Marketing and the Common Good

Reviews / Votes

This thought-provoking, interdisciplinary collection of essays primarily by Notre Dame faculty explores marketing through an ethical lens. The book addresses four major topic areas: societal aspects of marketing and consumption; social and ethical thought; sustainability; and public policy issues. Specifically, the essays center on how marketing affects society, and they are broken down into separate parts that cover the societal aspects of marketing and consumption, Catholic social thought issues in marketing, and sustainability, public policy, and ethical issues in marketing. While each article is a separate piece of research by individual faculty members, collectively the essays spotlight pressing issues of marketing that should not be ignored, but rather highlighted by marketing educators. By exploring the wider relationship of marketing within the ethical and moral economy and its implications for the common good, the essays would be appropriate as supplemental readings for both upper-level marketing undergraduates and graduate students.




--N. E. Furlow, Marymount University 'CHOICE 2015' Selection

I am most impressed with this collection of thoughtful essays from Notre Dame's distinguished faculty to help us think about the impact of marketing and its contributions to society.Philip Kotler, S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, USA

Most insightful and comprehensive collection of essays on marketing and society authored by scholars from diverse disciplines and perspectives! Each essay in Marketing and the Common Good is thought-provoking and challenges the existing dogma in marketing.

Jagdish N. Sheth, Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing, Emory University, USA

The Fighting Irish beat their scholarly swords into societal ploughshares with a collection that is catholic in scope and Catholic in spirit. Ecumenical and enlightening, Marketing and the Common Good is a Notre Dame antidote to the B-school diseases of devil-take-the-hindmost and sin-to-win. This book is better than brilliant, it's uncommonly good!

Stephen Brown, Professor of Marketing Research, University of Ulster, UK

In a world where there is so much vanilla writing on marketing, this book adds welcome flavor. Issues about ethics, society, sustainability, Catholic social thought, public policy: all these have been sidelined in academic marketing too long. Using a cast of leading voices, Marketing and the Common Good tells a compelling story about why values matter, even when those values reach beyond consumer taste.

Thomas Donaldson, Mark O. Winkelman Endowed Professor, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA

With the increased attention in our field of Marketing to issues related to ethics, macromarketing, and transformative consumer research, this book about societal impacts on the Common Good offers timely insights into topics of increasing urgency. In short, the book provides required reading for both academics and practitioners concerned with the problem of contributing to the moral and spiritual elevation of our market-driven economy.

Morris B. Holbrook, W. T. Dillard Professor Emeritus of Marketing, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, USA

This book is a manifesto for stakeholder-centric marketing. The essays focus on how marketing serves the common good and specifically addresses major dimensions of social responsibility, including social issues, sustainability, planned obsolescence, childhood obesity, firearms, personal selling issues, as well as many other dimensions.

O.C. Ferrell, Professor of Marketing, University Distinguished Professor and Bill Daniels Professor of Business Ethics, University of New Mexico, USA

An impassioned plea for the re-enchantment of Marketing by targeting fairness, social justice and sustainability. An exciting and persuasive collection of essays which argue that Marketing can make a major contribution to the common good.

Richard Elliott, Dean, School of Management, University of Bath, UK

This volume is a remarkable and demanding book. It is distinguished by its positive intentions, its largeness of view, and immense thoughtfulness. It confronts and stimulates the reader to ruminate about the marketing system. Ever since I read it I have been obsessively brooding about a profound question: Is there such a thing as the common good?

Sidney J. Levy, Coca-Cola Distinguished Professor of Marketing, Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, and Charles H. Kellstadt Professor Emeritus of Marketing, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, USA

I can't envision a more thoughtful set of essays about the interface of marketing and the common good of the planet than these. They are both immediately actionable and deeply philosophic. They are historical, contemporary, and forward looking. They will comprise a valuable asset for anyone interested in human development, sustainability, global inequality, social marketing, transformational consumer research, quality of life, or business and consumer ethics. And they showcase the intellectually powerful and spiritually profound group of marketing scholars that Notre Dame has attracted and produced. This is a timely and compelling book.

Russell Belk, Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing, Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada

The University of Notre Dame has long been a towering lighthouse of guidance across the turbulent sea of inevitable moral dilemmas in social and economic life. This new volume from its Mendoza College of Business reaffirms the continuing leadership of its marketing faculty in advancing profound and lasting knowledge about the nature and the necessity of virtues, values, and ethics in the practice of business today, and beyond.

David Glen Mick, Robert Hill Carter Professor of Commerce, McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia, USA

Combining marketing and the common good may seem implausible to some, but the Notre Dame faculty has a longstanding history of recognizing that our profession not only can but should be concerned with our larger societal impact. As a community of scholars they have celebrated the ways in which marketing has contributed to the common good, while fully recognizing the downside of our actions and the role of government to rectify resulting problems. This volume is a must-read for executives and students alike who wish to understand and advocate for the common good in ways that can truly make the world a better place.

Ronald Hill, Richard J. and Barbara Naclerio Chairholder in Business, Villanova University, USA

This is a pioneering and significant contribution shaped by institutional context and the visible hand of moral sentiment. The authors assemble the thoughtful work of a cohort of scholars that is truly unique in key regards: unique not only in terms of the stature of their contribution to the evolving moral tone of the discipline over the last 50 years; nor in their in penetrating accounts of the knots of ethical construct and social justice that frame the marketing gaze on societal impact; but in their virtually unprecedented return to discourse of the 'commons' and the 'common good' to suggest pathways towards the moral turn in marketing studies.

Douglas Brownlie, Professor of Marketing, University of Stirling, UK

I heartily recommend Marketing and the Common Good. This provocative collection of essays, written by prominent researchers in the field, provides a critical assessment of marketing and its role in some of the most pressing social problems facing humanity. Ultimately, their message is hopeful as readers are challenged to imagine a world where we are citizens first, and business and marketing practices serve our collective interests.

Julie L. Ozanne, Sonny Merryman Professor of Marketing, Virginia Tech University, USA and Chair, Advisory Committee on Transformative Consumer Research (ACR)

At a time when turning on the news frequently yields a new crop of corporate scandals, it is clearly appropriate that the scholarly community reflect on their role in affirming the present economic system. This collection is an admirable response to such a task. It scrutinizes the role of marketing in society, looking at its contribution to social justice and environmental sustainability. For those who require an introduction to the many complex debates surrounding the relationship between marketing and society, Murphy and Sherry's volume is essential reading.

Mark Tadajewski, Professor of Marketing, Durham University, UK

While marketing journals and textbooks overflow with a firm-centric and customer-centric micro lens on marketing, the Notre Dame marketing faculty for over five decades have telescoped out with a macro lens to debate and engage in dialogue about the social impact of marketing. This book celebrates that continuing dialogue and will benefit all that read and reflect upon the insights shared in this book.

Robert Lusch, James and Pamela Muzzy Chair in Entrepreneurship and Executive Director of the
McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship , University of Arizona, USA

As modern Business Schools grapple with how to best embed ethics in the curriculum, Notre Dame showcases its prowess and long-standing interest in this area in this collection of thought-provoking and enlightening essays. Covering a diverse and comprehensive range of topics, the essays invite us to contemplate both specific consumption-related problems, such as obesity and firearms, and general marketing system issues. This volume is a worthy addition to the limited but growing body of work addressing the role of marketing in a fair and just society.

Simone Pettigrew, Professor of Marketing and Director of the Health Evaluation Unit, University of Western Australia, Australia

Marketing so often seems at odds with the common good, not least given some of the unintended consequences of marketing activities. However, as this wide-ranging and thought-provoking collection of essays shows, marketing can be conceived and practiced in ways that promote the common good as well. It offers insight for marketing practitioners and scholars alike. It is also testament to the long-standing commitment of marketing faculty at Notre Dame to scholarship on issues of marketing and society, marketing ethics, and marketing and public policy-in short, to marketing and the common good.

