Transformative consumer research in the new era of marketing: An introduction to the special issue

AMS Review

This special issue follows from the Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) conference that took place in June of 2023 at the Royal Holloway University of London, just over 15 years after the inaugural TCR conference in 2007 at Dartmouth College. TCR reached this milestone having re-invigorated and consolidated consumer research scholarship in the drive to foreground the study of how consumption intersects with complex and pressing social problems and well-being when framing our research questions and hoped-for contributions (Mick, 2006). In so doing, TCR advanced in lockstep with the rising consciousness within wider marketing discipline “to address questions of relevance to the field and [emphasis added] the world” (Coulter, 2016 p.136) As such, this shift is envisaged as the ‘new era’ of scholarship transcending epistemological and disciplinary boundaries to determine dimensions and determinants of societal impact as one of marketing outcomes (Chandy et al., 2021; MacInnis et al., 2020; Scott & Mende, 2022; Vargo, 2022).