full knowledge of the practical difficulties and solutions. Because of the rapid speed of technical progress, AI’s ethical and regulatory ramifications in marketing are continually increasing. Consequently, this work should be a springboard for more research and continuing conversations on this subject.

This study’s findings have several practical implications for marketing professionals. Emphasising openness and explainability: Marketing professionals should prioritise transparency in their use of AI, ensuring that customers are fully informed about data collection and utilisation for targeted advertising. By promoting openness and explainability, marketers can foster customer trust and avoid the negative consequences of a lack of transparency. Establishing ethical guidelines: Marketing professionals need to develop ethical rules for the creation and implementation of AI-powered marketing strategies. Adhering to ethical principles ensures compliance with legal norms and aligns with the organisation’s values and ideals. Investing in bias detection tools and privacy-enhancing technology: To mitigate risks associated with AI in marketing, marketers should allocate resources to develop and implement bias detection tools and privacy-enhancing technology. These tools can identify and address biases in AI algorithms, safeguard consumer privacy and extract valuable insights from consumer data.

This study’s social implications emphasise the need for a comprehensive approach to address the ethical and legal challenges of AI in marketing. This includes adopting a responsible innovation framework, promoting ethical leadership, using ethical decision-making frameworks and conducting multidisciplinary research. By incorporating these approaches, marketers can navigate the complexities of AI in marketing responsibly, foster an ethical organisational culture, make informed ethical decisions and develop effective solutions. Such practices promote public trust, ensure equitable distribution of benefits and risk, and mitigate potential negative social consequences associated with AI in marketing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is among the first to explore potential solutions comprehensively. This paper provides a nuanced understanding of the challenges by using a multidisciplinary framework and synthesising various sources. It contributes valuable insights for academia and industry.

The chapter briefly reviews the eight volumes in my Legend series – organizational buying behavior, consumer behavior, product and new product management, marketing strategy, market segmentation, global marketing, marketing research and modeling, and the future of marketing. In addition, the chapter highlights the three driving forces of much of my research: (a) the real world challenges facing corporations and organizations, (b) the search for new methodological developments, and (c) the continuous challenge of the prevailing marketing concepts and approaches. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the evolution of marketing in the past five decades and my wish list for the discipline and my future activities.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges and marketing executive development needs of the future as revealed in surveys of senior marketing executives, chief marketing officers and CEOs of major corporations in the USA and globally.

A historical analysis of the marketing function, its importance and emerging needs was conducted.

Within this paper, the two questions of key importance that will be explored to manage marketing in tomorrow's world are as follows: what emerging trends present challenges to the marketing executive of the future? And what skills and knowledge trends and changes demand that the effective marketing executive acquire? The conclusion of this study indicate that the marketing executive of the future must have the needed skills in managing innovation and change, educating and developing leaders, understand technology, formulate and implement strategy, apply new leadership concepts, collaborate with government, anticipate social and technological advances, become more customer oriented and be more flexible.

The paper is valuable in that it highlights the challenges and needs of senior marketing executives going forward in a changing world.

This study aims to improve understanding of companies’ motives and concerns in relation to cooperation through a joint commercial product portfolio.

The qualitative research method was used to study 17 companies based on two case projects.

The joint commercial product portfolio is introduced as a new type of co-marketing. The possible business drivers, targeted benefits and perceived challenges of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in relation to cooperation through a joint commercial product portfolio are identified. The companies seem to be motivated by and concerned about similar issues that also apply to other forms of co-marketing.

The study consisted of two case projects in the same country and, thus, share fairly similar business environments and cultures. Therefore, the same results may not be obtained for a study that is conducted in a different location.

Managers of SMEs can benefit from the results of this study by improving their understanding of co-marketing opportunities through the creation of a joint commercial product portfolio with suitable companies. In addition, the results provide managers with insights into the challenges that should be considered when planning marketing cooperation.

