C.B. Bhattacharya and Daniel Korschun
Executive Summary
There is an urgent need to look beyond customers as the sole target of marketing activities so that marketers can better understand the impact of marketing activities on a host of other actors. The Stakeholder Marketing Consortium, a collaborative project between the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program and Boston University, supported by the Marketing Science Institute, convened an invitation-only conference to discuss this novel approach to marketing. The assembly of scholars and practitioners explored new frontiers of marketing by addressing long-standing marketing questions placed within a much broader context—reexamining the customer relationship—and by examining the impacts of marketing activities on the company and all its stakeholders, including, but not limited to, employees, investors, regulators, and society at large. The implications of taking a broadened stakeholder orientation were discussed, and key research questions that may advance this burgeoning area of study were identified. Topics included the evolving role of marketing with respect to stakeholders and society, the expanding number of stakeholder audiences that marketers must consider, the implications of companies partnering with nonprofit organizations to improve societal welfare, the metrics that are needed to assess progress in this realm, and challenges and obstacles that may hinder adoption of the stakeholder marketing orientation. The next step for this research initiative is to publish a set of papers on the aforementioned themes in the fall 2009 issue of Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.
C.B. Bhattacharya received his PhD in Marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 and his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in 1984. His expertise is in the area of marketing strategy innovation and stakeholder marketing. He believes that in today’s environment, companies need to go “beyond the four Ps” and use levers such as corporate and brand identity, membership and brand communities, and corporate social responsibility to strengthen stakeholder relationships. Dr. Bhattacharya has served on the editorial review boards of Journal of Marketing and Corporate Reputation Review and has also served as editor of special issues of California Management Review, Journal of Business Research, and Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. He has published numerous articles in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Organization Science, among other outlets.
Daniel Korschun is a doctoral candidate in Marketing in the School of Management at Boston University. His primary research interests are corporate social responsibility, corporate brand management, and stakeholder engagement. His research appears in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, MIT Sloan Management Review, and the Journal of Business Ethics (forthcoming).
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Vol. 27, No. 1, Spring 2008
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