Well-Being in a Global World—The Role of International Marketing: An Editorial

The notion that marketing can be a force for good has been around for at least five decades (e.g., Kotler and Levy 1969; Kotler and Zaltman 1971), and as marketing scholars, we are proud of the value that marketing can bring to society. However, we often face tough questions regarding marketing's dark side; is it the discipline that “is used to create and sustain the power of multinational corporations? Promoting the consumerism that is ruining our world? The never-ending advertising efforts to convince people to buy things they do not need?” (Lefebvre 2013, p. 1, preface).

Facing growing criticism on the one hand (Kohli and Haenlein 2021; Mende and Misra 2021) and an increased understanding that societies face “grand” societal challenges (such as climate change, diversity and inclusion, and inequality) on the other hand—what has been the marketing scholarly community's response? While the marketing discipline has begun to address these challenges, this work is still considered a niche rather than mainstream area of investigation. In the top four marketing journals (Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, and Marketing Science), only 108 (out of 1,088) articles published during 2012–2016 address socially responsible topics (around 10%, compared with 15% at the top management journals; Ozturan and Grinstein 2017). Similarly, an analysis of sustainability-related articles in six marketing journals (the top four plus International Journal of Research in Marketing and Journal of Consumer Psychology) over a ten-year period reveals an average of about two articles per year per journal (Bolderdijk, Grinstein, and Risselada 2022).

But things are changing. Mainstream marketing scholars and journals have begun putting society's most pressing problems front and center. For example, Journal of Marketing's special issue on “Marketing for a Better World” (Chandy et al. 2021) received 239 submissions, reflecting the growing interest in societal issues. Other examples include the Journal of Consumer Psychology's special issue on “Consumer Psychology for the Greater Good” (Labroo and Goldsmith 2021) and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science's editorial on responsible research in marketing (Haenlein et al. 2021).

The trend reflected in the aforementioned research is important for responsible marketers, consumers, policy makers, and nonprofit organizations, as well as for marketing as a discipline, driving scholars to examine important questions (Kohli and Haenlein 2021). Given this background, what is the role of the international marketing community? We believe the international marketing field is well-positioned to tackle many societal problems. First, most grand societal problems and responses to them are global in nature (Hewett, Okazaki, and Price 2022). Climate change, poverty, health care and education access, social injustice, inequality, immigration, minorities’ rights, corruption, privacy concerns, mental health concerns—these are all challenges faced by governments, citizens and consumers, and for-profit and nonprofit organizations across the globe. Second, collaboration among actors across sectors, industries, and countries is essential to effectively address them. As such, local and global actors as well as national and international institutions must collaborate. While many problems have similar properties, differences across countries and cultures are critical in explaining different interventions and policies, as well as public response and efficacy levels. Finally, the need to account for country and culture differences when addressing grand societal problems as well as the importance of international marketing became clearer during the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted the intertwined nature of global and local challenges and interventions.

Although we witnessed progress on the study of societal issues in a global context (e.g., special issues in the Journal of International Business Studies [Rodriguez et al. 2006] and Journal of World Business [Shapiro, Hobdari, and Oh 2018]), international marketing is also starting to see its role more fully than before. In recent years, the Journal of International Marketing (JIM) has increasingly published articles addressing business and society (e.g., Heinberg et al. 2021; Randrianasolo and Semenov 2022; Strizhakova, Coulter, and Price 2021), and the time is ripe for the premier international marketing outlet to demonstrate its commitment to addressing societal challenges. To this aim, JIM issued a call for a fairly broad special issue concerning a key concept for many stakeholders in the context of pressing societal issues and an important outcome: well-being. Well-being goes beyond satisfaction with consumption experiences, reflecting various aspects of life satisfaction such as safety, social relations, physical health, and prosperity. It is an important marker of success for consumers, firms, and countries—and, in the case of societal issues, it is a construct worth studying, as it is an indicator of positive social change (Rüppel, Liersch, and Walter 2015). To offer context for the special issue and shed light on the intersection of well-being and societal issues in a global world, we review prior work in JIM next.

