Sustainable Marketing in Tourism: Striving for Sustained Transformation and Wellbeing

Dear Colleagues,

In these post-pandemic times, sustainable marketing has become the epicenter of corporate practice and academic inquiry. This can be attributed to serious public concerns about environmental degradation, social issues, the dedicated initiatives of corporate marketers, and the sustainability priorities of many nations across the globe (Sheth and Parvitayar 2021). Another key emerging issue that has taken center stage in the travel and tourism industry is associated with health and wellbeing (Chhabra 2021, 2022). According to Kelleci and Yildiz (2021), the most important duty of the travel and tourism industry is to restore the good health and wellbeing of all its stakeholders and the planet at large. There is an expectation from the tourism industry and its various stakeholders to meaningfully integrate social, environmental, and health measures in their agenda. Health is predominantly featured in the United Nations’ list of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Bolton 2022). The SDGs are inspiring decision-makers to consider a broad set of wellbeing outcomes beyond economic metrics.

The recent literature has recognized the significant role of marketing in aiding the societal aspiration of facilitating the wellbeing and flourishing of the travel and tourism industry (Lacznial and Shulz 2022; Sheth and Parvatyar 2022). Marketing can instill a sense of mindfulness towards one’s wellness and that of broader society. The key challenge is to integrate behavior changes in everyday life, and this calls for a sustained transformation agenda (Atljevic 2020). Several strategies must be in place to support the transformative travel agenda. Transformative travel refers to travel experiences that capture “journeys of the mind”, aspiring for self-actualization and boosting responsible behavior towards others and the ecological systems (Pung, Gnoth, and Chiappa 2020; Reisinger, 2013). According to Bolton (2022), the marketing community should develop a strategic agenda guided by the SDGs to contribute towards a better world.

There is a need for emergent marketing paradigms (Cavender, Swanson, and Wright 2020; Pung and Chiappa, 2020; Sheldon, 2020; Teoh, Wang, and Kwek 2021). Several paths have unfolded and continue to unfold which stimulate the desire to develop new pathways of inquiries, such as: how can health and wellbeing be integrated into new sustainable tourism marketing models? What are the best ways that the tourism marketing agenda can inculcate the SDGs? What kind of paradigms can be conceptualized to promote the sustained transformation and resilience of different stakeholders in the travel and tourism industry?

This Special Issue invites conceptual, empirical, and theoretical explorations, in marketing, to identify and engage with the sustainable and transformative pathways for the travel and tourism industry. There is tremendous potential to facilitate/restore traditional and ethical/moral codes, with an elevated sense of consciousness, and to promote the sustainable production and consumption of tourism resources. This call is open to multifaceted and multidisciplinary research perspectives and discourses, and the intent is to feature both case study-specific and theoretical research papers in the context of tourism, that are based on (but not limited to) the following themes:

SDGs and sustainable marketing;

Sufficiency and sustainable wellbeing;

Sustainable consumption and resilience;

Competitive edge of ethical production;

Peak episodes and ethical consumption;

Alternative marketing systems;

Demarketing and wellbeing;

Growth-oriented versus normative scopes of marketing;

Directional marketing paradigms and sustainability;

The role of mindful consumers and downshifters in promoting sustainable consumption;

Transformative behavior and flourishing;

Circular marketing roadmap;

Redefining consumer and enterprise prosperity;

Social marketing and wellbeing;

Pay to use marketing paradigms and sustainability;

Digital nomads and transformative behavior;

Reusable products and the new conscious consumer;

The emerging market of voluntary simplifiers;

Abstracts, which must be submitted by February 21, 2023, should be between 500 and 1,000 words and clearly state the methods and procedures of the research, the expected results, and a list of references. The authors will be given feedback on their abstracts by March 31, 2023. The full paper must be submitted by July 22, 2023. It will then be blind reviewed by at least two reviewers.

The publication of the Special Issue: Spring 2024.

Please email all submissions (in English) to:

Deepak Chhabra, PhD

School of Community Resources and Development

411 North Central Ave., Mail code: 4020

Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA

Tel: 602 496 0550

Fax: 602 496 0953

Email: Deepak.chhabra@asu.edu

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References

Ateljevic, I. (2020). Transforming the (tourism) world for good and (re) generating the potential ‘new normal’. Tourism Geographies, 22(3), 467–475.

Bolton, R. N. (2022). The convergence of sustainability and marketing: Transforming marketing to respond to a new world. Australasian Marketing Journal, 30(2), 107–112.

Chhabra, D. (2021). Transformative perspectives of tourism: dialogical perceptiveness. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 38(8), 759–768.

Chhabra, D. (2022). Transformational model of wellbeing for serious travellers. International Journal of Spa and Wellness, 5(2), 129–146.

Kelleci, A., and Yıldız, O. (2021). A guiding framework for levels of sustainability in marketing. Sustainability, 13(4), 1644.

Laczniak, G., and Shultz, C. (2022). Socially Responsible Marketing (SRM): Broader, Deeper, and Ever Greater. Journal of Macromarketing, 02761467221134685.

Pung, J., and Chiappa, G. (2020). An exploratory and qualitative study on the meaning of transformative tourism and its facilitators and inhibitors. European Journal of Tourism Research, 24, 2404, 1–21.

Reisinger, Y. (2013). Transformational tourism: Tourist perspectives. CABI.

Sheldon, P. J. (2020). Designing tourism experiences for inner transformation. Annals of Tourism Research, 83, 102935.

Sheth, J. N., and Parvatiyar, A. (2021). Sustainable marketing: Market-driving, not market-driven. Journal of macromarketing, 41(1), 150–165.

Sheth, J. N., and Parvatiyar, A. (2022). Socially Responsible Marketing: Toward Aligning Dharma (Duties), Karma (Actions), and Eudaimonia (Wellbeing). Journal of Macromarketing, 02761467221130260.

Teoh, M. W., Wang, Y., and Kwek, A. (2021). Conceptualising co-created transformative tourism experiences: A systematic narrative review. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 47, 176–189.

Dr. Deepak Chhabra
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• sustainable marketing
• wellbeing
• tourism
• transformative behavior