Although largely ignored and underestimated within the marketing discipline, stakeholder orientation has become a major alternative to customer orientation that has dominated marketing strategy during the last half century (Ferrell et al. 2010; Kimery & Rinehart 1998;
Smith et al. 2010). Excitement is now increasing as a growing stream of marketing litera-ture addresses the potential implications of stakeholder thinking for marketing strategy (Bhattacharya 2010). The basic ideas of stakeholder theory and marketing have become in-terconnected for these scholars under the term “stakeholder marketing”. According to C.B.
Bhattacharya (2010, 1), stakeholder marketing aims to (1) consider multiple stakeholder interests when designing, implementing and evaluating marketing strategy, (2) understand the full impact of marketing on all stakeholders, (3) study the relationships between stake-holders, (4) understand how marketers can effectively address commonalities and conflicts in stakeholder needs and interests and (5) help maximise shareholder value. This way of understanding stakeholder marketing has a significant affinity with stakeholder theory. In-deed, the majority of studies on stakeholder marketing follow the premise established by Edward Freeman in his landmark book “Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach”
(1984) and his view that stakeholders are “any groups or individuals who can affect or are affected by the achievement of an organization’s objectives”.
Both stakeholder theory, which has received extensive examination in the manage-ment literature (Laplume, Sonpar & Litz 2008; Stoney & Winstanley 2001), and stakeholder marketing seem to offer a rich body of thought for the further development of sustainable marketing (Banerjee 2007, 23–40; Fry & Polonsky 2004; García-Rosell 2009; Maignan &
Ferrell 2004; Maignan et al. 2005). These theories suggest that the centrepiece of sustain-able marketing involves considering the rights and interests of all legitimate stakeholders rather than simply those of customers and shareholders. In adopting this approach, sus-tainable marketing helps firms make responsible marketing decisions that promote both their strategic goals and social welfare (see Fry & Polonsky 2004, 1304). While stakeholder marketing and stakeholder theory have been invaluable in stimulating our thinking regard-ing the relationship between marketregard-ing, nature and society, I believe that these theories do not sufficiently advance the theorisation of sustainable marketing. In fact, because of the prevailing firm orientation and assumption that stakeholders are isolatable entities, I argue that stakeholder marketing and stakeholder theory fail to offer insights into the dynamics and complexities of sustainable marketing. However, there are two independent developments within business studies that can fill the gap left by stakeholder marketing and stakeholder theory.
The first development refers to the emerging relational perspective on stakeholder the-ory that has been addressed and discussed by a host of scholars who recognised the need to shift the analytical focus from individual stakeholders to a dynamic, decentralised web of multi-stakeholder relationships (e.g., Buchholz & Rosenthal 2004, 2005; Hemmati 2002;
Reynolds & Yuthas 2008; Wicks, Gilbert & Freeman 1994). For example, in her attempt to re-orient stakeholder thinking, Minu Hemmati emphasises the study of multi-stakeholder
processes and the wealth of subjective perspectives, knowledge and experiences that these processes entail. This view is further elaborated by Rogene Buchholz and Sandra Rosenthal (2005, 147), who share the view that organisations are not separable from their stakehold-ers but are, in fact, constituted by the multiple relationships in which they are embedded.
Instead of understanding stakeholder value as comprising individual needs, priorities and judgements, as proposed by the individualist premises of traditional stakeholder theory, relational stakeholder theorists regard stakeholder value as the product of dynamic com-munity relations (Buchholz & Rosenthal 2005, 145). This view is consistent with Adam Arvidsson’s (2011, 268) suggestion that what creates stakeholder value is the ability to cre-ate significant relationships that sustain the dynamic web of multi-stakeholder relation-ships within which organisations are embedded.
The second development is related to the cultural approach of marketing and, more precisely, the study of markets as a social construction (e.g., Araujo 2007; Araujo & Kjell-berg 2009; Firat & Dholakia 2006; Peñaloza & Venkatesh 2006; Venkatesh & Peñaloza 2006).
