The Integrative Justice Model for Marketing to the Poor: An Extension of S-D Logic to Distributive Justice and Macromarketing

As multinational corporations (MNCs) increasingly turn their attention to the fast growing markets of China, India, Brazil, and other developing areas, the question of fair treatment of consumers and other residents of those areas is more intensively debated than ever before. In essence, issues of distributive justice come to the fore, that is, are the benefits and burdens of rapid economic development being fairly allocated among the parties and stakeholders to the expanded economic transactions? In response to this question, the authors have postulated a detailed normative model for ethically marketing to impoverished consumer segments; they label their model, the Integrative Justice Model (IJM) for impoverished markets. In this article, the authors show how the IJM, an independently derived model of normative marketing, conforms in its key operational elements to the foundational premises (FPs) of the positive S-D logic and extends the S-D logic perspective to societal and ethical concerns. Furthermore, the authors connect the S-D logic philosophy to macromarketing frameworks such as distributive justice, sustainability, and labor.