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Executive Summary
Marketing scholars need to be more involved in both disaster research and decisions about how to distribute resources during a natural disaster. As a function, marketing is fundamentally concerned with needs assessment and fulfillment and with the efficient distribution of resources. The dialogue on disaster recovery reveals that underfulfillment of needs and insufficient resource distribution are common grievances and sources of both real and perceived injustice. The view of markets and marketing as social processes recognizes that market interactions and other forms of consumption are dominant modes of human action that provide solutions to the real problems of survivors’ everyday lives (i.e., markets are the provisioning system for food, clothing, shelter, work clothing, toys, recreational equipment, and so on). Furthermore, markets and access to resources are the means by which disaster survivors can achieve a higher state of existence. Thus, marketing functions and marketing philosophies could contribute greatly to disaster science.

This essay addresses how the definitions of disaster and vulnerability serve as guides for market and policy responses and shows how a fundamental lack of understanding of what creates a disaster and what constitutes human (and consumer) vulnerability constrains the ability of individuals, communities, and institutions to mitigate and/or recover from natural hazards and the responses that follow. Fundamentally, the definitions of disaster and vulnerability affect how and to whom resources are distributed.

The global struggle for more sustainable models of economic, social, and environmental development is at the heart of disaster and vulnerability analysis. Sustainable models of disaster reduction and recovery policies must recognize that the network of actors in the market (e.g., firms, nongovernmental organizations, government, consumers) share the burden of risk and experience of vulnerability in a disaster. The essay argues that market and policy responses must consider both the resource deficits and adaptive capacities of disaster survivors and the characteristics of the environments in which they live to cocreate opportunities for resilience.

Biography
Stacey Menzel Baker (PhD University of Nebraska–Lincoln) is Associate Professor of Marketing & Sustainable Business Practices in the College of Business at the University of Wyoming. Her research focuses on symbolic and experiential aspects of consumption, often focusing on issues of consumer vulnerability, welfare, and protection. She has explored possession meanings, the value of shopping, the experiences of consumers with disabilities in the marketplace, and the experiences of consumers recovering from natural disasters and has worked to define the domain of consumer vulnerability more clearly. Stacey sits on the editorial boards for Journal of Advertising, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Journal of Macromarketing, and Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.

Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Volume 28, Number 1, Spring 2009
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