Abstracts from the 2013 Macromarketing Conference Abstracts from the 2013 Macromarketing Conference Detlev Zwick 1 The 38 th annual meeting of the Macromarketing Society was held June 4-7, 2013 in Toronto, Canada. Detlev Zwick and Sammy Bonsu served as co-chairs of the conference. The meet- ing featured 83 papers or panel presentations, and drew 102 scholars from around the globe. Published without copyright as Macromarketing in the Age of Neoliberalism and edited by Detlev Zwick, the proceedings are available at http://macro marketing.org. Where available, the abstracts for presentations are listed below. Growing the ‘‘Certified’’ Food Market: An Analysis of How Information Flows Influence Consumer Understanding of Ethical Food Choices Julie V. Stanton, The Pennsylvania State University, Media, USA Laurel A. Cook, The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA In this study, we examine how consumers react to information about food choices, with special focus on the amount of informa- tion they receive and how they cope with it. Understanding whether they feel overwhelmed and/or how individuals cope with information is then linked to their perceptions of organic and GMO-free labels on food choices. Withdrawal from infor- mation processing can inhibit (accurate) understanding of food options and thus result in inferior personal choices. Our hypoth- eses are tested against survey data of American consumers. Are Diamonds Forever? Exploring the Creation and Maintenance of a Market for Ethical Diamond Engagement Rings Hana Sethi, Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada Sarah Glozer, Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham, UK Scholars have recently noted that, ‘‘the process of market evo- lution is central to marketing, and yet it is surprising to find such a paucity of empirical research addressing it,’’ (Giesler 2008, p. 739). Previous literature on market creation, and evolution houses only a handful of studies (Giesler 2008; Humphreys 2010a, 2010b; Karababa and Ger 2011). Our goal is to understand how an ethical market is created, and the challenges and strate- gies used to sustain it. The characteristics which define the ‘mar- ket for virtue’ (Vogel 2005) have remained obtuse and the notion of an ‘‘ethical market’’ is still a nebulous one (Crane 2005). In this study, we thus analyze the complex, global diamond engage- ment ring industry. The goals of this article are to analyze (1) the drivers of the creation of an ethical market, (2) the challenges of gaining legitimacy as an ethical market, and (3) the strategies sta- keholders use to gain legitimacy as an ethical market. Consumption Behavior as Energy Consumption: A Marketing Systems Perspective John D. Mittelstaedt, University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA Robert A. Mittelstaedt, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA The purpose of this paper is to offer the perspective that we consume neither goods nor services, but instead bundles of accumulated energy needed to harvest, process, transport, store, and exchange the goods and services that serve as solu- tions to the problems of the human condition. Rather than focusing on how we reduce consumption of goods or services, we should focus on how we reduce the energy necessary to pro- duce end-user solutions, through the marketing system. This paper offers a theoretical context for such an argument. Marketing Systems and Market Failure: A Consideration of Side Effects William Redmond, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, USA If the systems approach is increasingly displacing the transac- tional approach to marketing, what are macro-level effects of this shift? This area has been the subject of broad-scale assess- ments (Layton and Grossbart 2006; Layton 2007). In contrast the 1 Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada Journal of Macromarketing 33(4) 395-409 ª The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0276146713500051 jmk.sagepub.com