The subaltern quandary refers to the failure of a fast-growing economy to improve the abysmal living conditions of marginalized groups. To gain a better insight into this issue, we investigate the subaltern group’s experiences of marketing systems in the context of neo-liberal reforms in rural India. The qualitative analysis of subaltern narratives shows that subaltern experiences are shaped by marketization processes that imbue market relations with new stylized meanings of dignity. Despite these meanings perpetuating limited and distorted constructions, subalterns use them, exemplified in their attempts to minimize their perceived dissimilarity to other marketing system actors, in order to gain access to predominant, albeit flawed, marketing systems. Thus, the status quo is rarely challenged. This research suggests that the subaltern quandary can only be resolved when market development initiatives take human worth as a main goal, while subalterns are empowered with market system creation, design and governance capabilities.

This article explores the spatial marketing system in India. It highlights a case where market failure is institutionalized through the normalization of heterotopia in the consumption of gated communities (GCs). We build on the earlier work by Bargends and by Sandberg on spatial marketing systems to discuss the consumption of exclusive space. We find that the gated community leads to heterotopic relations, fantasized living and, the pursuit of identity through spatial purification. This research contributes to macromarketing research by offering three theoretical interpretations of our qualitative study of residents of a gated community in India. First, spatial inequality is found to be a defining process in this spatial marketing system. The creation of such disparities is a deliberate strategy by dominant consumers to ‘other’ the outsiders. This spatial segregation is seen as a market failure. Secondly, branded space emerges as a trope for decoupling with local lower class surroundings through a process of postcolonial mimesis. In the process of imitating the West, residents engage in self-captivity and voluntary seclusion to achieve spatial purification. Thirdly, we extend marketing systems theory by locating spatial purification-related processes and mechanisms at the heart of marketing systems formation and adaptive change.

In the poverty‐ridden settings in neo‐liberal India, we explore how subsistence consumers construct their quality‐of‐life (QOL). Drawing on the concepts of chronotope and futurization, we posit two additional dimensions of subsistence consumers' construction of QOL namely, chronotopefication and futurization. Our findings suggest that chronotopefication and futurization are defining processes of subsistence consumers' construction of QOL perceptions; their sacrifices, efforts, and costs, however painful they may be, would be perceived as QOL enhancing from the prism of chronotopefication and futurization; and subsistence consumers chronotopize and futurize QOL for the whole extended household within the intergenerational temporal space by focusing on stable input–outcome pathways. Based on the evidence, we propose QOL as chronotopefication and futurization framework (QOL‐CFF). The framework suggests that subsistence consumers construct QOL as chronotope building, futurized and having a symbolic effect. They consider current agonies as a foundation for future building.

Constructive Engagement (CE) aims at developing sustainable and equitable marketing systems that ensure collective well-being. This paper reflects on an initiative that constructively engages with impoverished market actors, i.e., rag-picking women in India. It is endeavored by operationalizing Integrative Justice Model (IJM) principles while trying to tackle the issue of solid waste management. Our findings suggest that CE across the spectrum in the value chain is required to alleviate the conditions of disadvantaged market actors and improve their well-being. Our qualitative inquiry in rag-picking women’s lives and an initiative of social enterprise contribute to the ongoing conversation in macromarketing literature- (1) by empirically evidencing how the CE operationalizes the IJM and help redress the issues of social traps and internalities; (2) by uniquely connecting the macro issues of waste management with the issues of honesty, fairness, dignity and deserved justice in the neglected market transactions; (3) that IJM principles guide the constructive engagement process.

No abstract