The role of war-related marketing activism actions in community resilience: from the ground in Ukraine

Extant literature considers marketing activities as instrumental for postwar recovery and peace-building. However, war is an ongoing lived experience for numerous societies across the world. Focusing on the role of marketing during war, this article presents a study examining how and why people living in war adversity deploy, perceive, and respond to war-related marketing activism actions (MAA). War-related MAA are acts through which brands/organizations and consumers create or draw on marketing meanings to convey and to enact stances and experiences related to war. This study adopts a multimodal qualitative methodology integrating photo elicitation and in-depth interviews with consumers and with marketing and management professionals in Ukraine, the country enduring invasion and war by Russia at the time of this article’s publication. Analyses through a community resilience theoretical lens generate a conceptualization that demonstrates how war-related MAA are harnessed and serve as a medium in community dialogues concerning envisaged resilience trajectories (survival, creativity and growth, and recovery). The article advances understanding of marketing activism during war by illuminating its potential and boundary conditions for serving as a community resilience resource. It also offers public policy development directions for marketing practice, organizations, and governments.