Journal of Marketing Management

Disruptions are prevalent in the current volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment facing consumers and markets (Fehrer & Bove, 2022). Ranging from major, external, economic (cost-of-living), health (COVID-19), humanitarian (war) crises, environmental disasters (climate change, earthquakes, and floods), technological innovations (AI), to job transitions, childbirth, divorce and death, disruptions influence consumers, consumption, and markets. Disruptions can limit or improve access to products/services and markets but also alter routines in consumption practices. During disruptions consumers can be affected cognitively and emotionally. However, they are also capable of deploying coping mechanisms to buffer negative experiences. For instance, interactions with service providers can increase or reduce vulnerability, resilience and wellbeing of consumers, thus impacting marketing systems (Fehrer & Bove, 2022). Disruptions can also alter the consumption experience itself, making it better due to AI (e.g., chatbots) or less optimal due to staff shortage, stock outages and long queues (Hamilton & Hosany, 2023). Disruptive forces such as AI and other technological innovations can potentially lead to superior and more enjoyable consumer encounters.

Consumer groups can handle disruptions differently and enact multiple coping mechanisms that need to be understood. For example, young people and single consumers may operate in unique ways, compared to the elderly, and those who live in relationships or families (Kerrane et al., 2021; Hosany & Hamilton, 2022; Kerrane, et al., 2023). The cause, frequency, duration, nature (planned versus unplanned) and intensity of disruptions can impact consumers and consumer groups (Hosany & Hamilton, 2022). The incidence of co-occurring versus simultaneous disruptions, in subsistence or non-subsistence economies may also have implications for consumer responses and marketing systems. Internal and/or external stressors may lead to distinct responses from consumers and alter the functioning of markets, requiring building strategies (Fehrer & Bove, 2022). For instance, consumers facing social inequalities may alter their consumption practices (Bhattacharyya & Belk, 2019). In encountering disruptions such as floods and earthquakes (Baker, 2009), individual resilience may support community resilience (Jordan & Prayag, 2022), with implications for the marketing system to better assist consumers pre, during and post-disruption. Several complex mechanisms are at play in consumer responses to disruptions as they build individual resilience and contribute to market or system resilience.

In this special issue, we seek to stimulate ideas, generate debate and promote collaborations on how consumers can develop resilience in response to disruptions and contribute to other forms of resilience (e.g., market or system). Consumer resilience is a loosely defined term in the marketing literature, which can imply bouncing back (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004) or forward (Hall et al., 2020) when coping with disruptions. Understanding and making sense of how to build consumer resilience in a VUCA world, has implications on how markets and marketing systems plan, adapt, transform, innovate and co-create value with consumers and a wider range of stakeholders to fulfil higher public expectations, through the lens of the marketing discipline for a better world (Chandy et al., 2021). In coping with disruptions (e.g., Haenlein et al., 2022), consumers and businesses may need to co-create and collaborate for resilience building (Jiang et al., 2021; Ozanne et al., 2022).  The changing nature of the consumption experience itself during disruptions may also have implications for satisfaction, loyalty, quality of life and wellbeing of consumers.

Authors planning to submit their manuscript to the special issue are encouraged to enter their work in progress for feedback to the workshop on ‘Disruptions and Consumer Resilience’ hosted by the Academy of Marketing, at its annual conference, in July 2024 at Cardiff Business School.

We call for theoretical and empirical papers that address topics such as, but not limited to:

• the nature of disruptions - what are disruptions? How can disruptions be conceptualised in the marketing literature? How do disruptions affect consumers or markets/marketing systems?
• how do different types of disruptions (e.g., internal versus external, planned versus unplanned; short-term versus long-term; frequency, duration, intensity) influence resilience of consumers and markets/marketing systems?
• what is consumer resilience? what are its driving factors and outcomes?
• theories/frameworks that shape better understanding of consumer resilience pre/during/post disruptions
• understanding behaviour across stages of the customer journey, as a result of disruptions
• how diverse consumer segments (children, teenagers, parents, single mums, dads, tourists, elderly, disabled, LGBTQ+, consumers facing poverty, or diverse in other ways) build/display resilience in the face of disruptions
• challenges faced by different consumer groups due to disruptions and different forms of resilience they enact (e.g. by age, ethnicity, class, poverty, disability, gender, sexuality, region)
• how do consumer traits, aspirations and goals, intersectionalities, and prior experiences with disruptions, shape resilient pathways and outcomes (e.g., quality of life, wellbeing, consumer advocacy)
• can stakeholders help consumers to develop innovative approaches to build and sustain resilience
• What effects do sustainability and climate-change based issues have on consumer resilience and responses to challenge and change?
• What effects do geopolitical disruptions have on consumer resilience (e.g. war, political upheaval, disruptions to key supply chains and continuity)?

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

Authors should submit manuscripts of between 8,000–10,000 words (excluding tables, references, captions, footnotes and endnotes). All submissions must strictly follow the guidelines for the Journal of Marketing Management. Please note the requirements to include a Summary Statement of Contribution, and to place figures and tables at their correct location within the text. Please also read the following guidelines prior to submitting your manuscript:

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Manuscripts should be submitted online using the T&F Submission Portal for Journal of Marketing Management. Authors should prepare and upload two versions of their manuscript (only use alpha-numeric characters or underscores in the filename). One should be a complete text, while in the second all document information identifying the author should be removed from the files to allow them to be sent anonymously to referees.

When uploading files authors will be able to define the non-anonymous version as “Manuscript - with author details”, and the anonymous version as “Manuscript - Anonymous”. To submit your manuscript to the Special Issue choose “Research Article” from the Manuscript Type list in the Submission Portal. On the next screen (Manuscript Details), answer ‘yes’ to the question ‘Are you submitting your paper for a specific special issue or article collection?’. A drop down menu will then appear and you should select the Special Issue Title from this list.

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