Journal of Marketing Management

Doing Impactful Marketing and Consumer Research

There are growing calls for academic research to make an impact through being socially relevant and addressing societal ‘grand challenges’– whether that be climate change, technological transformations, transitions toward sustainable consumption and production patterns, or supporting the health and wellbeing of an ageing population. The rally for impactful marketing and consumer research was reiterated by a recent editorial from the Journal of Consumer Research, acknowledging ‘there is a growing call for consumer research to get out of the ivory tower and address a growing list of important managerial and societal concerns’ (Schmitt et al., 2022: 755). Indeed, impact has become an important metric for measuring both institutional and academic ‘success’, such as the Research Excellence Framework in the UK, with 25% of its research excellence assessment now based on research impact as captured through impact case studies, which can generate substantial research income for institutions (Ozanne et al., 2017; Steadman and Millington, 2022). Subsequently, we are witnessing new positions opening up in some universities to support the creation and documentation of research impact, such as Faculty Impact Leads.

Running contrary to these calls for action, however, are critiques of marketing that highlight its potential to exacerbate societal issues, such as climate change, obesity, and poverty, through encouraging overconsumption, stimulating pressures to consume beyond our means, and supporting a throwaway consumer culture (Madan et al., 2023). Moreover, the relevance of business and marketing research for organisations and society has long been questioned and such cries are getting louder (Schmitt et al., 2022). Van de Ven and Johnson (2006), for instance, pinpoint three problematics leading to so-called ‘theory-practice’ gaps, including ineffective research translation, inherent distinctions between academic and non-academic research, and working in research silos. As Chandy et al. (2021: 1) therefore remark, ‘unless we broaden the set of outcomes we study ... marketing scholars risk becoming detached from many of the most important challenges facing the world today—challenges to which marketing can contribute both positively and negatively’.

Yet, there are notable examples of researchers within marketing and consumer research who are unsettling these theory-practice gaps and addressing societal challenges, with an increased emphasis over recent years on marketing for social good. For example, there are marketing journals dedicated to exploring broader social issues, such as the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing and the Journal of Macromarketing, whilst recent special issues have also surfaced examining such themes, such as a 2021 special issue of the Journal of Marketing entitled ‘Better Marketing for a Better World’ (see Chandy et al., 2021). Furthermore, researchers aligned with Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) and the Consumer Research with Impact for Society (CRIS) SIG of the Academy of Marketing are doing research with real-world impact, given TCR is all about ‘...developing rigorous scientific findings to alleviate social problems’ (Davis et al., 2016: 167). Examples of social issues being investigated by these researchers, often working in collaboration with non-academic partners such as practitioners, policy-makers, and community groups, include disability in the marketplace (Higgins et al., 2024), shared parental leave policies (Banister and Kerrane, 2018), experiences of poverty (Hutton et al., 2022), community wellbeing (Hamilton and Porteous, 2022), high street revitalisation (Millington et al., 2024), visions for a low carbon future (Cherry et al., 2024), social enterprise legitimacy (Samuel et al., 2021), plastic packaging and sustainability (Piacentini et al., 2024).

However, doing socially engaged research can bring about a range of challenges (Steadman and Millington, 2022), and the increased pressures to juggle all the activities involved in engaging non-academic audiences with our work– from appearing in the media to speaking to policy-makers– on top of the ongoing expectation to ‘publish or perish’, can lead to academics feeling exhausted and undervalued. As Horton (2020: 3) observes, ‘...we might feel that we are never productive enough, not writing enough or being cited enough, not generating enough income, not being REFable or IMPACTful enough, not being World-Leading, authoritative or media-friendly...’ Such constraints are starting to be discussed both within and outside the field. A recent special issue of Dialogues in Urban Research, for example, explores the realities of making a real-world change in urban spaces (see Lees, 2024), such as the time-consuming process of engaging with local communities often in terrain unfamiliar to many academics and spilling into the evening (Millington et al., 2024). Within marketing, the challenges involved in adopting ‘engaged scholarship’ or ‘relational engagement’, which involves working with non-academic partners to make a difference, have also been unpacked – whether due to competing research partner working practices and timelines (Ozanne et al., 2017), or the difficulties publishing from research which might prioritise societal change over theory development (Steadman and Millington, 2022). Moreover, there is some related work in the Journal of Marketing Management exploring the issues involved in doing transformative services research across different disciplinary boundaries, each with their own internal logics and semantics (Hamilton and Porteous, 2022), in addition to the emotional and physical vulnerabilities involved in academic research more broadly (e.g. Jafari et al., 2013; Preece et al., 2022; Steadman, 2023).

Consequently, whilst academics are increasingly expected to be impactful, the emotional and practical realities of doing impact-driven research are still not very well-understood, whilst those doing this sort of research may struggle to translate their work into theoretical contributions deemed publishable by some journals, and are not always fully supported by their institutions. There is therefore arguably further scope to exchange ideas in this domain. This special issue focuses on revealing the behind-the-scenes realities of doing impactful research within marketing and consumer research to foster an exchange of shared experiences, and, ultimately, to ensure engaged scholars are better supported by their institutions and the Higher Education sector more broadly.

Suggested topic areas
We welcome conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions to the special issue focused on the overarching topic of doing impactful marketing and consumer research. Below are some indicative themes that could be covered in submissions, though this list is not exhaustive:

• The emotional vulnerabilities involved in doing impactful research
• The challenges involved in doing impactful research (e.g. personal, institutional, practical etc.)
• Methods for doing impactful research (e.g. participatory, reflexive, and engaged scholarship approaches etc.)
• Unsettling academic silos through interdisciplinary and cross-institutional collaborations
• Research addressing the ‘grand challenges’ of society and the SDGs
• Shared lessons and case studies of Transformative Consumer Research
• The interrelationship between policy and marketing research
• Addressing theory-practice gaps through marketing research
• The scale of marketing impacts (e.g. micro, local, national, global etc.)
• The temporalities involved in doing impactful research (e.g. navigating differing temporalities of research partners, the long-term nature of this research etc.)
• Conceptualising different types of marketing impacts
• Measuring the impacts of marketing and consumer research
• Developing theories from- or about- impactful marketing research.

The full Call for Papers including references can be found at the JMM blog site: https://www.jmmnews.com/doing-impactful-marketing/