Building positive resilience through vulnerability analysis
ISSN: 2042-6763
Article publication date: 6 July 2020
Issue publication date: 7 December 2020
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrative framework for vulnerability analysis in social marketing systems by identifying, investigating and problematising the relationships among several interrelated concepts, including power, power asymmetry, vulnerability and resilience, in the context of social marketing systems.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper synthesising literature from social marketing, sociology and marketing management.
Findings
The main outcome of the discussion is a proposed integrative framework for vulnerability analysis. The framework identifies the main groups of stakeholders within a social marketing system and the bases for their power and consequential power asymmetries. It focusses on the types and states of vulnerability to identify the distinct characteristics of the social conditions of vulnerability for micro-level system actors. It leads to building positive resilience through efforts aiming to change the power asymmetries at the downstream, midstream and upstream levels.
Originality/value
The integrative framework for vulnerability analysis answers the call from Wood (2019) for the development of practical approaches to better understand resilience-building approaches in social marketing programmes. The framework provides reconciliation for diverse dimensions of vulnerability as a natural characteristic of all social marketing systems and as a universal, constant and inherent social condition.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper forms part of a special section “Social transformation and vulnerable populations”, guest edited by Lukas Parker, Krzysztof Kubacki, Linda Brennan, Mike Reid and Natalia Szablewska.
Citation
Kubacki, K., Siemieniako, D. and Brennan, L. (2020), "Building positive resilience through vulnerability analysis", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 471-488. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-09-2019-0142
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited