Marketplace Dignity: Transforming How We Engage with Customers Across Their Journey

Everywhere we turn, brands and organizations are under fire for failing to treat their customers with respect and dignity. And increasingly, consumers want firms to take a lead in helping to shape a better society. Yet, most don’t know where to start or have struggled to get things right.

In Marketplace Dignity, Cait Lamberton, Neela A. Saldanha, and Tom Wein introduce a tangible, practical way to take a stand on the fundamental value of humans, and in so doing, be a force for good in a society that increasingly demands that they do so. Marketplace dignity is the idea that customers seek respect and recognition from the firms they interact with, not just rational or emotional benefits. Marketplace dignity appeals to humans’ sense of justice and goes to the essence of what makes customers human. It is also a powerful driver of their engagement, loyalty, and satisfaction.

In this book, you will discover how to:
+ Apply the principles of marketplace dignity to the whole of the customer journey, from the pre-consumption phase to the post-consumption phase;
+ Design and deliver products, services, and experiences that respect your customers’ dignity and value as human beings;
+ Improve your performance using the Marketplace Dignity Framework, which is underpinned by representation, agency, and equality; and
+ Create a competitive edge and a positive social impact with marketplace dignity.

Drawing on the authors’ rigorous research, as well as the successes and failures of companies around the world, from Fortune 100 companies to nonprofits to independent organizations, Marketplace Dignity will empower you to diagnose, understand, and enhance the way that you engage with your customer base across the entirety of their journey with your organization.

Cait Lamberton is the Alberto I. Duran Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where she has taught at the undergraduate, MBA doctoral and executive levels. Her research focuses on consumer behavior considered both at individual and socially-embedded perspectives. In addition to being named a Wharton and Penn Fellow, Cait has been designated a Marketing Science Institute Scholar, received the Erin Anderson Award for the field’s top female researcher and mentor, the Lazaridis Prize for research related to technology, and the Hunt/Maynard Award for conceptual contributions to the field of Marketing. Outside academia, Cait has been retained as a consultant by the US Departments of Labor and Education as well as pharmaceutical and financial services firms. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from Wheaton College (IL), an MBA, and PhD from the University of South Carolina, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Lucerne, Switzerland.

Neela A. Saldanha is the Executive Director at the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE) and a behavioral scientist. Previously she was the Founding Director for the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change, Ashoka University India, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to her career in development, Neela spent 15+ years in the private sector leading teams in brands, sales, consumer insights, and strategy at Nestle, Unilever, PepsiCo, and Accenture. Neela has been mentioned in Forbes magazines as “Ten Behavioral Scientists You Should Know.” Her writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Nature Human Behavior, and Behavioral Scientist, among others. She is a Board Member of The Life You Can Save, founded by leading philosopher Peter Singer, and Grameen Foundation USA. She has a PhD in Marketing from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from IIM Calcutta, India. Neela lives in New York City with her husband Tanuj, daughter Aliya, and gently stubborn cat Ginger.

Tom Wein is a Director at IDinsight. He leads the Dignity Initiative there, building on research he has been doing since 2017. Tom has spent the past 13 years leading research in the Global South. He has given evidence to the UK Parliament, and written several academic papers. He previously led Raising Voices’ work to prevent violence against children in schools in Uganda. Before that, he worked with the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics, where he built the CREME research agenda on culture, research ethics and methods, and led work on activism, civil society and edutainment. Tom holds a Master’s degree in Communication for Development from Malmö University in Sweden, and an undergraduate degree in War Studies from King’s College, London. He works to advance justice and create better governance through useful research, and believes research is most useful when it grapples with questions of power. He lives in Nairobi, Kenya, with his wife Rachel, son Oliver, and dog Bailey.