Overview of Prior Work in JIM on Well-Being-Related Issues

A systematic review of work in JIM on well-being and societal issues in the last ten years, covering the last three Editors in Chief and issues from December 2011 to March 2022, identified 15 related articles out of 208 published articles (excluding editorials). Thus, these “prosocial” articles represent 7.2% of the published work in JIM over that period. Among these publications, we see four overarching themes. The first theme relates to sustainability-related questions such as climate change perceptions, eco-innovation, and sustainable products, linked to core international marketing concepts such as exporting, adaptation/standardization decisions, or country-of-origin effects. For example, Leonidou et al. (2013) develop the idea of sustainability exporting and found a sustainable exporting marketing strategy to drive firms’ export performance, especially for exporters of industrial (vs. consumer) goods and for firms that sell to developed (vs. developing) countries. Zeriti et al. (2014) explore conditions under which sustainable exporting marketing strategy is likely to follow adaptation over standardization as well as the circumstances under which this strategy affects export performance. Other work in the sustainability context adopts the consumer perspective. For example, Strizhakova, Coulter, and Price (2021) apply the “fresh start mindset” concept—the consumer belief that people can make a new start, and chart a new course in life—in a cross-national study as a predictor of interest in environmentally friendly global brands. In another example, Schill, Godefroit-Winkel, and Hughes (2021) introduce a novel connection between concepts not yet studied in tandem: climate change perceptions and country-of-origin effects. Relatedly, Tran and Paparoidamis (2020) explore the (in)congruence between a country's ecological image and products associated with that country and their ecological attributes. The authors developed the country-of-manufacture concept, which reflects consumers’ perception of a country's commitment to sustainable development policy and practices.

The second theme relates to the link between international marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and focuses on consumers’ response to firms’ CSR efforts by either (1) connecting CSR-related concepts and international marketing concepts (such as cultural identity, national cultural orientation, local vs. foreign brands, or country transparency) or (2) examining cross-country differences. In one example, Madden, Roth, and Dillon (2012) study the halo effect and found that its presence is greater for product quality associations than for CSR. Choi et al. (2016) find that collectivistic (but not individualistic) consumers make more altruistic (but not egoistic) attributions about domestic (vs. foreign) firms’ CSR motives and that altruistic attribution leads to more positive firm perceptions. Strizhakova and Coulter (2019) reveal that nationalism moderates consumers’ attitudes toward corporate social marketing, and these effects are mitigated when firms engage with global causes.

The third research theme relates to bottom-of-the-pyramid markets. This literature stream is unique in the sense that the main theoretical constructs are closely linked to international marketing while also employing important but less widely used methodological approaches. Varadarajan (2014) presents a framework to address the challenges in the way of, and opportunities for, bottom-of-the-pyramid markets to access more sustainable opportunities and behaviors. Adekambi, Ingenbleek, and Van Trijp (2015) use case studies from Benin to show that market connections are established when export market information is generated by formal-sector organizations and when such organizations establish formal ways of sharing information with bottom of the pyramid producers.

The final “prosocial” theme relates to health issues and includes one article. Across 70 countries, Kumar et al. (2021) study the role of prevention- and promotion-based interventions in curbing the spread of COVID-19. They find that prevention-based interventions inhibit disease incidence, whereas promotion-focused interventions enhance a nation's ability to respond to medical emergencies and augment people's ability to isolate and slow the spread.

Well-Being Topics and the Special Issue(s)

The prior work in JIM on well-being and societal issues will hopefully pave the way for more work on these critical topics. The response to the special issue call for papers yielded sufficient papers of excellent rigor and contribution to publish two JIM issues: one on well-being in the age of COVID-19, followed by another on general topics of well-being in a global context, to be published later in 2022. In this first of two special issues, Wood (2022) offers a persuasive commentary on the problems addressed in this special issue, followed by five articles examining key issues related to consumers’ behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic and offering compelling direction for marketing managers based on their collective findings. In the first article in the special issue, Leonhardt and Pezzuti (2022) investigate the critical—and, at times, controversial—issue of vaccine acceptance across cultures and report that vaccination intentions are higher among people from countries higher in collectivism. Next, two articles examine consumers’ consumption behaviors during the pandemic. Ahmadi et al. (2022) find that consumers’ stockpiling of groceries and household supplies during the pandemic exhibits considerable heterogeneity across countries and is explained by cultural differences. Relatedly, Sheng, Kim, and Ketron (2022) find that while social media information seeking has a negative downstream relationship to Chinese consumers’ hoarding behaviors during the pandemic, this relationship is positive for U.S. consumers. Next, Vecchi et al. (2022) article focuses on a different element of individuals’ behaviors during the pandemic, examining the role of recreational dance for worker productivity. The authors find that dancing influences productivity both directly and indirectly through its impact on subjective well-being. Finally, Davvetas, Ulqinaku, and Abi (2022) explore how consumers’ relative perceptions of the pandemic's local impact affect institutional trust formation and consumer well-being. They find that institutional trust declines more when a country's citizens perceive greater relative local impact.

Conclusion

While the articles in this special issue employ a wide range of methodologies across varying country contexts and examine a range of behaviors, collectively, they offer powerful evidence of the important role of cultural differences for consumers’ behaviors during a global pandemic. Differences in national culture are shown to influence vaccination intentions, stockpiling of groceries, and the role of social media on hoarding behaviors during the pandemic. In addition, other differences such as relative perceptions of the pandemic's local impact and the practice of recreational dance are shown to have important influences on consumers’ well-being. We believe the findings from these articles not only add to the valuable work on societal-related topics appearing in JIM but also highlight opportunities for international marketing practitioners and scholars to work together to understand and address pressing societal challenges.