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Increasing industrial agriculture and economic crisis has generated creative responses in pursuit of responsible solutions to the human and environmental cost of globalization by applying these models to promote social responsibility, help sustain livelihoods and foster biodiversity. A key issue concerns how responsible and circular businesses might provide appropriate responses to large-scale “wicked” problems. This paper aims to ask what such creativity looks like in the context of a circular economy that attempts to build closed value loops, by examining a case from the organic cotton textile industry: Appachi Eco-Logic.

This study uses an ethnographic extended-case approach to identify two phases of creative growth at Appachi Eco-Logic, examining how closing the value loop and creating circularity involved broadening the circle to include more and more actors.

This study identifies two major challenges to achieving and maintaining full circularity before concluding with a broad provocation for the study of circular economies.

The case offers insight into fundamental features of circularity, regeneration and redistribution, which can be used by managers to build responsible and sustainable closed value loops.

Retail organizations that consider a service ecosystems view of sustainability focused on transformation have the potential to contribute to the wellbeing of individuals, business and society. The purpose of this paper is to explore the transformative nature of sustainable retail fashion organizations and their impact on wellbeing within a sustainable retail service ecosystem.

A qualitative in-depth case study research design was implemented using four sustainable fashion brands. Data were collected from multiple sources including secondary data from company websites and publicly available reports and interviews with founders and/or high-ranking managers within the organization.

Three overarching themes critical to transformation in sustainable retail service ecosystems were identified: (1) embedded core purpose or ethos, (2) relevance of fit and (3) breadth and depth of message. Corresponding wellbeing elements were found within the three themes – community and society wellbeing, environmental wellbeing, business strategy wellbeing, consumer wellbeing, leadership wellbeing, employee wellbeing, stakeholder and value chain wellbeing and brand wellbeing.

Future research offers an important opportunity to further explore the relationships between sustainability, TSR and wellbeing in other service contexts.

The paper contributes to transformative service research literature by conceptualizing a sustainable retail service wellbeing ecosystem framework.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concepts of social enterprise (SE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Both terms are regarded as pivotal but somewhat related when discussed in scholarship. Despite this few attempts have been made to isolate the manner in which they connect.

In this paper the authors attempt to unpack these two terms in order to isolate key areas of overlap in their use and operationalization. In doing so, the authors address the call for work to synthesize the highly fragmented literature.

The paper demonstrates that, while SE and CSR retain a unique place in the business-society landscape, there is indeed an overlap between the two. The generation of value – social, collaborative, or strategic – appears to be a central theme that connects the two concepts.

The authors offer a detailed discussion of how SE and CSR have contributed to scholarship, and demonstrate that the two terms are indeed interrelated on many levels.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many consumers to pause and rethink the impacts of their consumption behavior. The purpose of this paper is to explore changes to consumers’ preferences and shopping behavior in retail using a sustainable consumption lens to understand the long-term effects of the pandemic on retail services.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 participants to gain insights into shopping behaviors and preferences during the pandemic and to investigate changes in attitudes or behaviors toward sustainable consumption as a result of the pandemic. Data analysis involved an iterative inductive process and subsequent thematic analysis.

The results reveal a strong move toward sustainable and conscious consumption with three key changes occurring as a result of the pandemic, including changes in consumers’ ethos, move to purpose-driven shopping and drive to buy local and support national.

This paper reveals insights into consumer shopping behaviors and preferences that can potentially counter the collapse of “normal” marketplace activities in the face of the current global pandemic by providing a framework for how retail services can respond, reimagine and recover to move forward long term.

This study uncovers the importance of services marketing in endorsing and promoting sustainable consumption by shaping subtle shifts in conscious consumption as a way to recover from a global pandemic and move to a “new” service marketplace.

The purpose of this study is to examine well-being messaging on Instagram to understand what constitutes transformative social media advertising with potential to enhance consumer lives and create change at a community and societal level.

A novel-phased approach using transformative advertising research and positive psychology is adopted for an in-depth examination of Lululemon, a well-being brand advocate. The study combines secondary case data, analysis of brand messaging on Instagram, interviews with brand followers, and six months of Instagram posts consumer responses.

