Guest editorial: Impact through transformative consumer research
这篇客座编辑文章介绍了变革性消费者研究（TCR）特刊，聚焦于通过学者与利益相关者合作解决社会问题，展示如何通过协作实现社会影响，适合关注市场营销与社会影响的学者。
Transformative consumer research (TCR) is the pre-eminent sub-field in Marketing addressing the key intersections between consumer theory, marketing practice and policy to explicitly promote solutions for improving societal well-being (Mick, 2008; Scott and Mende, 2022). Since its inception almost 20 years ago TCR has contributed seminal conceptual and empirical scholarship on some of the most pressing societal challenges (Anderson et al., 2013; Bahl et al., 2016; Block et al., 2011; Kipnis et al., 2021; Ozanne et al., 2017). Recent recommendations from the TCR Impact Task Force have highlighted the urgent and critical need to prioritise and reorient research goals around societal impact, to develop robust strategies for stakeholder engagement and to grow and foster a culture of collaboration and community-centric research (Ozanne et al., 2024). As impact-focused work grows in prominence across a range of business and management disciplines, we are also witnessing an escalating number of scholars around the globe undertaking TCR scholarship. To recognise and highlight their contributions, our vision for this special issue was to cultivate a space for scholars to share the nature of their diverse impact journeys and outcomes, as publishing avenues for such insights remain nascent in scope and number (Ozanne et al., 2024).Adopting the innovative format of an EJM impact article, this special issue focuses on TCR’s strength in developing rigorous scientific findings in collaboration with stakeholder organisations and groups to alleviate social problems. Representing a first-time collaboration between the European Journal of Marketing and the bi-annual Transformative Consumer Research Conference, all papers contained in this issue have emanated from the 2023 TCR Conference, held at Royal Holloway University of London. As change can be achieved only if, and to the extent to which, researchers mobilise all the relevant actors involved in the goals at stake (Fiandrino et al., 2022), the dialogical conference model of TCR is uniquely positioned to strive towards impact development. Comprised of groups of researchers and non-academic stakeholders who share common commitments to addressing social problems, attendees convened for an extended period during the conference to pursue solutions for enhancing marketplace well-being for consumers and communities. By focusing on positive individual and collective change, this exclusively impact article populated special issue showcases the breadth and depth of outcomes that TCR uniquely delivers in terms of partnership, community-building and empowerment-focused collaborations to achieve greater societal impact on wide-ranging issues such as, social media mindfulness, misinformation interventions, gender equity in advertising, social impact measurement for nonprofits and children’s digital well-being.Often the relationship between research and societal impact is more indirect, non-linear and complex than many evaluation frameworks allow (Bornmann, 2012). Consequently, social impact measurement approaches remain notoriously difficult to implement, yet are fundamental to the successful operation and continued survival of nonprofit organisations delivering societal change. Harnessing their extensive expertise in transformative services collaborations, Alkire et al. (this issue) outline the journey involved in co-developing a practical toolkit designed to identify and report social impacts for a UK-based nonprofit supporting refugee communities. The co-created toolkit enables a more holistic self-assessment, directly impacting nonprofits’ organisational resilience.Embracing the move towards directional thinking for impact across a breadth of market actors, the impact papers by Schneider et al. (this issue) and Zayer, Guerrier and Coleman (this issue) demonstrate how delivering impact through an intentional decision to link research to change can result in multi-level generative outcomes. Collaborating with thought leaders from social media, advertising, artificial intelligence and advocacy groups, Schneider et al. provide an important and timely contribution to combat misinformation through the co-design, dissemination and implementation of their anti-misinformation WISER framework. By developing a framework with demonstrable impact, authors provide a roadmap for further collaborative action to counter misinformation for TCR scholarship and beyond.Zayer, Gurrier and Coleman, illuminate how their transformative advertising framework and associated education curriculum have been applied to the SeeHer initiative from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the nonprofit, ANAEducational Foundation (USA); and by an action coalition, shEqual (Australia), led by a women’s health organisation in alliance with industry, government, academia and the gender equity and violence prevention sectors.Recognising that impact collaborations are not without their challenges, two impact papers surface the emotional dimensions of relational engagement and solution co-creation. Elf et al. (this issue) and Preece et al. (this issue) reinforce how overlooked effects are not consequences of research impact efforts but are essential for impact to occur from the outset. Explicating the role of resonant-seeking approaches in developing and evidencing impact with arts-based collaborations working on inclusion, Elf et al. provide detailed insights on the application of the emancipatory praxis methodological approach (Hutton and Heath, 2020) in generating impact outcomes for collaborators and researchers alike. Preece et al. sensitively highlight the hitherto absent role of navigating power imbalances in relational engagement within the cultural sector. They present a dynamic experience-based roadmap for relational engagement in action [ROC: Resourcefulness Obliquity Caring], to help scholars navigate the possible obstacles which may arise when collaborating with stakeholders.The contributions of Chan et al. (this issue) and Cook (this issue) underscore the strength of TCR paradigm in scholar-stakeholder alliances for co-problematising, co-designing and co-producing societal impact as well as unpacking the constitutive practices, outcomes and insights from co-creation. Stemming from an enduring scholarly and nonprofit collaboration, Chan et al. showcase how aligning the motivations of non-academic and scholar collaborators enhances the process of co-development and implementation of key resources designed around a Social Media Mindfulness Practice to foster intentional social media use. Similarly, Cook’s impact paper (this issue) emphasises how working interactively across community members of concern aids in the development of solutions to enhance children’s digital well-being. Both papers address limited understandings of how collaborations with market stakeholders can inform responsible innovations (Voegtlin et al., 2022).Finally, longer-term programmatic collaborations for impact between scholars and organisations are an emerging phenomenon in our field. Capturing porous forms of impact which occur during these impact journeys are disregarded both in scholarly debates and as meaningful routes to impact realisation in practice (Pain et al., 2015). In their impact article, Cross et al. (this issue), provide a unique insight into their impact journey as a leading network within TCR; the Diversity and Inclusion Engaged Marketing initiative. Outlining their co-creation efforts to sustain and grow their work for the long-term they discuss key outcomes achieved with two notable partners; Women in Marketing (WiM), a UK-based social enterprise aiming to empower women in the marketing profession; the National Diversity Council (NDC), a former US-based nonprofit organisation.As impact articles aim to celebrate and make explicit the impact of research, as well as the challenge of designing, developing, tracking and demonstrating those outcomes (Keeling and Marshall, 2022), we are delighted to be considered alongside some of the first ever EJM impact special issues (Mitchell et al., 2024; Keeling and Marshall, 2022). We express our deepest appreciation to Debbie Keeling, Richard Whitfield, Greg Marshall and the EJM Editorial team for their commitment to and support of this special issue. We also wish to express our sincere thanks to the excellent reviewers for their constructive support of author teams during the process. Finally, we wish to congratulate the authors featured in this special issue for their sustained commitment to addressing societal concerns and we hope this work will encourage others in our scholarly community to pursue impact through Transformative Consumer Research.