The study provides new perspectives on the existing co-marketing literature by discussing the creation of a joint commercial product portfolio as a vehicle to support companies’ business objectives. The study contributes to the increasing business-to-business co-marketing literature by presenting the business drivers, targeted benefits and perceived challenges related to SMEs cooperation through a joint commercial product portfolio.

Based on a “Fill-the-Bottle” (FTB) challenge, this research explores how experiential design can help cause-related marketing. This study aims to show that experiences designed as anti-structural and anti-functional can raise awareness through action.

The authors study a corpus of 52 introspective journals and 60 pictures about the challenge, which entails filling empty bottles with cigarette butts from the streets as quickly as possible, then sharing pictures of the bottles on social media.

The anti-structural design of the experience activates the participants’ experiential system, and the social interactions between the participants and pedestrians construct meaning for the experience. The results further indicate that as follows: individuals’ frames of reference can explain whether they perceive the experience as liberatory or stochastic; anti-structural design can serve cause-related marketing by focusing on three stages: doing, showing and sharing; and experiential marketing can serve societal and social causes.

This research involved a single field. Further research with more heterogeneous participants would be insightful. The power of experiential marketing to serve meaningful and collective causes should be encouraged. Further research should be conducted to understand and conceptualize these collective attempts to fight the dark sides of consumption.

In line with Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) advice to stage memorable experiences by working cautiously on cues, the FTB challenge analysis indicates that by focusing on material evidence and staging a specific sequence of doing something about it, showing everyone what is being done and expanding visibility by sharing artifacts of the action on social media, one can actually make people think about and remember the action.

The “do-show-share” design that the FTB challenge uses can be relevant for many cause-related marketing efforts because it operates on both individual and collective levels.

This research offers a new perspective on experiential marketing by studying how experiences designed to be anti-structural can renew social, cause-related marketing tools.

Marketing is all about understanding your consumers and giving them what they want. However, this process becomes more complicated in times of economic crisis and national slowdown. Consumers can become scattered and unpredictable in their behaviour, making it hard to understand what they want or need. At times like these, it is more important than ever to rely on qualitative market research to understand the views of consumers and managers. Thus, this study aims to look at the significant consumer challenges that arise during times of crisis and the marketing strategies that managers prefer to counter the crisis.

The data collected for this study involves an extensive literature review followed by personal interviews with industry experts. This study presents two separate models, indicating hierarchical relationships among consumer challenges during crisis and marketing strategies using the total interpretive structural modelling approach. Further MICMAC analysis (popularly known as cross-impact matrix multiplication) was also performed to assess each variable's driving and dependence power.

“Price sensitiveness” and “adaptive buying” result as driving factors with the highest driving and lowest dependence power, which further gives rise to other consumer behaviour challenges. Likewise, the most critical strategies are “information systems” and the formation of “crisis management teams” during a crisis. At the same time, other strategies have resulted as linkage and dependent factors and none as the autonomous factor.

This paper provides a systematic understanding of how a manager can understand the challenges consumers face during a crisis and suggests a powerful summary of strategies companies can implement to sail through a crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to enrich the knowledge about blockchain (BC) technology implementation in the agri-food industry by providing an interpretive framework of the key marketing opportunities and challenges, related to the adoption of BC for Geographical Indication (GI) products.

The study adopts an explorative qualitative research design through the cognitive mapping technique applied to the cognition of different market players involved in agri-food BC projects: farmers, distributors, companies and consultancies.

This study presents a comprehensive examination of the marketing impacts of BC across various marketing objectives, including product enhancement, brand positioning, consumer relationships, market access and supply chain relationships. It highlights the capability of BC to facilitate data-enabled ecosystems within the agri-food sector, involving supply chain actors and control agencies. Additionally, the study sheds light on the challenges (technological, collaborative, political, financial and organizational) associated with the implementation of BC in the marketing of agri-food products.

