“We could be heroes”: Reflections on reimagining marketing strategies for a better world

Abstract

The world faces many grand challenges—ranging from climate emergency, social inequality, overconsumption, and the spread of misinformation—issues that marketing practices can sometimes exacerbate (De Ruyter et al., 2022). The past couple of decades have witnessed a fundamental transformation in marketing scholarship, as the discipline has shifted its gaze from product-centric performance metrics to service-dominant logic-inspired strategies to broader societal and environmental imperatives (Chandy et al., 2021; Grewal et al., 2024). These shifts, accelerated by global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate emergencies, geopolitical instability, and consumers’ collective responses to these shifts, have underscored the urgency of reimagining marketing’s role in addressing grand challenges. In response, marketing scholars and practitioners alike have been called to move beyond conventional paradigms and embrace an approach that integrates ethical imperatives, sustainability goals, and inclusivity into the fabric of marketing (Haenlein et al., 2022; Mende et al., 2024). This special issue builds on this momentum, curating a set of contributions that challenge, expand, and refine our understanding of marketing’s transformative potential. The articles in this issue engage with pressing questions at the intersection of marketing, sustainability, and social impact, offering both conceptual advancements and empirical insights that illuminate pathways for more equitable, ethical, inclusive, and sustainable marketing practices. Collectively, they demonstrate that reimagining marketing is not merely a theoretical exercise—it is a strategic directive that requires marketers to innovate, adapt, and act in ways that contribute to a better world (Chandy et al., 2021).

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