Stakeholder Marketing Consortium

The Stakeholder Marketing Consortium, a joint project of the Aspen Institute's Business and Society Program and Boston University, is a forum for innovative research and collaboration among leading marketing scholars and practitioners. The consortium is designed to generate new research that looks beyond customers as the target of marketing activities and firms as the primary intended beneficiary. The consortium addresses long-standing marketing questions placed within a much broader context - re examining the customer relationship - and also looking at the impacts of marketing activities on a host of other actors - i.e. employees, regulators, investors, and society-at-large.

 

The Consortium held its first meeting in September 2007 in Aspen , CO . Twenty academics attended, as well as marketing practitioners from the Gap, the Girl Scouts, Frito Lay, McKinsey and Visa. The meeting was conducted in a dialogue format and was designed to generate new research questions and to spark innovation in marketing practice, as well as to reconsider the role of marketing in light of new technologies and changing markets. Some of the questions raised included

 

•  What are the implications for marketing of recognizing that organizations are influenced by and have effects on a broad range of social actors

    beyond customers?

•  When should regulators intervene if consumers are making sub-optimal decisions in the purchase of products or services?

•  What models are available for understanding the business case for engaging in socially responsible behavior?

•  How can an orientation towards socially responsible behavior be diffused through the company to both internal and external constituents?

 

The second meeting of the Stakeholder Marketing Consortium will be held at Boston University on October 2 and 3, 2008. In order to involve a wider audience in the work of the Consortium, the meeting will follow a more traditional conference format. Approximately fifty attendees are expected. Once again, panels will include a mix of academic and corporate presenters. Topics addressed will include

 

•  Is a stakeholder orientation at odds with the purpose of business?

•  Creating a stakeholder-oriented organization

•  Implementing stakeholder-oriented marketing strategies

•  Measuring stakeholder orientation effectiveness

For more information on the Stakeholder Marketing Consortium, please visit the Consortium website: http://stakeholder.bu.edu