AMS Review最新文献

{"title":"From purpose statements to purpose systems: Research opportunities on eudaimonic well-being for consumers and employees","authors":"Patti Williams,&nbsp;Jennifer Edson Escalas","doi":"10.1007/s13162-026-00344-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-026-00344-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article extends Williams, Escalas, and Morningstar’s (2022) framework of brand purpose and consumer eudaimonic well-being through an in-depth analysis of Resmed, a restorative health technology company whose mission is to create products “that people love.” We conceptualize brand purpose as organizational architecture rather than simply external positioning, showing how purpose operates through identity integration, emotional activation, and structural integration across stakeholders. We examine brand love as a relational outcome that consolidates purpose-driven mechanisms in contexts characterized by vulnerability and stigma. In restorative categories, love may emerge not from aspiration but from sustained functional restoration and dignity-preserving design. Second, we expand the framework to incorporate employee eudaimonic well-being, as Resmed reveals that purpose internalization shapes employees’ authentic pride, coordination, and enactment quality, reinforcing consumer flourishing through reciprocity loops. We further identify structural conditions, including clarity, authenticity, vulnerability intensity, and stigma visibility, that stabilize emotional pathways and strengthen durable commitment. Finally, we outline measurement implications for assessing purpose-driven systems. Together, these contributions illuminate brand purpose as a multi-level system linking consumer and employee flourishing with organizational strategy and generate interesting avenues for future research.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-026-00344-1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147938287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What is marketing? Three defining properties","authors":"Elina Jaakkola","doi":"10.1007/s13162-026-00336-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-026-00336-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This commentary discusses a recent call to redefine marketing by focusing on its fundamental meaning and purpose. The commentary proposes three unique, defining properties of marketing that a conceptualization of the “overarching marketing phenomenon” should accommodate to resonate with both business and academia: an externally oriented value-creation mindset, an outside-in perspective, and an integrative, relational orientation.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-026-00336-1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147937812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A stakeholder systems approach to the marketing discipline’s troubled trajectory","authors":"Ronald K. Mitchell,&nbsp;Hadi Houshmand,&nbsp;Benjamin T. Mitchell,&nbsp;Jeffrey S. Harrison","doi":"10.1007/s13162-026-00331-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-026-00331-6","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In what has been termed the “manifesto conversation,” the question has been raised as to “how the marketing discipline will successfully use its human and institutional resources to reverse its troubled trajectory, renew itself, and meet its responsibilities to its stakeholders” (Hunt et al., 2022, p. 139). This research question is the focus of this paper. Herein we draw on stakeholder theory amplified by concepts from systems and institutional theory, to offer an approach to address this question. Using stakeholder systems theory we argue (a) that competitiveness among sub-fields operates to invoke mutual improvements for the marketing stakeholders of each sub-field, and (b) that due to the constitutive nature of systems, each necessary contribution by a given sub-field can be identified and included in sufficiently serving marketing’s stakeholders. We offer three contributions. First, we develop theory to suggest how multiple marketing constituencies might continue to pursue novel research while remaining true to the foundations of each constituency. Second, we suggest a theoretical mechanism for integration across sub-fields. Third, we offer ideas whereby marketing-discipline actors can work proactively to create, maintain, and in some cases disrupt the institutions that presently constrain the development of marketing as a core field of study in a dynamic business environment. It therefore is our hope that our analysis in this paper can serve an effectuating purpose as the marketing discipline seeks to use its human and institutional resources in connection with its troubled trajectory, to renew itself, and meet its responsibilities to its stakeholders.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-026-00331-6.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147937757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What should be fixed in something that isn’t broken: A commentary on “How to save marketing ...”1","authors":"Rajan Varadarajan","doi":"10.1007/s13162-026-00335-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-026-00335-2","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Grönroos (AMS Review, 2026) notes the marketing discipline is at a critical juncture due to its fragmented and largely tactical focus, misalignment with environmental issues and the needs of businesses and society, and other shortcomings. He views the definition of marketing adopted by American Marketing Association (AMA) in 2007 (American Marketing Association, 2024) as representing the management approach, and marketing based on the management approach as myopically focused on activities without a clear purpose. Grönroos calls for an approach in which the perspective is raised from <i>what marketing does</i> in an activity-based framework to <i>what marketing is</i> at a higher level as an overarching phenomenon. He further notes that while a discussion on “what marketing would be as a phenomenon” is outside the scope of the article, it should encompass the purpose of marketing when introduced and implemented in any context. An issue of concern regarding Grönroos’ criticisms of the current state of the marketing discipline is that they are opinions and not evidence-based facts. Regarding his comments on the AMA 2007 definition of marketing, it should be viewed as one of many definitions and not as the definitive definition. Furthermore, the marketing discipline and practice would benefit from multiple definitions of marketing, including a definition that is activities focused and managerial in its orientation.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147829729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction to theory and practice","authors":"Bernard Jaworski","doi":"10.1007/s13162-026-00345-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-026-00345-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147829730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Marketing: A phenomenon of flourishing through care","authors":"Cristina Mele","doi":"10.1007/s13162-026-00341-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-026-00341-4","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Responding to calls to approach marketing as a phenomenon, this commentary examines ontological, epistemological, and ethical perspectives that make marketing intelligible. The dominance of activity-centered and positivist orientations have limited the field’s capacity to articulate its underlying purpose, but adopting relational and more-than-human views allows for a conceptualization of marketing as a sociomaterial phenomenon within which knowing, being, and doing are inseparably intertwined. More-than-human flourishing then becomes marketing’s higher-order orientation, shifting attention from episodic value creation to the cultivation of conditions that sustain well-being and well-becoming over time. To ensure flourishing is more than just aspirational, care is required, as both a condition of its possibility and a manifestation of the relational and material work through which markets and ecosystems can be maintained and rendered livable. This integrated, societally grounded approach can redefine marketing’s purpose.