Towards a framework for critical social marketing: what is to be done for emancipation?

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we aim to theoretically advance critical social marketing (CSM). Our purpose is to advance a guiding ethos for the disparate corpus of CSM scholarship and encourage social marketers to become more critically informed in their research and practice. We introduce a critically reflexive, decolonising, intersectional, and trauma-informed CSM framework for social marketing theory, research, and practice towards emancipatory behaviour and social change. Our framework is applied in the context of the social problem of child labour. We then discuss and offer conclusions of the implications of our CSM framework, provide suggestions for a future research agenda that challenges scholars to engage in critically informed research and practice in social marketing.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical theory
• critical social marketing
• reflexivity
• intersectionality
• decolonisation
• trauma
• child labour

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ross Gordon

Ross Gordon is a Professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. He is an interdisciplinary social change researcher with degree qualifications in social marketing, public policy, and politics and history. Ross currently serves on the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health. His work focuses on social issues and social change, through a critical, reflexive, and multi-perspective lens. Professor Gordon works across various behaviour and social change topic areas including energy efficiency, climate action, alcohol, gambling, tobacco control, mental health, and workplace bullying. He is also interested in critiques of neoliberalism and related social activism. He has been a principal or named investigator on projects attracting over $7.9m in research funds in Australia, UK, Europe, and India. He has acted an expert advisor to the Australian Government, the UK and Scottish Governments, the European Commission, WHO, Energy Consumers Australia, NSW Health, and a range of other stakeholders on various topics relating to behaviour and social change.

Foluké Abigail Bádéjọ́

Dr Foluké Abigail Bádéjọ́ is Senior Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. Dr Bádéjọ́ is a proud Yorùubá woman, partially raised in Northern Nigeria, and then Fiji, before now calling Brisbane, Australia home. Her work is driven by an emancipatory research agenda through her core values of dignity, equality, and authenticity. She adopts a transdisciplinary, systems thinking view of complex social problems along with innovative approaches to behaviour change. Folúké’s works is guided by African philosophy, Critical Theory, intersectional feminism and post-colonialism and she has researched issues including human trafficking and modern slavery, homelessness, school food literacy, energy inequality, and gambling related harm. She has been a principal or named investigator on projects attracting a total of $436,950 in research funds. Folúké has published over 30 academic journal and conference papers including in outlets such as Marketing Theory, Journal of Services Marketing, European Sports Management Quarterly, and Journal of Social Marketing.

Lauren Gurrieri

Dr Lauren Gurrieri is a Senior Lecturer at RMIT University in Melbourne. Dr Gurrier is a marketing academic whose research examines gender, consumption, and the marketplace with a focus on gender-based inequalities in consumer culture. This includes how women can be stigmatized, stereotyped, and excluded in marketing; issues of body idealisation, objectification, and violent representations in marketing; and the strategies used by female consumers to resist and challenge marketplace norms. Her scholarship has been published in a range of leading journals, including Gender, Work & Organisation, Journal of Business Research, Consumption, Markets & Culture, and the Journal of Macromarketing. Dr Gurrieri is a Board Member of the Consumer Culture Theory Consortium, an Advisory Board Member for GENMAC (Gender, Marketing and Consumer Behaviour) and is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Marketing Management.