Special Issue Editors: Clifford J. Shultz, José Antonio Rosa, and Alan J. Malter
“We the peoples of the [marketing academy] determined to save future generations from the scourge of war…”
Charter of the United Nations (United Nations 1945, p. 2)
The Journal of Public Policy & Marketing is soliciting manuscripts that explore how marketing and public policy can contribute to enduring human well-being by preventing, mitigating, or ending violent social conflict whenever possible, and to enabling beneficial exchange and reducing physical and mental anguish when conflict overtakes societies.
Violent social conflict is a vexing challenge for humanity (Coleman 2014; Tuchman 1985). Various wars this century in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Syria, Sri Lanka, and now Ethiopia and Ukraine are but a few examples of a long history of warfare, over millennia, which disrupts or destroys marketplace activity and kills or displaces people. Survivors must improvise and adapt marketing, policy, and consumption to provide essential goods and services despite deprivation, uncertainty, and physical insecurity.
The harm to individual lives, families, communities, societies, and countries victimized by war is enormous. Annual financial costs are estimated to be $14.4 trillion, 10.5% of global GDP (Institute for Economics & Peace 2021). The total human suffering is incalculable. When social violence escalates to war it can become protracted; as the destructive capabilities of war technologies become more powerful and lethal, such violence poses a growing existential threat to Homo sapiens and many other life-forms on this planet. We have known for millennia that war is costly even in victory (Pyrrhus [in Plutarch] (~2 BCE/1920) and are reminded in our news feeds that war and violent conflict rage on. We have also seen that even amid devastating and protracted conflict, there can be instances of accord and cooperation that enhance life instead of extinguishing it, and that it is often around the most basic of human needs (food, shelter, love) that peace can arise within the furnace of war (Shultz et al. 2020). These paradoxical realities cry out for understanding and action from what are perhaps the most powerful forces shaping societies and people around the world, in fresh ways.
Across levels of analysis and drawing from our accumulated knowledge, marketing scholars and practitioners can engage in initiatives that lead to sustainable peace, prosperity, and well-being for people, organizations, nation-states, and our planet. Coordinated policy and marketing innovations are paramount to conflict cessation and mitigation as well as the advancement of peace and human well-being (e.g., Barrios et al. 2016; Osgood 1962; Shultz et al. 2005).
Markets, marketing, and policy are indispensable to the process and practice of peacemaking and to the systemic endeavors that facilitate sustainable peace, prosperity, and well-being (Rosa, Hugo, and Boggs 2021; Shultz 2016). Better understanding of marketing and policy and their influence on communities, families, and individuals in the specific contexts of violent conflict—systems, interactions, failures, successes, improvements, and good practices—are requisite for a safer, fairer, healthier, and more peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable world. The purpose of this special issue is to enhance this understanding and to inform policy and marketing practice through thoughtful studies in violent social contexts across levels of analysis.
Plausible foci of study might include, but are not limited to, the topics listed below. With all topics, we encourage marketing-related outcome variables and recommendations for actionable marketing and policy implications extending from the research:
- Marketing and policy as constructive engagement toward sustainable peace, prosperity, social justice, and strong institutions (United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #16)
- Marketing and policy to eliminate or mitigate social conflict, violence, and war and to enhance justice, sustainable peace, prosperity, and well-being
- Marketing and consumer dynamics in states made fragile by hegemony, climate change, energy inequities, and other conflict-inducing factors
- Marketing activities as mechanisms to overcome exclusion/disenfranchisement; discrimination based on religion, gender, race, and ethnicity; poverty; and inequality in conflict-affected countries and regions
- Cyber warfare and cyber security; information, misinformation, and propaganda campaigns
- Market disruptions and market continuities (persistence of marketing activities); consumer resilience and effects of physical insecurity on marketing activities and marketplace behavior during wartime conditions
- Marketing, policy, and consumer dynamics of violence-forced displacement and refugee crises
- Rebuilding trust postconflict and among former adversaries; policies, markets, and marketing endeavors to rehabilitate and reintegrate ex-combatants into civil society
- Simmering conflict (e.g., Middle East); marketing and policy to reduce tensions
- Marketing, policy, and consumer dimensions of peace tourism or dark tourism, which contribute new marketing knowledge
- The military industrial complex, arms trafficking, and war profiteers
- Marketing and policy initiatives to assist conflict recovery; community and nation building
- Positive peace marketing and peace dividends through marketing; marketing investments in human development and infrastructure as alternatives to armaments and war
- Applying analysis and intervention tools favored by marketing, consumer, and policy scholars to eliminate, reduce, or prevent conflict and to sustain peace
- Marketing, policy, and consumer dynamics of violence by crime syndicates, cartels, gangs, regimes, and conflict entrepreneurs
- Market, marketing, and consumer dynamics of “good” wars, and “peacekeeping” military investments and operations
- Marketing and public policy implications of negotiations, sanctions, and incentives
- Constructive engagement: theoretical considerations, underpinnings and developments, with implications for cooperative, systemic advances in marketing, public policy, and consumer behavior, and sustainable peace, prosperity, and well-being for all stakeholders
- Fresh perspectives as proposed by authors, consistent with themes of the special issue and agreed on by the editors
Scholars with active research streams on war-ravaged or conflict-crippled societies, places, economies, and/or marketing systems, and who have related interests in peace marketing and consumer resilience to violence, are especially encouraged to submit manuscripts. Multiple-discipline perspectives are welcome, including but not limited to peace studies, military studies, political science, sociology, psychology, economics, law, ethics, history, anthropology, gender studies, ethnicity and race, ecology, sustainability, public health, geography, and others.
