Marketing’s role in promoting dignity and human rights: A conceptualization for assessment and future research

Abstract

We offer a framework to assess marketing activities for their relationship to human rights, grounded in the recognition that respect for dignity—the inalienable, inherent, and equal value possessed by all humans—is at their core. Drawing from historical and recent thought in philosophy, management and medicine, we focus on three factors of dignity: recognition, agency and equity. We then integrate academic research from our own field as the basis of a marketing-specific conceptualization of dignity, offering a list of assessment questions for firms desiring to integrate dignity into their marketing activities. Given the nascent state of research on dignity in marketing, we also propose a set of questions for future inquiry. We close with three case studies that highlight organizations’ success or failure in affirming dignity in areas relevant to the Sustainable Development Goals, and offer an invitation to esearchers to partner with global dignity-centric organizations to continue this work across cultures and challenges.