N. Craig Smith, INSEAD Chaired Professor of Ethics and Social Responsibility, France

Marketing is widely demonized as being synonymous with egocentric materialism, a shallow consumer culture, broken promises, intrusiveness and other ills. The collection of essays now published by two of the most eminent marketing scholars and business ethics researchers, John F. Sherry, Jr. and Patrick E. Murphy, provides a welcome antidote to these prejudices. The contributions demonstrate that the field of marketing has substantially more intellectual gravitas than is commonly assumed. Illustrating the interconnectedness of marketing to ethics, moral economy and public policy, this book is a must read for anyone who is interested in societal aspects of marketing and in the fundamental question of how we all want to live together.

Bodo Schlegelmilch, Professor of International Marketing and Management, and Dean, Executive Academy,Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

A unique and important collection of essays join together in a coherent whole to make a powerful case for marketing's role in strongly influencing the common good. The common thread that underlies a multitude of specific marketing and society issues (ethical practices, sustainability, guns, childhood obesity, and et. al.) is revealed, placed in its historical and intellectual context, and even debated. Reading this volume will give many marketing scholars and students a far better understanding and perspective of our field's future.

Josh Wiener, Professor of Marketing, Carson Professor of Business Administration, and Director of the center for Social and Services Marketing, Oklahoma State University, USA

This book is a remarkable collective effort to re-imagine marketing as a means of identifying and achieving the common good. It provides a post-postmodern perspective of the intersection between marketing and society and paves the way for the remaking of marketing as 'societing'.

Bernard Cova, Professor of Marketing, Euromed Management and Visiting Professor, Bocconi University, Italy

This book is a must read for anyone who is interested in consumerism, marketing and society, marketing ethics or stewardship. Notre Dame has been at the forefront of research and thinking in these areas for decades. The authors are luminaries in the field.

Cornelia Pechmann, Professor of Marketing, Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, USA, and Editor of Journal of Consumer Research

For more than three decades, the Marketing Department at the University of Notre Dame has served as both thought leader and social conscience of the marketing discipline. While others in our field have focused on publishing in significant journals, the Notre Dame faculty have focused on publishing significant work - work that makes the world a better place (much of which appears in significant journals). This focus reflects their individual, collective and institutional orientations that marketing should serve a high purpose, that it should make a world a better place, and that it should empower people to think and act beyond their personal interest. If, as a marketing manager, you strive to improve the lives of your customers and community, as well as your firm, then your decisions are likely shaped by the thinking and teaching of Notre Dame. If, as a marketing scholar, you can articulate to others how marketing can make the world a better place, your argument almost certainly includes the thinking and teaching of the faculty of Notre Dame.

John Mittelstaedt, Professor and Chair, Department of Management and Marketing, University of Wyoming College of Business, USA

Drawing on the interdisciplinary concept of "the common good" as its central motif, this inspiring collection from Notre Dame scholars focuses our attention on the complex and powerful role that marketing and consumption play in contemporary society. Together the provocative chapters leave the reader with a much keener appreciation of the many ethical and moral ramifications of marketing activities and their societal impact, taking us through a wide range of pressing issues that cover topics as diverse as firearms, kidney donations and childhood obesity. This book is essential reading for all current and future marketers to understand the broader implications of their actions and how the discipline can affect the common good in positive as well as negative ways.

Pauline Maclaran, Professor of Marketing & Consumer Research, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

The authors included in this volume are among some of the most respected in the marketing discipline. It is hard to imagine that they all have some connection to one school (Notre Dame). Personally, I was especially attracted by the fact that, E.J. McCarthy, professor of the very first marketing course I ever enrolled in, was included in this volume. I believe that the topics covered should be useful to marketing students, academic researchers and business leaders alike.

Scott J. Vitell, Hardin Professor of Marketing, University of Mississippi, USA and Marketing and Consumer Behavior Section Editor for the Journal of Business Ethics

Not only does this text pay tribute to the continued voice and multifarious contributions of the Mendoza College of Business at Notre Dame in helping us understand what marketing can do to help us realize the common good but also provides another important part, alongside scholarship in macromarketing and public policy, of a collective cornerstone for enlightened marketing. This should be essential reading for all business school students across our world!

Pierre McDonagh, Dublin City University Business School, Ireland and Associate Editor, Journal of Macromarketing

I applaud this important effort at scholarly reflection on how marketing can serve the common good. It brings together serious scholarship on marketing with consideration of our obligation to serve society.

Rev. John Jenkins, President, University of Notre Dame