This work provides a comprehensive examination of the relevance of BC in the marketing activities of firms, particularly in the context of quality food products. It highlights the main areas of impact and effects and emphasizes the complexity of the phenomenon, which extends beyond its technical issues. Furthermore, it offers a systematic exploration of the challenges associated with the adoption of BC in marketing activities, thus contributing to a broader understanding of the implications of BC adoption in companies' marketing strategies.

The practical implications for this work addresses both GI companies and policy makers. Implications for companies relate to the market benefits associated with the implementation of BC, which allow further strengthening of market positioning, relationships of trust within the supply chain and integration between physical and digital market channels. The study also systematizes the challenges underlying the implementation of BC projects. The implications for policy makers regard the role they have to play in BC projects at regulatory, financial and policy levels.

Studies focusing on BC applications in marketing are still limited and characterized by a very narrow perspective (especially in the food industry). This study contributes to the conceptual design of the marketing applications of BC in the agri-food sector. The value of the study also lies in having framed the marketing impacts of BC in a holistic perspective, along with the technological and non-technological challenges that are related to the integration of BC in marketing strategy and operations.

This chapter highlights how implementing circular economy principles can help companies working with sustainability to move from a reductionist and waste management approach to marketing competitive circular value propositions that intentionally design out waste (e.g. emissions and pollution) by rethinking, reinventing and redesigning the value chain. Schijvens, a Dutch family-owned corporate fashion textile company, acts as a case for exemplifying successful implementation of circular economy principles as a marketing strategy in a sector that struggles with finding solutions to the ethical challenges of producing and marketing textile fashion. The textile industry has, for many years, been accused of production that is based on environmentally harmful processes and conditions that are not socially fair. Circular economy principles provide a range of suggestions to address the ethical challenges occurring from covering the human needs of having clothes to wear. Yet, implementing circular economy principles is not a panacea. It is not only a question of delivering a technological quick fix but also a question of managing the new processes and human mindset guiding the actions in the value chain. This chapter, therefore, outlines reasons for a different perspective on the traditional linear value chain and related implications managers face when undertaking a journey from sustainability based on a reductionist approach to a closed-loop approach. It is argued that implementing circular economy principles by pro-actively managing the value chain processes based on eco-centric dynamic capabilities can provide even more radical changes than the incremental reductionist approach often associated with being a green sustainable company.

Strategic marketing is confronted with an array of global challenges and opportunities at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. Some opinion leaders question the role and importance of marketing strategy. Others are convinced the discipline is more vital than ever before.

Several important trends and issues have been articulated by leaders in the marketing discipline concerning how marketing thought and practice are expected to change in the future. Interestingly, opinion leaders offer very different interpretations concerning the role and importance of marketing in organizations today. FindingsThus, it is apparent that a complete vision about the future of marketing strategy has not emerged, although several challenges are indicated. Our objective is to identify these strategy challenges and their implications regarding marketing thought and practice. Importantly, the challenges highlight several marketing strategy opportunities which are relevant to scholars and managers.

Marketing Science Institute interviews with CEOs and top marketing executives from a diversified sample of 12 corporations indicate “The strategic influence of marketing, as previously understood, appears to have diminished as short‐term revenue goals become more dominant and the role of the sales force is strengthened”. McGovern and Quelch in their survey of 120 companies and 18 interviews with CMOs and/or CEOs from global companies indicate that large corporations are “looking for strategic and operational leadership from the marketing organization more than ever before. The result is the increasing prominence of a senior executive whose title didn’t even exist ten years ago: the chief marketing officer or CMO”. Interviews with more than 40 CMOs from a range of companies around the globe by McKinsey & Company indicate that the top priority concern “is that an explosion of customer segments, products, media vehicles, and distribution channels has made marketing more complex, more costly, and less effective”. Vargo and Lusch propose that “marketing thought is not so much fragmented as it is evolving toward a new dominant logic – the exchange of intangibles, specialized skills and knowledge, and processes”.

Several forces are expected to impact the strategic marketing decisions of a wide range of companies throughout the world. Moreover, these forces need to be addressed in managerial initiatives, course design, and several offer promising research opportunities.