Venkatesh and Peñaloza (2006) describe the market as a social construction in the sense that markets are constructed by subject-to-subject relationships. In this way of thinking, stakeholders are not only subjected to the marketer but also to other stakeholders who be-come active producers of meaning via joint and continuous interactions. Therefore, stake-holders are considered not as isolated individuals with separate roles and tasks but as com-munity members whose roles and tasks merge and fade within the context of the market (see Firat & Venkatesh 1995). In a sense, the market approach to marketing offers a fruitful opportunity to look beyond the assumption in stakeholder marketing that a stakeholder orientation is principally about striking an appropriate balance between the interests of an organisation and its stakeholders. Viewing markets as a social construction is valuable for better understanding the complex socio-cultural relationships and interactions through which marketers, consumers and other stakeholders produce, maintain, negotiate, resist and transform values and meanings about sustainability (see Moisander 2007; Moisander
& Valtonen 2006b; Peñaloza & Mish 2011; Peñaloza & Venkatesh 2006).
One main argument links these two developments. Both research streams converge on the idea that firms are rooted in a web of multi-stakeholder relationships where value is constantly co-created. Thus, they disapprove of the prevailing individualistic view of stake-holders and market actors that focusses on the needs and interests of single stakestake-holders and thus downplays the socio-cultural context. The kinship between these two research streams also raises questions regarding their primary differences. While the relational per-spective on stakeholder theory continues to focus on the firm, the market approach fo-cusses on the market as a physical and virtual space that is constructed by the multiplicity and diversity of multi-stakeholder relations. By observing individual firms as both a part of the market and subjected to other stakeholders, the market approach shifts the unit of study from the firm to the market (Peñaloza & Venkatesh 2006). The work of marketing scholars using a market approach highlights the role of values and meanings to provide the subjective material that stakeholders rely on and reproduce when formulating their identities and relating to both other stakeholders and the natural environment (Araujo
& Kjellberg 2009; Peñaloza & Mish 2011). In this way, scholars draw attention to various discourses and practices as the means through which stakeholders construct and institu-tionalise meanings and values within a market context. While the notions of discourse and practise have made few inroads with relational stakeholder theorists, these theorists have more explicitly addressed the notions of meaning and value in relation to morality (Buch-holz & Rosenthal 2005).
In this doctoral dissertation, I establish a nexus between stakeholder marketing, the relational perspective on stakeholder theory and the market approach to marketing to create a framework to explore and more comprehensively understand the dynamics and complexities of sustainable marketing. The multi-stakeholder perspective on sustainable marketing outlined and illustrated in this dissertation grows from integrating and incorpo-rating premises from these three research fields. In this way, the framework contains three shifts from the current theorisation of sustainable marketing that has been largely shaped via managerial discourse. First, focus is shifted from individual stakeholders to the complex web of multi-stakeholder interactions and relationships. Second, emphasis is shifted from sustainability as a technical/scientific problem to sustainability as a set of meanings and values socially constructed by the discourses and practices available within a particular market context. Finally, there is a shift from “common sense” marketing to “reflexive” mar-keting. By forwarding these three fundamental mind-set shifts, the framework suggests, in agreement with Luis Araujo and Hans Kjellberg (2009, 198), that sustainable market-ing should be actively engaged in the production and transformation of markets towards greater sustainability.
A “multi-stakeholder perspective” thus refers to an analytical perspective on the socio-cultural production of the meanings and values of sustainability through the discourses and practices available at a certain time and place. By opening access to the complex weavings of stakeholder views, understandings and experiences, this analytical perspective enables marketing professionals to construct knowledge and develop both new capabilities and practices to support sustainability. This approach makes sense if we consider that scientific knowledge is not universally valid in all local contexts; moreover, the development of more sustainable practices requires promoting fruitful and transdisciplinary dialogues between locally relevant and universalist claims (see Heiskanen 2006, 10; cf. Nowotny 2003). In this dissertation, the term “marketing practice” is not used as a catch-all for what marketers do (Araujo & Kjellberg 2009, 198). Rather, the term marketing practices refers to men-tal representations, both scientific and lay knowledge, emotional states, embodied skills and material devices, as well as the configuration in which they come together, when both marketers and other stakeholders address environmental and social issues within a market context. In this way, the multi-stakeholder perspective both encourages critical reflexivity and prompts marketers to question “common sense” sustainable marketing: that is, the managerial way in which marketing professionals generally think and practice sustainable marketing (Catterall et al. 2002, 186; Fougère & Solitander 2009; Jones, Parker & Ten Bos 2005, 10; Skålén et al. 2008).