SPECIAL ISSUES

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).

This paper aims to identify key insights from the social media needs and experiences of target audience of young Black women (YBW) and apply principles of mindfulness to those insights to develop resources and practices to empower YBW to have a healthier relationship with social media.

This study examines children’s digital well-being through a stakeholder-driven, transdisciplinary research initiative. Understanding the multidimensional risks affecting a child’s digital well-being requires examining how stakeholders perceive and define the problem. The purpose of this research is to provide a deeper analysis of how the focal problem, identifying factors that influence a child’s digital well-being, should be framed. The author synthesizes insights from local agencies, teens, and medical practitioners to identify gaps in current framings and inform more comprehensive intervention strategies. In addition, this research offers insight beyond the context of digital well-being for scholars seeking to achieve societal impact through the process of stakeholder collaboration.

Purpose
This paper aims to provide methodological insights into effectively collaborating with arts organizations, highlighting approaches that can lead to impactful and meaningful research outcomes. It focuses on impact-making processes and the role of resonance.

Design/methodology/approach
As part of an ongoing collaboration with two arts organizations, the theatre group Next Door But One and St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, this paper explores how knowledge co-creation processes during data collection and analysis can lead to impact.

Findings
This study introduces the role of resonance – a state where people feel engaged, heard and connected – as a critical vehicle for impact. Resonance emerged from the collaborative research approach grounded in emancipatory praxis, which allowed the authors to engage in mutual (un)learning to make space for new insights and perspectives. The process of creating trust and a sense of safety nurtures resonance in collaborative research.

Research limitations/implications
This research underscores the transformative potential of collaborative methodologies, highlighting their role in fostering resonance between partners and stakeholders. Given the complex and extensive networks of the partnering organizations, the authors acknowledge the challenge of attributing the collaboration as the principal driver of change.

Practical implications
Organizations that embrace resonance-seeking practices and spaces can co-create and enhance organizational capacity to articulate social value and contribute to sustained positive impacts addressing societal challenges.

Originality/value
This paper unpacks the underexplored role of resonant-seeking approaches in developing and evidencing impact.

Abstract
Purpose
Misinformation is a major threat to individual, organizational and societal well-being. Combating it requires change on multiple levels. The purpose of this paper is to describe two co-created initiatives designed to holistically reduce the prevalence and effects of misinformation on social media.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopted a co-creation approach by convening a stakeholder group including social media, advertising, artificial intelligence and advocacy leaders. The authors also engaged social media users to collectively generate, test and implement an anti-misinformation strategy. These stakeholders shaped the development of the tools described in this paper.
Findings
First, the authors present a Social Media Ecosystem Map and Incentive Analysis that achieve impact by documenting avenues for action. Second, the authors illustrate impact at the user level by developing and disseminating the WISER framework, which delivers an implementable and memorable anti-misinformation strategy.
Research limitations/implications
Strategies tailored to the needs and characteristics of stakeholders are most likely to be persuasive. The discoveries and conclusions incorporate the contexts of the stakeholders with whom the authors collaborated. Future work will reveal recommendations for a broader audience.
Practical implications
The Social Media Ecosystem Map, Incentive Analysis and WISER framework represent promising foundations to spark novel insights and actions for ways to be WISER about information on social media.
Originality/value
Impact is often limited because strategies are developed in academic, corporate or policy silos. The authors adopt an original approach by exchanging knowledge among industry, academia and users with the aim of maximizing effectiveness and adoption.

Purpose
This paper aims to examine the complexities inherent in a collaborative academic–practitioner journey to co-create sustained impact that advances diversity and inclusion efforts in the marketing field.
Design/methodology/approach
Building on empirical insights from a series of academic–practitioner co-creation workshops and in-depth collaborations with two key stakeholders, this paper reflects on the co-creation efforts and use of brokerage and bridging practices, to engage effectively with different stakeholders under the Diversity and Inclusion Engaged Marketing (DIEM) initiative.
Findings
To illuminate the collaborative practices that have facilitated enhanced knowledge sharing between the academic and practice fields, the authors present two case studies, showcasing the impact outcomes co-created with DIEM-related practitioners based in the UK and the USA.
Research limitations/implications
This paper provides a roadmap for a co-created impact journey, starting from a cross-contextual approach to impact gap identification. The approach involves bridging capital and brokerage of knowledge in the development of collaborative platforms and academic–stakeholder interactions, generating impact outcomes that are not without challenges.
Practical implications
The roadmap can be used to facilitate future academic–practitioner collaborative efforts.
Originality/value
The reflections on ongoing co-created impact journeys reinforce the value of a wider understanding of impact for practitioners and academics, stemming from sustained academic–practitioner collaborations.

This paper aims to provide researchers with an experience-based roadmap for relational engagement which illustrates how to scale from small impacts to larger ones. Although the relational engagement approach is still nascent and unfolding, it is being advocated and implemented without a full understanding of the balancing act and complex trade-offs it requires. The paper emerges out of an ongoing collaboration between consumer researchers and a theatre company. In analysing the complexities and dilemmas of conducting relational engagement, this paper reflects on a number of key learnings to extend these to other researchers. The paper highlights some of the antecedents of relational engagement including mutual understanding and nurturing rapport. This paper demonstrates that relational engagement requires a number of iterative cycles, indicative of the time commitment needed to form a successful partner relationship. This paper shows the significance of a purpose-centric perspective and notes that the ethical responsibilities of such a perspective require an adaptive and reflexive approach which in practice can mean ceding power. The work shows that impact-making has a dynamic, non-linear shape that requires an open mindset, curiosity and the capacity to imagine different configurations of partners within the ecosystems in which this paper works. The paper presents novel insights around the caring challenges that emerge in relational engagement and how a caring approach is required as well as the values that emerge out of such an approach. The originality of this paper lies in recognising the reciprocal but not necessarily equivalent relations that underpin impact projects and demonstrating how developing a caring in action approach can generate closer cooperation between researchers and co-creation partners for practical and impactful knowledge development.

Purpose
This paper aims to illustrate how multistakeholder partnerships can maximize different forms of impact in relation to the transformative power of advertising, including inclusive gender representation and storytelling as well as the pursuit of gender equity in society more broadly.
Design/methodology/approach
Two collaborations between Transformative Consumer Research scholars and external partners working as coalitions to progress gender equity in advertising are detailed.
Findings
This research outlines the success factors and challenges across two multistakeholder initiatives and the forms of impact, both inside and outside the academy, that were realized through these partnerships.
Research limitations/implications
This research highlights how impactful outcomes, including societal benefits, are within the reach of academic scholars as they partner with industry, nonprofits and governments to produce traditional and nontraditional outputs of their collaborative efforts. This work details how these were achieved in relation progressing gender equity in advertising but may be limited to these cases and contexts.
Practical implications
This work provides practical advice for navigating challenges related to collaborative initiatives within the advertising ecosystem and underscores success factors for various actors who seek social justice goals – in this case, gender equity.
Social implications
This research demonstrates how academics can engage in partnerships to advance gender equity goals in society.
Originality/value
This research addresses a neglected area of research in advertising and marketing, taking a transformative perspective rooted in gender equity goals to illustrate how impact outcomes can be collaboratively realized in the advertising ecosystem.