Guest editorial: Impact through transformative consumer research

European Journal of Marketing

Transformative consumer research (TCR) is the pre-eminent sub-field in Marketing addressing the key intersections between consumer theory, marketing practice and policy to explicitly promote solutions for improving societal well-being (Mick, 2008; Scott and Mende, 2022). Since its inception almost 20 years ago TCR has contributed seminal conceptual and empirical scholarship on some of the most pressing societal challenges (Anderson et al., 2013; Bahl et al., 2016; Block et al., 2011; Kipnis et al., 2021; Ozanne et al., 2017). Recent recommendations from the TCR Impact Task Force have highlighted the urgent and critical need to prioritise and reorient research goals around societal impact, to develop robust strategies for stakeholder engagement and to grow and foster a culture of collaboration and community-centric research (Ozanne et al., 2024). As impact-focused work grows in prominence across a range of business and management disciplines, we are also witnessing an escalating number of scholars around the globe undertaking TCR scholarship. To recognise and highlight their contributions, our vision for this special issue was to cultivate a space for scholars to share the nature of their diverse impact journeys and outcomes, as publishing avenues for such insights remain nascent in scope and number (Ozanne et al., 2024).