Markets, Businesses, and Consumption in Refugees Settlements: A Review and Future Research Trajectory

The global refugee crisis is increasing, and many refugees will end up living in refugee settlements, also known as refugee camps. These settlements have dynamic economic activities, and such activities deserve attention. This paper draws upon academic and practitioner work to describe pertinent aspects of consumption, businesses, and markets in these settlements, including in relation to multiple stakeholders. These stakeholders can include, for example, governments, aid agencies, private sector, and local community groups. Based on these insights, the paper identifies key theoretical areas in need of attention related to these economic activities in refugee settlements, including market change, resilience, and vulnerability, and delineates an ambitious research trajectory for the future

Empowering Women Entrepreneurs in Emerging Economies: a Conceptual Model

Cyberfeminism is a woman-centered perspective that advocates women’s use of new information and communications technologies for empowerment. This paper explores the role of information technologies, in particular the role of social media, in empowering women entrepreneurship in emerging economies via increased social capital and improved self-efficacy. A conceptual model is offered and propositions are explicated

Teaching what Society Needs:“Hacking” an Introductory Marketing Course with Sustainability and Macromarketing

Marketing classes are often focused on the micro level, failing to account for wider societal issues. In this article, we argue for the inclusion of a wider macro-sustainability focus, one that "hacks" marketing education. With that objective in mind, we developed and delivered an introductory marketing course that integrated both the micro and the macro, thus infusing the course with macro-sustainability. This was done through an "expanded voice" perspective that included alternate complementary micro and macro class sessions while using a traditional managerial marketing textbook supplemented by macro-sustainability materials. We also integrated a controversies approach to support discussion and learning. We taught this course to 150 undergraduate students and conducted both quantitative and qualitative assessments of the course, including comparing results with an "unhacked" marketing course. Findings indicated increased awareness of macro-sustainability topics and movement on appreciation of sustainability and the role marketing can have in achieving this awareness. Finally, we offer a model of how marketing classes at all levels can be "hacked" with a macro-sustainability approach

Macromarketing Pedagogy:Empowering Students to Achieve a Sustainable World

The United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are challenging the world to work towards a more sustainable future. Its 17 goals are ambitious, requiring concerted and system-based efforts driven by critical and socially aware thinking. However, marketing education is largely falling short of teaching students to think that way. Given macromarketing's unique perspective on the interactions among markets, marketing, and society, macromarketers are poised to contribute to marketing pedagogy and to commit students to realizing the SDGs. This article first looks back at the previous 40 years of macromarketing pedagogy, before offering contemporary approaches to teaching macromarketing through four illustrative case studies found in an online repository called Pedagogy Place. It then looks forward, setting an aspiring vision for macro-oriented classrooms in the coming years

Exploring marketing transformations: A marketing systems approach to understanding impoverished contexts

Scholars have investigated the role of marketing in impoverished contexts for decades. A historical review of this literature from World War Two onward identified four key themes: a persistent rhetoric regarding the need for transformation of impoverished contexts; an ongoing lack of investigation of available resources in such contexts; a general consensus that markets therein are inefficient; and an ongoing debate regarding the role of local intermediaries in these contexts. These interrelated themes give rise to the key research questions of the dissertation which are explored across three papers. The first paper explores the potential effects of a transformation recommendation in impoverished contexts. Through identifying and discussing the important resource of community knowledge, this propositional-based paper delineates both the social harm and the benefits that can occur if companies appropriate this resource. It also provides a theoretical framework to guide marketers in their transformation activities. The second paper explores a foundational concept in marketing, that of efficiency, in relation to understudied available resources in impoverished contexts – conceptualized as capitals. It provides a more appropriate goal of efficiency, that of well-being efficiency, and creates an Integrated Capitals Framework, while examining the implications of the relationships between these capitals for marketing and development. The third paper of this dissertation, using an inductive approach, investigates the role of traditional intermediaries in impoverished contexts. The author conducted interviews with small-scale intermediaries and collected observational-based data in the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. The findings indicate that these small-scale intermediaries, through pooling, meshing, and mobilizing, contribute to the resilience and well-being of their system, with implications for resilience theory and for the transformation recommendation of disintermediation. Across the three papers, the dissertation furthers marketing scholarship within important theoretical areas. It joins the growing number of critiques regarding approaches to marketing and development through challenging existing assumptions aimed at transforming impoverished contexts by calling for and contributing to a marketing systems perspective towards improving well-being. It also provides insights for practitioners and policymakers who engage in these contexts