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As specialisation takes root in human communities, the economics of scale and of diversity come into play. Scale leads to product markets, specialised firms, channels, and to industries. Diversity generates peasant markets, shopping malls, and business eco‐systems. These outcomes are all examples of marketing systems, and are typical of the patterns that emerge, grow, adapt and evolve in complex transaction flows. Marketing systems are multi‐level, path dependent, dynamic systems, embedded within a social matrix, and interacting with institutional and knowledge environments. The purpose of this paper is to outline a number of propositions that might serve as a basis for a theory of marketing systems.

The paper draws on historical research into the evolution of exchange and on examples of markets and exchange practices from marketing, anthropology, sociology, and economics. It utilises results from complex adaptive systems theory, from the networks and markets literatures, and from ecology, to formulate a series of propositions that identify properties believed to be common to all marketing systems.

Marketing systems are identified and categorized as emergent patterns in flows of transactions. In total, 12 foundational propositions are suggested. The propositions are complementary to those suggested by S‐D logic.

This paper offers a fresh approach to the study of marketing systems, developing relevant theory. Marketing systems link micro choices with macro outcomes, with implications ranging from disaster recovery to distributive justice and QOL outcomes.

Combining institutional work and actor engagement (AE) literature, this paper aims to elucidate how the collective action of market shaping occurs through the interplay between market shapers’ institutional work and engagement of other market actors. While markets are shaped by actors’ purposive actions and recent literature notes the need to also mobilize AE, the underlying process remains nebulous.

This paper is conceptual but supported by an illustrative case study: the Winding Tree. This blockchain-based, decentralized travel marketplace shapes a market by decoupling existing resource linkages, creating new ones and stabilizing others through a dynamic, iterative process between the market shaper’s institutional work and others’ AE.

The paper develops a dynamic, iterative framework of market shaping through increased resource density, revealing the interplay between seven types of market shapers’ institutional work distilled from the literature and changes in other market actors’ engagement dispositions, behaviors and the diffusion of AE through the market.

This research contributes to the emergent market shaping and market innovation literature by illustrating how the engagement of market actors is a fundamental means of market shaping. Specifically, it advances understanding of how market shapers’ institutional work leads to new resource linkages and higher resource density in emergent market systems through AE. The resultant framework offers an original, critical foundation for future market shaping research.

Looks at the marketing literature on the subject of multi‐attribute utility models. Reviews the multiple objective and multi‐dimensional preference models within the framework of multiple attribute utility theory. Suggests that much of the research in this area has been information‐ rather than decision‐oriented and, as a result, this has not been integrated successfully into the field of strategic marketing policy‐making.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Marketing Intelligence & Planning is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing Strategy; Customer Service; Sales Management/Sundry; Promotion; Marketing Research/Customer Behaviour; Product Management; Logistics and Distribution.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management is split into eight sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Distribution and supply chain management; Logistics; Air/road/rail transport; Retail/wholesale; Freight and delivery services; International; Purchasing; Accounting.

This paper proposes a model of distributor retention in network marketing (NWM) organisations based on a review of the existing literature from salesforce management, turnover and marketing perspectives. It is hypothesised that a number of the characteristics of NWM organisations, and those of the individual distributors themselves, could offer considerable utility in allowing NWM organisations to predict the duration of the relationship that they might expect to develop with a particular distributor.

A little-known “lottery fever” has spread to many parts of rural China over the past 10 years. This is driven by participation in underground lotteries with local bookies. It is called liuhecai, which is the name of the Hong Kong lottery, and is based on guessing the bonus number of the Hong Kong Mark Six lottery. Such lotteries are illegal, but are an open secret. This chapter seeks to understand the meaning of this apparently irrational lottery fever: why people participate in it, why they believe the conspiracy theory that it is rigged (and yet still participate), and why similar lotteries have emerged in both capitalist Taiwan and post-socialist China at this particular time.

With the explosion of digital technologies in contemporary daily life, fuelled by a pandemic and remote working, online learning and shopping and the proliferation of social platforms, much remains nebulous about the opportunities these technologies hold for social marketers beyond their previously documented use as communication and promotion tools. This paper aims to provide a rich examination of the variety of digital technologies used within social marketing and establish the scale of integration between digital technologies and social marketing.

Following systematic literature review procedures, a systematic literature review through eight databases was conducted. The systematic review focussed on the assessment of social marketing studies that incorporated a wide range of mature and emerging digital technologies such as the internet, mobile platforms and social media channels. A total of 50 social marketing studies (2014–2020) were analysed.

The review found that there have been major advancements in the technologies available to social marketers in recent years. Furthermore, the adoption of digital technologies by social marketers has evolved from a communication or promotion function where generic information is pushed to the citizen, towards the use of these technologies for a more personalised design, content and behaviour change intervention. In some studies, the digital technologies were the primary means for interactions and collaborations to take place. The review also found that digital technologies target more than the individual citizen. Digital technologies are used to target multi-level stakeholders, policy makers and partners as part of behavioural change interventions.

Only two previous reviews have synthesised digital technologies and their use in social marketing. This review provides a recent depiction of the range and scale of integration within social marketing. Specifically, it demonstrates the expansion beyond a persuasive application to their use for research, segmentation and targeting, collaboration and co-creation, the product and facilitator of service delivery. Finally, this review provides a heat map to illustrate the integration between digital technologies and key concepts and criteria within social marketing.

Although the use of data from different levels is very common in international marketing research, the practice of employing multi‐level analysis techniques is relatively new. The paper aims to provide an application of a specific case of multi‐level modelling – where the dependent variable is dichotomous, which is often the case in marketing research (e.g. whether a consumer buys the brand or not, whether he/she is aware of the brand or not, etc.)

A hierarchical generalized linear model is employed.

Since this is a technical paper, the authors would like to emphasize the process rather than the empirical findings. In summary, the paper: provides a brief theoretical overview of Hierarchical Linear Modeling and Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling; illustrates the application of the method using the domains of consumers within countries and a dichotomous dependent variable; focuses on interpretation of log‐odds results; and concludes with practical issues and research implications.

The main value of this research is to demonstrate how to employ multi‐level models when the dependent variable is dichotomous. Multi‐level techniques are quite new in international marketing research, although nested data structures are relatively common in our field. This is a technical paper that guides the researchers as to how to apply and interpret the results when modeling such data with a dichotomous dependent variable.