No abstract

Consumers are at the focal point of marketers' attention. However, while extensive research is devoted to understanding consumers' motivations, attitudes and behaviour, surprisingly little attention is given to the consumers' views of marketing itself. This paper explores consumers' attitudes towards marketing and their perceptions of it, reflecting critically upon their views. Since much criticism of marketing focuses on its role in promoting consumption, we also consider perceptions of current levels of consumption and the extent to which marketing is held responsible for them. Based on 29 in-depth interviews we find evidence suggesting the prevalence of negative attitudes towards marketing, especially associated with deceptive or dishonest campaigns, although marketing's informative role is acknowledged. Importantly, findings reveal a limited understanding of the discipline, suggesting a gap between the concept of marketing and consumers' perceptions of it. This paper sends marketers important messages from consumers and offers grounds for further debate.

Purpose Seeking ways towards a sustainable future is the most dominant socio-political challenge of our time. Marketing should have a crucial role to play in leading research and impact in sustainability, yet it is limited by relying on cognitive behavioural theories rooted in the 1970s, which have proved to have little bearing on actual behaviour. This paper aims to interrogate why marketing is failing to address the challenge of sustainability and identify alternative approaches. Design/methodology/approach The constraint in theoretical development contextualises the problem, followed by a focus on four key themes to promote theory development: developing sustainable people; models of alternative consumption; building towards sustainable marketplaces; and theoretical domains for the future. These themes were developed and refined during the 2018 Academy of Marketing workshop on seeking sustainable futures. MacInnis’s (2011) framework for conceptual contributions in marketing provides the narrative thread and structure. Findings The current state of play is explicated, combining the four themes and MacInnis’s framework to identify the failures and gaps in extant approaches to the field. Research limitations/implications This paper sets a new research agenda for the marketing discipline in quest for sustainable futures in marketing and consumer research. Practical implications Approaches are proposed which will allow the transformation of the dominant socio-economic systems towards a model capable of promoting a sustainable future. Originality/value The paper provides thought leadership in marketing and sustainability as befits the special issue, by moving beyond the description of the problem to making a conceptual contribution and setting a research agenda for the future.

In this article, we explore consumers' perceptions of marketing and the extent to which they believe that marketing can play a positive transformative role in society. Findings from 36 semistructured interviews indicate that consumers typically perceive marketing as having a traditional short‐term, transactional, and ‘company‐focused’ orientation rather than a transformative one. This was reflected in participants' views of marketing, as well as in their choices and comments when they were given two academic definitions of marketing and one description of unethical marketing and asked to choose the one they thought best described marketing. In addition, participants viewed marketing as manipulative, and most held one‐sidedly negative opinions of its transformative potential. The majority did not feel autonomous in their purchase decisions, calling into question marketers' usual defence that consumers are sovereign. In a similar vein, they expressed concerns about the effects of marketing's manipulative and deceptive techniques on vulnerable consumers. These findings are rather worrying given that enhancing the transformative potential of marketing requires a more nuanced understanding of its role and function within society. Accordingly, we argue that successful transformative marketing interventions need to take into account and address consumers' disbelief as to the capacity of marketing to improve social welfare. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a contextualized view of participants’ accounts of self-gift consumer behaviour (SGCB) throughout the consumption cycle, from the motivations to the emotions that follow. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses an interpretive approach, focused on participants’ constructions of meanings, using 99 critical incident technique interviews, which followed 16 in-depth interviews. Findings – This paper identifies the following self-gift motivations: To Reward Myself (and Others); To celebrate; To remember or get closer; To forget or part; To feel loved or cheered up; and To enjoy life. It also uncovers a compensatory/therapeutic dimension in most self-gifts. The authors identify changes in emotional responses to SGCB over time, and suggest a relationship between these emotions and the contexts that drive self-gifts. Self-gifts are conceptualized as pleasure-oriented, symbolic and special consumption experiences, which are self-directed, or both self- and others-directed; perceived by the consumer to be justified by the contexts in which they occur; and driven and followed by context-dependent emotions. Originality/value – This manuscript offers novel insights into participants’ uses of both SGCB and the act of labelling purchases “self-gifts”. It uncovers how consumers are concerned with accounting for indulgent spending and how this problematizes the concept of “self-gift”. It challenges the idea of a single context for SGCB, showing how interacting motivations explain it. It also introduces a temporal dimension to self-gift theory by considering emotional responses at different times. Finally, it offers a new conceptualization of and theoretical framework for SGCB.