Abstract
Ours is the first age in which many thousands of the best trained minds have made it their full time business to get inside the collective public mind…to get inside in order to manipulate, exploit and control.
The intrusiveness of organized marketing is so pervasive today that it emerges as the most potent social force that shapes human behaviour. As a consequence, consumers are subtly persuaded to define their identity in terms of their possessions and to modify their social image through the consumption of products. There is much criticism against the proliferation and intrusion of various forms of technology and media into the everyday lives of the citizenry. No matter where they turn, consumers are surrounded by marketing efforts intruding into their very personal lives. Marketing interacts with technology in so many ways and the effect of this interaction on business outcomes, consumer behaviour and society are not always easy to understand, and not always positive either. While the forces of marketing play an extremely powerful role in shaping the modern networked society, it remains a fact that some of its impacts are socially undesirable. Trends such as increasing consumer materialism, conspicuous consumption, obsessive consumption, compulsive consumption, consumption of drugs, addiction to internet pornography, etc. are on the rise. It is in this context that the ‘International Conference on Marketing, Technology and Society’ was organized at IIM Kozhikode during 29 September to 1 October 2016.
This conference sought to direct the concern of the marketing community towards the intended and unintended consequences of marketing and technology on the society. We received an overwhelming response from the academic community and 107 papers were selected for presentation in the conference based on a double blind review process from 216 full paper submissions. From the papers presented in the conference, 18 were chosen for consideration to this special issue of IIM Kozhikode Society and Management Review. After subsequent double blind reviews and revisions, finally eight articles appear in this special issue.
The articles in the issue cover a broad spectrum in terms of phenomena studied and the methodologies employed. We have an article on the effect of credible reviews on brand image studied using the mixed methods which is now increasingly becoming popular in marketing. There is also a work using qualitative grounded theory to understand how self and identity of being an ideal woman has its manifestations in consumption. The other phenomena studies include online consumption, how sports celebrity endorsement influences brand image, shopping experience, cause marketing and framing effects and job performance of sales people. The methodologies used show an eclectic mix from surveys and structural equation modelling to grounded theory, mixed methods, AHP and experimentation.
We believe that this special issue will be a valuable addition to marketing scholarship .We are positive that this compilation contains the groundwork for some of the very interesting and potentially impactful research for the future and that these articles will offer fresh insight into anyone with an eye for contemporary concerns and emerging trends in marketing and technology.