SPECIAL ISSUES

This article proposes an expanded conceptualization of materialism that grounds materialism in research on the self. The article stresses the functions of materialistic goal pursuit, the processes by which these functions are developed and implemented, and their potential consequences. This functional perspective views materialistic behavior as motivated goal pursuit intended to construct and maintain self-identity, and defines materialism as the extent to which people engage in identity maintenance and construction through symbolic consumption. The article discusses the utility of this conceptualization of materialism in relation to other conceptualizations and suggests avenues for future research.

Today's marketplaces are increasingly multicultural as more individuals negotiate complex cultural identities. Brands play a role in materializing individual identities—however, little is known about how culture-based brand appeals might affect consumers'' identity dynamics, positively or negatively. The paper provides a framework and a model that examines the interaction between three different types of multicultural marketplaces (assimilation, separation, and mutual integration) and different voices that brands might use in their cultural appeals (Branding Ignorance, Branding Tolerance, and Branding Engagement). The model identifies how these different voices (strategies) might exacerbate consumer vulnerabilities in different types of marketplaces and provides recommendations for how to use culture-based branding appeals in a benevolent manner.

Consumer research holds potential for expanding society''s understanding of how people experience poverty and mechanisms for poverty alleviation. Capitalizing on this potential, however, will require more exploration of how consumption experiences shape individual and collective well-being among the poor. This article proposes a framework for transformative consumer research focused on felt deprivation and power within the lived experience of poverty. The framework points to consumer choice, product/service experiences, consumer culture, marketplace forces, and consumption capabilities as research streams with potential to help alleviate poverty. Future research in these areas will expand pathways for transforming the lives of the poor by alleviating stress, engaging marketplace institutions, fulfilling life aspirations, leveraging trust and social capital, and facilitating creativity and adaptation.

This article conceptualizes and presents a research agenda for the emerging area of transformative service research, which lies at the intersection of service research and transformative consumer research and focuses on well-being outcomes related to service and services. A conceptual framework provides a big-picture view of how the interaction between service entities (e.g., individual service employees, service processes or offerings, organizations) and consumer entities (e.g., individuals, collectives such as families or communities, the ecosystem) influences the well-being outcomes of both. Research questions derived from the framework in the context of financial services, health care, and social services help catalyze new research in the transformative service research domain.

This research broadens the focus on the addiction process by examining the role of marketing cues in the “pre-addiction” phase of the consumption continuum that is broadly conceptualized to include behavior that may or may not result in addiction. If addictive behavior is to occur then dependence on that behavior occurs leading to negative or harmful consequences as consumption increases over time becoming a critical component of the individual''s life. Of central interest to this research are the environmental triggers that influence such pre-addiction consumption behaviors with a specific focus on the role marketing cues can play in facilitating and preventing the progression from non-use to addiction. We suggest that marketing cues have the potential to heavily influence the path towards and away from addiction and we identify types of cues that can impact each phase, or multiple phases, of the consumption continuum.

This article explores the potential of a theoretical framework, based on social cognitive theory (SCT), to inspire future research into sustainable consumption. The SCT framework provides a dynamic perspective on sustainable consumption through exploring the interactive nature of personal, environmental and behavioral factors of consumption. The SCT framework, which builds on prior theoretical models of sustainable consumption, incorporates the concept of reciprocal determinism, wherein personal, environmental and behavioral factors create a feedback loop to influence each other.Two examples, toy sharing in New Zealand and water conservation in Australia, illustrate the dynamic nature of sustainable consumption and the potential of an SCT based framework to provide a more nuanced view of behavioral change in this context. From these two examples, several ideas for future research emerge to help illustrate the potential of SCT to inform and inspire the next wave of research on sustainable consumption.

The social justice paradigm, developed in philosophy by John Rawls and others, reaches limits when confronted with diverse populations, unsound governments, and global markets. Its parameters are further limited by a traditional utilitarian approach to both industrial actors and consumer behaviors. Finally, by focusing too exclusively on poverty, as manifested in insufficient incomes or resources, the paradigm overlooks the oppressive role that gender, race, and religious prejudice play in keeping the poor subordinated. The authors suggest three ways in which marketing researchers could bring their unique expertise to the question of social justice in a global economy: by (1) reinventing the theoretical foundation laid down by thinkers such as Rawls, (2) documenting and evaluating emergent “feasible fixes” to achieve justice (e.g., the global resource dividend, cause-related marketing, Fair Trade, philanthrocapitalism), and (3) exploring the parameters of the consumption basket that would be minimally required to achieve human capabilities.

A perennial problem in social marketing and public policy is the plight of at-risk consumers. The authors define at-risk consumers as marketplace participants who, because of historical or personal circumstances or disabilities, may be harmed by marketers’ practices or may be unable or unwilling to take full advantage of marketplace opportunities. This definition refers to either objective reality or perceptions. Early research focused on consumers who were at risk because they were poor, ethnic or racial minorities, immigrants, women, or elderly. Today's researchers also study consumers who are at risk because they are from religious minorities, disabled, illiterate, homeless, indigent, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. The authors identify four tensions affecting research on and policy and marketing applications for at-risk populations: the value of focusing on (1) vulnerabilities versus strengths, (2) radical versus marginal change, (3) targeting versus nontargeting, and (4) encouraging knowledgeable versus naive consumers. They conclude with a discussion of the significance of including at-risk consumers as full marketplace participants and identify future research directions.