A Call for Research at the Public Policy–Marketing Strategy Interface

Abstract

Public policy touches every aspect of a firm’s marketing practices; accordingly, research at the intersection of marketing strategy and public policy is critical. These two research domains have flourished over the past decades, and important theories and empirical findings have been developed. Yet, the two domains have largely advanced independently of one another, and with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Seiders, Flynn, and Nenkov 2022), the research at the interface between the two is limited. Public policy can be broadly defined as a “set of interrelated decisions taken by a political actor or group of actors concerning the selection of goals and the means of achieving them” (Jenkins 1978, p. 15). In turn, marketing strategy is an organization’s decisions “concerning products, markets, marketing activities and marketing resources in the creation, communication and/or delivery of products that offer value to customers” and thus enables the organization to achieve objectives (Varadarajan 2010). Marketing strategy research, we contend, would greatly benefit from studying how decisions taken by a political actor or group of actors, including laws, regulatory measures, and other policies, impact and shape firms’marketing strategies. In particular, we believe that the areas of data privacy, health, corporate activism, and sustainability are ripe for research at that interface. In what follows, we briefly introduce these four areas and offer suggestions for future research.