Journal of Macromarketing

This article investigates socially responsible buying (SRB), a subject that has received little attention in past marketing literature on buyer-seller relationships. On the basis of a brief review of the literature on corporate social responsibility, the article proposes a conceptualization of SRB that accentuates the role of stakeholder and organizational norms, respec tively. These conceptual grounds are used to depict various SRB strategies and to advance research propositions outlining their likely antecedents.

Due to the globalization of markets and businesses, an everincreasing number of marketers have to deal with ethical issues in cross-cultural settings. This article extends the macromarketing ethics literature by describing the need and search for normative ethics in global markets, reviewing conventional frameworks for ethical analysis and decision making in international settings, and introducing a communicative approach for purposes of framing ethical decisions without the assumption of core values as the ultimate reference point of ethical analysis. Using illustrative examples, potential implications and applications of the suggested communicative approach are provided by juxtaposing it to conventional frameworks.

This article explores the far-reaching implications of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on the consumer well-being. There has been much debate recently regarding the CPI. It has been claimed that it exaggerates the realities of the economic conditions in favor of the poor. However, the author, by construct ing two CPIs, one for the rich and one for the poor, maintains that, on the contrary, the current CPI does not fairly reflectthe economic conditions that the poor are facing. If anything, it understates the cost of living for the poor. Thus, having only one representative national CPI is not quite fair. The article proposes at least one price index for the rich and one for the poor.