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Consumers spend billions of dollars every year on products and services designed to help improve or change their physical appearance and performance. Such procedures, especially where surgery is involved, are not without risk of adverse consequences such as physical injury, irreversible nerve damage, or even permanent disfigurement. The popularity of appearance-enhancing cosmetic surgery seems to be rising, despite the many risks associated with it. To qualitatively investigate the complex interplay of relevant factors (including variables related to individual motivation, risk tolerance, self-concept, and societal standards of beauty), and to organize and analyze the resulting qualitative data, the systematic, psychologically sophisticated blueprint of dimensional qualitative research, or DQR (Cohen, 1999) was employed. Through in-depth interviews, content analysis of written material found on the Internet, and three focus groups, an effort was made to better understand consumer motivation for cosmetic surgery where there was no medical necessity. Findings and implications of this research are discussed.

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Sustainable development has been a hot button issue for decades, and yet business schools continue to struggle with accessible, meaningful and effective strategies to incorporate the topic into their curricula. To extend the teaching toolbox of educators, we describe two complementary marketing courses that use values-based learning to incorporate a sustainability focus in conjunction with traditional marketing topics. Using nonprofit organizations as the foundation, experiential learning methods are presented that can facilitate development of the moral, ethical, and perceptual foundation graduates need to be successful in today's sustainability focused marketplace. Specific objectives and measures related to building this foundation also are described. Preliminary results are presented suggesting that this two-pronged focus is very effective at increasing and maintaining interest in sustainability issues, as well as increasing the number of marketing students and graduates working in sustainability marketing positions.