Journal of Strategic Marketing

Strategic Marketing, Technology, and Societal Transformation: Ethics, Power, and Social Change

Background

In recent years, marketing is no longer just for delivering value to firms, but it is something much bigger. With rapid advancements in digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and digital platforms, marketing is no longer just part of people’s and society’s lives, but it is deeply embedded within it. This is what makes marketing much more significant and impacts not just people’s behaviors, but also firms and society as a whole, including society’s values (Vargo & Lusch, 2004).

Many marketing scholars have begun to suggest that marketing is no longer just for economic purposes, but it is for social purposes as well (Kotler et al., 2019). For instance, algorithms have become such a big part of people’s lives, determining what people see, what people buy, and what people believe. This is where ethics come into play. Marketing, on one hand, is no longer just for economic purposes, but it is for social purposes as well, such as for sustainability and well-being.

Despite marketing being such a big part of people’s and society’s lives, marketing’s social and ethical issues, especially regarding emerging technologies, have yet to be explored, especially regarding marketing strategies.

As such, this special issue seeks to explore how strategic marketing, as enabled by technology, is changing society, and what are the ethical and power implications of such change. We hope to encourage more critical and interdisciplinary debates on these issues.

Call for Papers

We would like to invite researchers to submit their articles for consideration for publication in this special issue, which aims to focus on the interface of strategic marketing, technology, and society. We are interested in articles that can theoretically and/or empirically inform us about the role of marketing strategies in society and vice versa.

We would like to emphasize that we are particularly interested in articles that focus on the ethical concerns, power and control issues, and the general societal effects of marketing strategies in the virtual world.

Note: 

Suggested Topics

The special issue is interested in the following topics, but not limited to:

·         Ethical concerns of AI marketing

·         Bias and fairness of marketing algorithms

·         Digital surveillance and the privacy of consumers

·         Power relations and manipulation of consumers by digital marketing

·         Social responsibility of influencer marketing

·         Mental health/well-being of consumers

·         Multidisciplinary marketing and digital inequality

·         Power of platforms over consumers

·         Social responsibility of marketing and ESG

·         Multidisciplinary marketing of brands

·         Multidisciplinary marketing in vulnerable communities

·         Multidisciplinary marketing of technology and the transformation of the identity of consumers

·         Multidisciplinary marketing of the attention economy

·         Multidisciplinary marketing strategies during social crises/uncertainty

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