Food Marketing SIG
Food Marketing SIG
SIG Co-Chair
Dr Andrea Tonner,
University of Strathclyde
SIG Co-Chair
Professor Benedetta Cappellini,
Durham University
SIG Co-Chair
Professor Juliette Wilson,
University of Strathclyde
Food Marketing SIG Two Day Research Forum
Reframing Food Marketing for Contemporary Market Pressures: Value, Health, Trust and Social Responsibility
25th June 2026 2pm-4pm – Online via Microsoft Teams
16th July 2026 2pm-4pm – Online via Microsoft Teams
Deadline for 500 word abstracts – 12th June 2026
Food marketing is operating in one of the most demanding environments in recent history. Cost-of-living pressures are reshaping purchasing behaviour and brand loyalty. Public health scrutiny of ultra-processed foods, sugar, and advertising to children continues to intensify. Sustainability claims are increasingly contested. Retailer power remains concentrated, while supply chains are fragile. Trust in institutions, corporations and media is uneven. What role does marketing play in navigating these pressures?
This research forum invites scholars to come together to interrogate the contemporary pressures shaping food marketing practice.
We welcome conceptual and empirical submissions addressing, for example:
- Marketing strategy under cost-of-living constraints
- Pricing, promotions and inequality
- Health reformulation and regulatory response
- Trust erosion and legitimacy repair in food brands
- Sustainability claims and greenwashing debates
- Retailer–supplier tensions in value distribution
- The political economy of food marketing
- Consumer trade-offs between price, health and ethics
- Institutional and systems perspectives on contemporary food markets
Please submit an abstract (up to 500 words) including:
- Research question or conceptual focus
- Theoretical framing
- Empirical context (if relevant)
- Contribution to understanding contemporary pressures in food marketing
- Indication of fit with the forum theme
Submissions by email to a.tonner@strath.ac.uk – deadline for submissions 12th June
Objectives
The Food Marketing Special Interest Group is committed to expanding the scope of scholarship across the breadth and range of issues currently being explored within Food Marketing. In recent years have witnessed the emergence of many new food movements, subcultures and communities that have impact on the ways people think about food, health and wellbeing.
These are accompanied by new and underexplored food practices (e.g. Barnes, 2022) that sit alongside new markets, organizational forms and food challenges that combine to have an underexplored impact on the ways we understand food. Some examples include: issues of climate change, global population growth, food waste, food shortage, soaring costs of living, new food cultures and uncertain geo-politics. These many challenges that threaten our current food realities are relevant to food marketing scholars.
Our food futures require new approaches from individuals, communities, organisations and our own academic community to better understand how we could improve our food landscape(s). The purpose of this group is to engage with these transformational questions and increase Marketing’s visibility in key debates.