This special issue focuses on the relationship between well-being and marketing. While marketing is often assumed to play a constructive role in enhancing human well-being, how marketing activities actually affect well-being is far from evident. Depending on how marketing is designed and enacted, it may contribute to the improvement of well-being, but may also undermine it. This inherent ambivalence has generated growing theoretical and empirical interest in the relationship between well-being and marketing. In marketing research, well-being has been conceptualized as a broader construct encompassing life satisfaction, subjective happiness, and social welfare. Recent studies have increasingly attempted to integrate consumption-related well-being with general well-being, thereby extending the scope of marketing inquiry beyond narrow performance outcomes. Importantly, this research stream does more than extend the application domain of existing marketing theories. By incorporating well-being as a central concern, it invites not only further theoretical refinement in relation to well-being, but also re-examination of the implicit values and evaluative frameworks that have long underpinned marketing theory. The aim of this special issue is to stimulate such theoretical reflection and to advance scholarship that more carefully addresses the role of marketing in shaping human well-being.
Yuichiro Hidaka (Mon,) studied this question.