Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Qualitative Market Research.
“Re-imagining Marketing in a Post-Pandemic World: Challenges, Strategies, and Solutions”
Guest Editors: Dixit S.K., Correia A., & Gunasekar S.
Deadline: 31 March 2022
Modern marketing and its philosophies have transformed in recent years, moving from a company-centric, singular, and transactional marketing lens to a customer-centric, process-oriented, and usage-based one (Hartwig & Jacob, 2021). Marketing has also diverged into three distinct subdisciplines: marketing strategy, consumer behavior, and marketing analytics (Mehta et al., 2020). The core of modern marketing still lies in offering the maximum value for customers.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the individuals/organisations and implies a change in market dynamics. Consumers and organizations are employing innovative business transaction modes to cope with unprecedented marketplace conditions. Relationships between businesses and consumers are changing quickly due to restrictions from COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing protocols. Behavioral market dynamics have been redefined throughout the pandemic amid partial and full lockdowns. As consumers are now also shopping for many new-to-them products (e.g., face shields and masks) in new ways (e.g., no-contact methods via e-commerce and at-home delivery) using emerging technologies (smartphones and mobile apps) to venture new experiences. The convenience of online shopping motivates consumers to continue these newly acquired habits.
Organizations are therefore adopting innovative means to complete business transactions. The powerful convergence of marketing and technology has helped consumers to navigate these marketplace shifts. As the world moves beyond immediate survival, some of these changes will likely persist and become part of everyday life; others may revert to pre-pandemic tactics (Sheth, 2021). It would be interesting and important to explore the relationship between changing consumer behavior and needs in order to inform sustainable marketing models (Mehta et al., 2020). Therefore, this special issue aims to discuss the pandemic in terms of identifying emerging patterns in consumer behavior along with necessary transformations in marketing models to cope with these changes. New perspectives on customer-centric themes of doing business must integrate providers and receivers while creating value for both.
Therefore, the purpose of this special issue is to assemble a collection of high-quality articles that explore how this pandemic changed marketing strategies for products and services. Overall, this special issue aims to enrich and update the existing literature to uncover groundbreaking aspects of multidisciplinary marketing to profile prevailing marketing trends. Therefore, the guest editors encourage the contributors to offer an extensive set of papers addressing the shifting dynamics of marketing/ consumer behavior and technological interference for marketing worldwide. Papers with new perspectives on and approaches to traditional paradigms and theories using sound qualitative methods will be invited. Ultimately, this special issue will highlight the current Ontologies, Epistemologies, and Methodologies using Qualitative Research Methods to explore post-pandemic marketing philosophies with high-quality contributions from global researchers and practitioners.
The special issue is organized in three parts; the first aims to thoroughly explore the new marketing dynamics, the second part develops the transformative and emergent consumer behaviour, whereas the third part focuses on the technological interference for marketing worldwide. Submissions for the special issue will include the following partial and indicative listing of qualitative research themes (with multidisciplinary orientations and emergent marketing philosophies), but are not limited to:
- New Marketing Dynamics
- Challenges and impacts of the pandemic in marketing strategies
- Strategies for services and tourism in the post-pandemic world
- Post-pandemic resilience and recovery in services and tourism
- Marketing strategies for new attitudes and behaviours formed during the pandemic
- Multidisciplinary alliances in marketing
- Health, safety, and sustainability – reimagining marketing responses and strategies
- Sports marketing, including team sports, branding, and product marketing
- Effective marketing communication
- Marketing research methodology
- Crisis communication and strategic planning
- Space management and adaptations to new social norm
- Transformative And Emergent Consumer Behaviour
- Changing Trends and new behaviours?
- Luxury goods, brands, products, and fashion
- Changing needs and marketing strategies
- New avenues in shopping behaviours
- Strategies for the hospitality and tourism industry to adopt in the post-pandemic changes
- Handling stress and trauma during the crisis
- New markets, new trends, new segments
- Technological Interference For Marketing Worldwide
- Marketing strategies for online shopping
- Education-based marketing – shifting to a hybrid education system
- Marketing strategies – adapting to new technology and innovation
- Effective social media marketing strategies and their implications
- Connecting the Dots between Marketing, Information, and Customer Experience
Submission Instructions:
Authors willing to contribute to this special issue can contact the guest editors regarding topics of interest or any questions/suggestions regarding the special issue. The submission window for the special issue articles will open on 15th September, 2021. The deadline for article submission in the special issue is 31st March 2022, with a planned publication of the issue in 2023.
More info here.
