Introduction to the special issue on subsistence marketplaces: From micro-level insights to macro-level impact

As regular readers of the Journal of Macromarketing well know, macromarketing is an academic discipline broadly committed to the study of the interplay of markets, marketing and society (e.g., Hunt 1981). Macromarketing research, therefore, is particularly germane to environments in which people find themselves in subsistence living conditions. Indeed, for decades, macro marketers have studied distressed countries, regions, communities, and systems in which such conditions often are the norm with the intent of understanding them, and more importantly, improving life quality. Subsistence marketplace studies, with a bottom-up orientation,provide unique micro-level insights for macromarketing, sharing the primary concern of developing a sustainable and just marketing system in which prosperity and quality of life are enhanced for all who reside in the marketplace. What follows is an introduction to the articles that comprise this special issue on ‘‘Subsistence Marketplaces.’’