2024 AMA Marketing and Public Policy Conference

From Grassroots to Government: Empowering Social Change to Address Wicked Problems

Marketing and Public Policy scholarship seeks to address issues at the intersection of consumers, organizations, and policymakers. As a field, our focus often resides at the level of national legislation and major-headline decisions. However, social change and impactful policymaking often begins at the local, community level. Further, bottom-up, grassroots movements fueled by consumers as well as corporate interests play a major role in shifting public sentiments, community social endeavors, and legislative action. While federal, top-down approaches may result in broad, sweeping action, consumer groups and communities can create significant, lasting change through local policymaking efforts. For our 2024 conference, we encourage work that addresses the relationships between marketing and public policy activities at the micro, meso and macro perspectives. We invite scholars to consider diverse stakeholder groups at all levels, who generate or influence social change at the intersection of marketing and policy.

As with all eras, our present society is facing major crises and challenges that not only affect every corner of the globe, but also seem impossible to solve. These complex issues, or wicked problems (Rittel and Webber 1973), are persistent challenges because there are typically no straightforward solutions, with unequally distributed costs and benefits. Therefore, addressing these issues demands consideration from multiple, sometimes opposing perspectives and stakeholder groups. As academics and policymakers, it is our responsibility to explore these difficult issues through holistic assessments and creative approaches to problem solving. Further, we must consider the intersectionality of these concerns, including diverse contributors and those implicitly and explicitly affected by them.

By adopting a broad view to include all approaches to developing and impacting policy, we hope to bring fresh ideas to pursue boundary-spanning, marketing-relevant work, resulting in sustainable responses to pervasive wicked problems (MacInnis et. al 2020). Drawing on the words from constitutional law scholar, Paul Freund, we urge our colleagues to submit work that advances thought not merely suited for the “weather of the day,” but also for the “climate of the era.”