SPECIAL ISSUES

Marketing academics are increasingly seeking societal impact from their work, yet still encounter problems in creating and sustaining meaningful relationships with those whom their work seeks to help. We use an empirical investigation to identify and propose solutions to the key barriers that impede the initiation and development of impactful relationships between marketing academics and Social Impact Organizations (SIOs). The investigation entailed 20 interviews with SIOs and Knowledge Exchange (KE) professionals in the US, UK and France. The main barriers hindering relationships are differing perspectives on resources, goal misalignment and misconceptions about the other party. Potential solutions include: involving both parties in structured activities for initializing collaboration; planning resource investment in research; engaging with KE professionals to facilitate goal alignment and to broker communications; increasing academic visibility in SIO communities; using teaching as a springboard to develop collaborations; supporting SIO-led initiatives and finding creative ways to overcome time incongruity.

In underserved communities throughout affluent countries, people lack access to affordable, nutritious food. To remedy this, Social Entrepreneurial Organizations (SEOs) are creating local, community-based food distribution infrastructure that provides sustainable access to healthy and affordable food. Our paper develops an integrative framework focused on identifying the key marketing practices that enhance the success of local, community-based SEOs securing affordable access to healthy foods. We adopt a relational engagement approach and bring an inductive case study method to our collaborative research partnerships with SEOs innovating community-based solutions to improve food access. Our research-based framework suggests opportunities for academic research on food access with conceptual and societal benefit. Finally, we call for more academic research to advance local, community-based social entrepreneurship focused on attaining healthy food access for all.

Research in the orientation of for-profit companies suggests a dichotomous choice between a transactional or relational orientation. Yet, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are inherently different in their operations and approaches and deserve special consideration. Numerous NPOs seek to achieve social goals, such as poverty alleviation, by conducting interventions in communities with the aid of donations and volunteer labor. Building upon the Transformative Charity Experience concept and the triad model (i.e., NPOs, donors/volunteers and communities), the present research utilizes case study data from NPOs and qualitative data from an impoverished community in Central America to reveal that the transactional/relational orientation model is too simplistic to adequately capture poverty alleviation efforts, and a richer model of the interplay of community and NPO engagement is developed. Further, although NPOs and communities both exhibit a strong desire for greater engagement, numerous tensions exist that pull NPOs away from higher to lower levels of engagement. • The transactional/relational orientation model is too simplistic for NPOs. • A richer model of the interplay of community and NPO engagement is developed. • Both NPOs and communities exhibit a strong desire for greater engagement. • However, inherent tensions pull NPOs away from higher to lower levels of engagement.

As modern societies have become increasingly diverse, we witness elevated tensions between different cultural groups. Through spaces and representations they create, marketers provide interaction for various groups and we argue that marketing science, education and practice can play a transformative role in addressing these tensions. Towards this end, this paper contributes in three areas. First, we examine the structures and mechanisms underlying tensions and argue for a change from current policies of tolerance that merely recognize diversity, to actively seeking a well-being-enhancing multicultural engagement. Second, we provide a conceptual framework, employing a bridge metaphor that identifies the interactive marketplace domains of multicultural engagement (security, visibility, opportunity, utility, competence, and cultural navigability). Third, from the framework, we derive an agenda for actions by marketing academe and practice to support each domain.

Though the majority of Americans report they are financially stable, they do not have sufficient savings to handle an unplanned emergency. There appears to be a disconnect between an individual's perception of their financial situation and their actual financial state. Nevertheless, only scant research focuses on financial vulnerability from both a subjective and objective perspective, and a clear and consistent definition of this construct is missing in the literature. To fill this gap, this review draws across disciplines to consolidate extant knowledge on financial vulnerability. First, we propose a novel definition of financial vulnerability that includes both its subjective and objective dimensions. Next, we create a framework to assess a consumer's financial vulnerability. We then identify interventions for varying degrees of financial vulnerability that are tailored to the individual's fiscal situation. Finally, we present a research agenda to guide future research on financial vulnerability.

Banking deserts, vulnerable communities that lack access to mainstream banks, represent a serious societal problem. Mainstream banks successfully entering banking deserts can help to assuage this problem. Drawing from research on the psychological consequences of poverty, we propose that mainstream banks can more successfully operate in banking deserts by increasing consumers' perception of communal financial orientation as a bank benefit (i.e., consumers' perception that engaging with the bank is beneficial for their community's well‐being). Two field studies, comparing customers of a credit union who live in a banking desert and those who do not, show that the perception of communal financial orientation as a bank benefit increases banking‐desert consumers' beliefs that engaging with the credit union is beneficial and increases their likelihood of patronizing and recommending it; consumers living outside banking deserts do not display these effects. These findings provide novel insights into psychological mechanisms distinctly associated with banking‐desert consumers and establish the importance of communal financial orientation. This is a win‐win proposal for under‐served communities and financial service providers because it helps both improve financial inclusion and increase the viability of serving banking deserts.

People often fail to achieve health goals, which compromises their well‐being. Prior research suggests that seeing events through an observer's eyes (i.e., adopting a third‐person perspective) should facilitate goal pursuit. However, we find that third‐person perspectives discourage goal‐consistent intentions and behavior for health goals when goal centrality is low (i.e., the goal is peripheral to one's self‐concept). In Experiment 1, people who adopted a third‐person perspective chose more sugary foods if they considered a healthy eating goal to be more peripheral to the self. Experiment 2 examines why a third‐person perspective can hinder goal pursuit; it encourages a breakdown in implemental thinking which, in turn, increases negative self‐conscious emotions. While high goal centrality buffers people from negative effects on goal intentions, low centrality does not. Experiment 3 demonstrates that this effect is robust when goal centrality is manipulated. We recommend that consumers pursuing health goals (and individuals who support them) exercise caution when employing perspective‐based strategies, as they may backfire for people at greatest risk of goal abandonment.

This paper introduces experiential pleasure of food (EPF) as a journey that involves the enduring cognitive and emotional pleasure consumers gain from savoring the multisensory, communal, and cultural meanings of food experiences.Specifically, our paper extends work by Cornil and Chandon (2016a and 2016b) on epicurean eating pleasure (EEP) and identifies and defines three stages (contemplation, connection, and creation) and its determinants as they lead to consumers' food well-being (Block et al., 2011).EPF (vs.EEP) aims to promote enduring (vs.improved) consumer well-being and explores marketing and public policy implications and future research areas that might help achieve food well-being (FWB) (Block et al., 2011).EPF offers a clear path to connect pleasure and EEP with FWB.Specifically, our conceptualization of EPF will serve scholars, public policymakers, and marketers who are interested in understanding enduring healthy eating through the perspective of food as pleasure rather than as a health deterrent.• This paper introduces a new and important construct related to food well-being: the Experiential Pleasure of Food (EPF).• This paper offers a conceptual framework of a pleasure-centric and savoring approach to enduring healthy eating.• This paper brings a unique, deep, and multidisciplinary perspective on food as a meaningful experience to be savored.• This paper offers useful insights to scholars, marketers, and public policy makers to promote enduring healthy eating.