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The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative perspective to the article on consumer vulnerability recently published in this journal by Russell-Bennett et al. (2024).

The approach is collegial but firm in its analysis of their discussion about how vulnerable consumers feel and react, as offered without appropriate review and details from previous research.

The perspective given by the authors is found to lack sufficient substance and foundation in the consumer vulnerability literature across several leading journals in the field. Alternative interpretations are presented and articulated.

All ideas expressed as a counter to their arguments come from decades of experiences working with vulnerable peoples across multiple contexts and communities.

The purpose of this paper is to inspire research at the intersection of marketing and mental health. Marketing academics have much to offer – and much to learn from – research on consumer mental health. However, the context, terminology and setting may prove intimidating to marketing scholars unfamiliar with this vulnerable population. Here, experienced researchers offer guidance for conducting compelling research that not only applies marketing frameworks to the mental health industry but also uses this unique context to deepen our understanding of all consumers.

Common concerns about conducting marketing research in the area of mental health were circulated to researchers experienced working with vulnerable populations. Their thoughtful responses are reported here, organized around the research cycle.

Academics and practitioners offer insights into developing compelling research questions at the intersection of marketing and mental health, strategies to identify relevant populations to research and guidance for safe and ethical research design, conduct and publication.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first instructional paper to provide practical advice to begin and maintain a successful research agenda at the intersection of mental health and marketing.

There are multiple threats that cause consumers to be vulnerable in the marketplace, with poverty being a leading cause. Impoverishment often negatively impacts access to multiple categories of goods and services that consumers require to experience a reasonable quality of life. While there is research that explores the underlying factors that lead to resource deficits and marketplace restrictions, as well as their physical and emotional outcomes, an understanding of what is necessary to survive and thrive across societies is more elusive. To this end, our chapter carefully examines the concept of consumption adequacy (CA), which historically captures consumer needs for food and potable water, socially acceptable clothing adapted to weather conditions, safe housing that provides for privacy needs of occupants, preventative and remedial health care, and opportunities to grow and advance through education and training. After briefly summarizing the extant literature, each is described in turn, and ways of empirically investigating them across societies are advanced. This chapter closes with both marketer and public policy implications.

This chapter develops and examines a model of the relationship between consumption and environmental degradation, using per capita gross domestic product (GDP) as the proxy for consumer behavior and per capita carbon dioxide emissions as the indicator of pollution. The time paths of emissions and consumption are modeled within a dynamic framework representative of ever-changing global economic and social conditions, and the result is expressed as an optimization problem from which Hamiltonian conditions are derived. Optimal control theory can be used to solve problems in dynamic economic analysis, and the Hamiltonian approach is one way of solving this class of problems. These conditions are analyzed through the use of a phase diagram, and the empirical section of the chapter reveals the relationship between CO2 emissions and GDP values for the aggregate of 148 nation states studied by the United Nations, as well as for developed, developing, and underdeveloped countries as classified by the United Nations. The results of our analysis are not encouraging unless significant changes are made to the policies of leading nations, and the chapter closes with a discussion of alternative policy paths that may ease the identified trends in environmental degradation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the continuing search for evidence that good corporate governance leads to positive organizational outcomes, and it presents a unique perspective on this issue based on firm size.

The study utilized a comprehensive measure of governance as well as a risk‐adjusted measure of share price in its comparisons between companies known for good governance and broader markets composed of similar‐sized firms.

The findings show evidence of better risk‐adjusted performance across all recent sub‐periods (three‐, five‐, and ten‐year) for the firms in the smallest market capitalization category. Better risk‐adjusted returns were earned for only the ten‐year period for the largest firms and the overall US market. Mid‐cap stocks were not significant in any of the three periods studied. The fact that the small cap stocks showed significance for all three sub‐periods indicates the relationship between good corporate governance practices and the financial success of a company is the strongest for smaller firms and is more likely to be experienced in longer time horizons for most firms, small and large.

Investigations of this seminal issue have produced mixed results because the operational definitions of governance often are too narrow, the timeframes for impact are too constricted, and the comparisons are too broad. In addition, the use of a novel approach for understanding why these findings may hold true provides scholars with new avenues for thinking about and modeling the governance‐performance relationship.

Good governance matters and requires managers and policy makers to find the appropriate context in order to have meaningful comparisons.

The paper supports the “doing well while doing good” paradigm for both individual and institutional investors' investment choices by showing that selecting firms that practice good corporate governance can be a long‐term value‐maximizing strategy.

A major nuance from other studies of the impact of a firm's corporate governance performance on its financial performance is the authors' use of four sub‐categories of companies based on market capitalization/firm size. Findings ultimately show whether investors/owners reward corporate governance via stock purchases, and if so, how this relationship may have changed over the past decade according to various markets and risk‐adjusted returns.

The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the digital divide so advertisers recognize opportunities, threats, and responsibilities in their use of the Internet to promote goods and services worldwide. Through data collected by a variety of international organizations and in cooperation with the United Nations, this research explores the diffusion of information and communications technology within the context of vast socioeconomic inequalities across and inside nations. The paper opens with a brief discussion of the impact of the technological revolution on advertising, followed by a look at the digital divide. Data descriptions are presented in the next section, along with findings that provide regional comparisons. The paper closes with implications for advertising practice as well as global policy.

The purpose of this investigation is to examine the explanatory powers of a consumer complicity framework that uses counterfeit products and five emerging country markets (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). A web survey was administered to 1,600 consumers in Brazil, Russia, India, and China to test whether demographics, national origin, perceived quality, price, and a hedonic shopping environment predicted consumers' complicity in these emerging markets. Overall, the results found little support for either demographics or national origin to predict this type of illicit consumption. The best predictive variables were perceived quality, price, and hedonic shopping experience. The study concludes with a model that incorporates these results and suggests that future research employ demarketing tactics using both cognitive dissonance and expected utility theories to obtain a more holistic view for curbing complicity that goes beyond product attributes and the shopping environment.

We are grateful for the privilege of editing this book and organizing the conference that it celebrates. We thank our universities, departments, and organizations for their generous support, the many people who helped organize the conference, and the reviewers acknowledged below. Most of all, we thank our presenters, participants, and authors for their interest and energy.