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Executive Summary
Strategic marketing decisions often involve complex and uncertain conditions, such as the long-term safety of genetically modified foods, the effectiveness of new pharmaceuticals drugs, or the adoption of more sustainable business practices. Moreover, urgent social problems arise increasingly at the intersection of the interests of business leaders, policy makers, and consumers. The authors argue that deliberative democracy offers a fruitful approach for understanding marketing’s impact on society by revealing the complex and often conflicting network of interests among stakeholders. Deliberative methods hold promise for easing constraints on civic engagement, increasing consumer empowerment, and improving consumer welfare. The authors explore the strengths and weaknesses of five popular methods of deliberative democracy, guided by a historical and philosophical analysis of the roots of deliberative democracy: deliberative focus group, deliberative poll, citizens’ jury, consensus conference, and scenario workshop. Adherents of the marketing concept suggest that good strategy should be based on the needs of consumers, while researchers who follow a more societal marketing concept seek to expand consumers’ needs to include the needs of society. Typical methods to assess consumer needs include traditional surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Yet, in an increasingly interdependent and global marketplace, the ability of consumers to determine in isolation what is in their or society’s best interest is far from perfect. Consumers’ ability to communicate their needs accurately will likely improve when they are educated regarding the best available evidence at hand, have queried leading experts, and have debated the issue with other relevant stakeholders. Moreover, given that no single course of action is likely to be acceptable to all stakeholders, a democratic and dialogical process that includes wider input from various stakeholders would be useful to better understand the social implications of strategic decisions. The interests of a firm’s direct and indirect stakeholders are diverse and present managers with difficult trade-offs. Deliberative methods are presented as more effective methods for including the perspectives of multiple stakeholders in marketing decisions. Through deliberation, firms can consider the input of multiple stakeholders without requiring government mediation, can potentially generate acceptable decisions for stakeholders, and can be leaders in establishing new standards of corporate social responsibility. 

Biography
Julie L. Ozanne is Sonny Merryman Professor of Marketing at Virginia Polytechnic Institute’s R.B. Pamplin College of Business. She specializes substantively in the area of transformative consumer research. Her research has focused on the problems of poverty and health care access in rural Appalachia, the struggles of low-literate adults in the marketplace, illegal consumption among juvenile delinquents, environmentally sensitive consumption, and consumer activism. She specializes in alternative methodologies for the study of social problems, such as interpretive, critical, feminist, and participatory action research methods. Her work has appeared in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Macromarketing, The Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing, and Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces, among other outlets.

Canan Corus is Professor of Marketing in the Tobin College of Business at St. John’s University. She specializes in the area of consumer welfare and focuses on health communications and literacy. Her research interests include individual differences that shape risky behaviors, such as overeating, tailored interventions, and affective influences on health message effectiveness.

Bige Saatcioglu is a doctoral candidate at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She earned a BA in Public Relations from University of Istanbul and an MBA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Her research interests are theoretical and methodological issues in critical, transformative, and poststructuralist paradigms; interpretive consumer research; and consumer culture theory. She has published in Advances in International Management, Journal of International Business Studies, and Journal of Consumer Research. She has presented her research at the Public Policy and Marketing conference, the Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces conference, and the Association of Consumer Research conference. Her dissertation explores the practices of consumer resistance among the working poor. With her dissertation, she received second place for the ACR/Sheth Dissertation Award in the public purpose category. Before joining the doctoral program, Bige gained corporate marketing experience in public relations, advertising, market research, and product management.

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