From Insight to Impact: Rethinking Marketing and Consumer Research for Societal Transformation

Abstract

Marketing scholarship increasingly invokes societal impact as a marker of relevance and legitimacy. Yet despite this rhetorical shift, marketing theory remains marginal in many public, regulatory, and policy debates shaping societal futures. This commentary examines this disconnect by interrogating how impact is conceptualised within marketing scholarship. It argues that impact is often treated as an assumed outcome of studying markets rather than as a contingent, institutionally mediated process. Through a critical examination, the paper introduces impact integrity as a normative and epistemic orientation toward marketing knowledge. Impact integrity foregrounds reflexivity, translation, and accountability, directing attention to how marketing ideas circulate, gain legitimacy, and intersect with structures of governance and power. The paper concludes that without greater theoretical clarity about impact, marketing risks overstating its societal contribution while remaining institutionally peripheral. Reframing impact as something that must be earned offers macromarketing a more credible basis for engaging with societal transformation.