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-026-00341-4.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147796664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Death technologies and digital afterlife: An ethical perspective","authors":"Erik Hermann,&nbsp;Russell W. Belk,&nbsp;Vitor Lima","doi":"10.1007/s13162-026-00329-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-026-00329-0","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Technological advances are beginning to change the timeline and finality of death, and these emerging death technologies affect the dying, survivors, and society in unprecedented ways. We systematize current, emerging, and imagined technologically mediated or enabled human-death relationships through our REAL framework, which considers three areas of death technologies: digital <b>R</b>emembrance, life <b>E</b>xtension, and digital <b>A</b>fter<b>L</b>ife. These technologies extend consumption beyond the consumer life cycle into a consumer death cycle, raising profound ethical and marketing questions. Based on a thematic synthesis of recurring ethical principles, we conceptualize the CARE principles—<b>C</b>ontrol, <b>A</b>ccountability, <b>R</b>espect, and <b>E</b>quity—and illustrate implications for the (future) deceased, the bereaved, providers, and policymakers. Our work offers a starting point for understanding the complex ethical and marketing challenges of death technologies and the digital afterlife by developing a conceptual and ethical framework that clarifies how these technologies are organized, embedded, and governed within market systems. We also extend foundational concepts of consumer vulnerability, co-creation, and extended self into posthumous contexts, and lays out a research agenda.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-026-00329-0.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147796665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"If marketing is a phenomenon of creating meaningfulness, what is meaningful marketing theory?","authors":"Roderick J. Brodie,&nbsp;Julia A. Fehrer,&nbsp;John D. Nicholson","doi":"10.1007/s13162-026-00340-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-026-00340-5","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Marketing is again confronting foundational questions about what it fundamentally <i>is</i>. Responding to Grönroos’s (2026) argument that marketing’s crisis is ontological rather than methodological, this commentary engages with his call to re-anchor the discipline in a single overarching phenomenon. Building on the notion of marketing as a phenomenon of creating meaningfulness (Grönroos, 2023), the commentary examines what this phenomenological reframing implies for marketing theory. We argue that taking meaningfulness seriously destabilises core assumptions about marketing’s explanandum. To clarify what meaningful marketing theory requires, we assess marketing-indigenous meta-theories—service-dominant logic and resource-advantage theory. This assessment shows that while these frameworks offer necessary foundations, none alone can fully explain the emergence, contestation, and societal impact of meaningfulness. Instead, meaningful marketing theory benefits from a structured form of meta-theoretical pluralism in which a shared market-centric orientation provides coherence, while complementary perspectives from within and outside of marketing deepen the explanandum for meaningfulness.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-026-00340-5.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147797110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How to save marketing: Let’s focus on the phenomenon","authors":"Christian Grönroos","doi":"10.1007/s13162-026-00333-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-026-00333-4","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Marketing as a discipline faces critical juncture due to fragmented and largely tactical focus and misalignment with business, environmental, and societal needs. The ongoing debate in reputable marketing journals about how to resolve marketing’s dilemma has not yielded clear results. It appears to be taken for granted what marketing is. This article states that marketing based on the management approach has become myopically focused on activities without a clear purpose. The article advocates a transformative approach, in which the perspective is raised from what marketing does in an activity-based framework to what marketing is on a higher level as an overarching phenomenon. Thus, marketing’s inner meaning and purpose is in focus. Once this has been established, the choice of marketing decisions and activities should be a matter of consideration. By understanding marketing as a phenomenon, the discipline can potentially become inclusive in several ways, helping various institutions to embrace it and make it possible to reconcile conflicts between marketing’s many stakeholders and between commercial and environmental interests.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-026-00333-4.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147796641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Conceptualizing service ecosystem agility to maintain functionality in the face of perturbations","authors":"Stefan Burggraf,&nbsp;Amir Raki,&nbsp;Franziska S. Kullak,&nbsp;Louisa Schneider,&nbsp;Sertan Kabadayi,&nbsp;Susan Myrden","doi":"10.1007/s13162-026-00332-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-026-00332-5","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>While service ecosystems typically rely on self-adjustment to adapt to change, these mechanisms are often inadequate to maintain ecosystem functionality during perturbations. Specifically, the gradual and reactive nature of self-adjustment, dependent on institutional flexibility and resource availability, cannot match the escalating scale, complexity, and velocity that characterize perturbations. In response, the concept of agility has gained attention for its potential to support continuity in evolving environments. However, current agility literature adopts organization-centric perspectives that overlook ecosystem interdependencies and remain theoretically unsuitable for addressing perturbations that exceed natural adaptive thresholds. To fill this gap, we introduce the concept of <i>Service Ecosystem Agility (SEA)</i>. Through rigorous theoretical synthesis of self-adjustment and agility literatures, we develop an ecosystem-centered understanding of agility that creates emergent properties unavailable to existing conceptualizations. The resulting SEA concept comprises four interconnected building blocks: multi-level actor interconnectedness, proactive-reactive orientation, coordinated resource integration, and calibrated response capability. Each building block addresses limitations that neither self-adjustment mechanisms nor existing agility approaches can resolve independently. Through the analysis of literature, we develop theoretical propositions that specify what must exist for SEA to operate efficiently. These propositions illustrate conditions that enable SEA’s building blocks to materialize in practice and provide a foundation for future empirical validation. This research advances the service ecosystem literature by explaining functionality maintenance phenomena that existing theory cannot account for and by identifying building blocks that enable ecosystem-level agility during perturbations.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-026-00332-5.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147738914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}