Four themes – inspiring personal journeys and potential, encouraging mindfulness and gratitude, supporting connection and community and advancing diversity and equity – are used to develop a typology of well-being advertising message elements on Instagram.

This study contributes to the call for research on transformative advertising by establishing that Instagram is a powerful platform for well-being messages, particularly from brands committed to social issues. Practical implications for brands and avenues for future research are provided.

The world continues to grapple with grand challenges – climate change, pandemic, poverty, social injustice and diminishing resources – requiring mitigation if we are to focus on well-being and move towards a more sustainable future. Cultivating sustainable ecosystems offers a possible solution. The purpose of this paper is to understand how sustainable organizations at the meso level can nurture sustainable service ecosystems that provide the potential for greater well-being outcomes for individuals, business, society and the planet.

Case study data is gathered from 11 sustainable fashion organizations operating at the meso level within a complex ecosystem. The analysis includes interviews with founders and/or key managers and secondary information from company websites and publicly available reports.

The findings identify key value co-creation sustainable practices at the meso level that facilitate the function of the service ecosystem to create well-being outcomes. Value co-creation practices include – embedding a sustainable ethos; implementing sustainable strategies that embrace innovation, transparency and stakeholder collaboration; and incorporating sustainable communication practices that engage.

Encapsulating sustainability within macromarketing and service ecosystems enables the development of a sustainable service ecosystems framework that has the potential to offer enhanced well-being. Implications for marketing practice in terms of important factors that facilitate service-sustainable ecosystems to enhance well-being are considered.

The purpose of this research is to explore the role of identity for consumers with disabilities in a retail context. Understanding disability identity is critical to ensuring inclusion in service environments. Despite the growing call to understand the role of identity in consumer services, research on disability identity and the impacts of identity on service inclusion remains minimal.

A qualitative methodology generated data through personal narratives from people with disabilities revealing deep insights into the complexity of identity in a fashion retail context.

Emergent themes detail five consumer disability identities – authentic unique self, integrated self, community self, expressive self and practical self – seen when viewing service experiences from the perspective of people with lived experience of disability. Individual and collective agency also emerged as key themes that enable people with disabilities to feel a sense of inclusion.

This research explores the service experiences of people with disabilities in a retail context through a disability identity lens. The authors contribute to service literature by identifying five consumer disability identities that people with a disability adopt through their service experience and present a typology that demonstrates how each identity impacts on agency, with implications for service inclusion.

This research extends understanding of the role brand co-creation plays in encouraging ethical consumption. The paper addresses sustainable development goal 12 (SDG 12): ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns, exploring how brand co-creation can be employed to advance this development goal.

The Customer Brand Co-creation Model is used within an embedded case design to understand the role of the brand and the consumer in promoting sustainable consumption within the fashion industry.

Initial insights suggest marketing has much to offer sustainability through the use of the brand. An extended brand co-creation framework highlights the importance of embedding sustainability and viewing the consumer as central to mobilising SDG12.

An important concern is to ensure sustainability is embedded within the activities and strategy of the organisation and viewed as integral rather than peripheral.

The paper examines aspects crucial to co-creation of “sustainability” through a focus on both the consumer and the brand. Case narratives provide a strong foundation to consider the Customer Brand Co-creation Model and implications of this framework for managerial practice. This study extends the model to encompass the umbrella of “sustainability” and the firm's perspective.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to explore how working remotely might impact the superior–subordinate relationship. Specifically, this study examines how immediacy explains articulated dissent, considers how an individual’s attitudes toward online communication predicts immediacy and articulated dissent and compares these relationships in England, Australia and the USA.

Three nations were examined: Australia, England and the USA (n = 1,776). Surveys included demographic questions and the following measures: organizational dissent scale, perceived immediacy measure, computer-mediated immediate behaviors measure and measure of online communication attitude.

The results reveal supervisors’ computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy both positively predict dissent. Some aspects of online communication attitudes positively predict computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy. In addition, attitudes toward online communication positively predict dissent. National culture influences some of these relationships; in each case the effects were substantively larger for the USA when compared to the other nations.

This study is the first to cross-culturally analyze dissent and immediacy. In addition, this study considers the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic influences the superior–subordinate relationship.