Manuscripts should have a marketing focus and may be empirical or conceptual; empirical work is encouraged. Conceptual papers may include comprehensive reviews and historical research; connections to marketing should be clear and explicit. Empirical papers may use any applicable and appropriate methodologies, ranging from qualitative to quantitative (e.g., experimental research, survey research, text analysis, empirical modeling) data collection, as well as synthesis of research findings to quantitative methods (e.g., meta-analyses). Authors’ research may focus on people, organizations, aggregations and/or marketing systems from local to global, in the form of consumers, communities, nations, states, countries, regions, blocs, alliances, and multilateral agreements.
All submissions should be of the highest quality per Journal standards and guidelines and at the intersection of marketing, policy, and the public interest (Martin and Scott 2021). Submissions should directly address policy and marketing practice implications for stakeholder well-being within organizations and industry sectors, and within local communities, state, country, regional, and/or global markets.
Related Events of Interest
We encourage all authors interested in this special issue to submit their work and participate in one or more of the four special sessions or events being organized for the 2022 Marketing and Public Policy Conference, the 2022 AMA Summer Academic Conference, the 2023 AMA Winter Academic Conference, and an online conference/workshop. Conference participation is encouraged but not required for submission.
Inquiries can be directed to the special issue guest coeditors: Cliff Shultz (cjs2@luc.edu), José Antonio Rosa (jarosa@iastate.edu) and Alan Malter (amalter@uic.edu).
Manuscripts should follow JPP&M’s formatting guidelines, and all manuscripts should be submitted through the JPP&M’s online submission system.
Manuscripts to be considered for this special issue should be submitted by May 1, 2023.
Selected References
Barrios, Andrés., Kristine de Valck, Clifford Shultz, Olivier Sibai, Katherina Husemann, Matthew Maxwell-Smith, and Marius Luedicke (2016), “Marketing as a Means to Transformative Social Conflict Resolution: Lessons from Transitioning War Economies and the Colombian Coffee Marketing System,” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 35 (2), 185–97. https://doi.org/10.1509/jppm.15.151
Coleman, Peter (2014), “Intractable Conflict,” in The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, 3rd ed., Peter Coleman, Morton Deutsch, and Eric Marcus, eds. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 708–43.
Institute for Economics & Peace (2021), Economic Value of Peace 2021: Measuring the Global Economic Impact of Violence and Conflict. Sydney: Institute for Economics & Peace.
Martin, Kelly D. and Maura L. Scott (2021), “Journal of Public Policy & Marketing: A Strategic Vision for Rigor, Relevance, and Inclusivity,” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 40 (1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1177/0743915620928090
Osgood, Charles (1962), An Alternative to War or Surrender. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Plutarch (~2 BCE/1920), “The Life of Pyrrhus,” The Parallel Lives, Vol. IX, trans. Perrin, B., Loeb Classical Libraries, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rosa, José Antonio, Nichole Hugo, and David J. Boggs (2021), “Attaining Positive Peace in Competitive Markets: Lessons from Ecotourism Clusters,” in Building Positive Peace, Christina Campbell and Simon Cordery, eds. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars.
Shultz, Clifford (2016), “Marketing an End to War: Constructive Engagement, Community Wellbeing, and Sustainable Peace,” Markets, Globalization & Development Review, 1 (2), Article 2, 1–23. http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=mgdr
Shultz, Clifford, Andrés Barrios, Alexander Krasnikov, Ingrid Becker, Aronté Bennett, Renu Emile, Maria Hokkinen, Julia Pennington, Macros Santos, and Jaime Sierra (2020), “The Global Refugee Crisis: Pathway for a More Humanitarian Solution,” Journal of Macromarketing, 40 (1), 128–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/0276146719896390
Shultz, Clifford, Timothy Burkink, Bruno Grbac, and Nataša Renko (2005), “When Policies and Marketing Systems Explode: An Assessment of Food Marketing in the War-Ravaged Balkans and Implications for Recovery, Sustainable Peace, and Prosperity,” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 24 (1), 24–37. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jppm.24.1.24.63897
Tuchman, Barbara (1985), The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. New York: Random House.
United Nations (1945), Charter of the United Nations. New York: United Nations. https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/CTC/uncharter.pdf