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INTEREST CATEGORY: GLOBAL MARKETING

POSTING TYPE: Revisits

Posted by: Madhu Viswanathan

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Call For Papers

Special Issue of Subsistence Marketplaces – An Interdisciplinary, Inter-sector, International Journal

The first issue of��Subsistence Marketplaces (ISSN –��2765-8058 –��),��a journal affiliated with the entity and stream of work of the same name (), has been published in 2025 (��).

The term “subsistence marketplaces” was deliberately coined to reflect the need to study these marketplaces across resource and literacy barriers in their own right, beyond being new markets for companies (Viswanathan and Rosa, 2007)^[1]. Business and exchange happens in many different ways across the world. The term “marketplaces” denotes this focus and emphasizes the need to understand preexisting marketplaces before designing or presuming solutions.��The��term, “subsistence, emphasizes the qualitative nature of life circumstances wherein the ability to meet basic needs is chronically under threat (Viswanathan and Rosa, 2007)”

Subsistence Marketplaces��is an interdisciplinary, inter-sector, international journal focused on research, education, and practice that takes a bottom-up approach to studying the broad range of low-income consumers, entrepreneurs, communities and marketplaces around the world. The journal is coupled with a knowledge-practice portal that will evolve in parallel (Details below). The journal publishes both refereed and invited papers. There is no monetary charge of any sort at any stage in the process.

We aspire to evolve this forum, starting out with an issue each year. We aim to be listed in journal ranking sites in due course. Academic journal space has become more competitive over time and our vision is to create a niche for papers that combines rigor and relevance in the arena of subsistence marketplaces.

Special Issue – Non-Empirical Papers On Subsistence Marketplaces

Editors

Andrés Barrios, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia

Ronika Chakrabarti, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Samanthika Gallage, Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham, UK

Deadline – January 1 to March 31, 2026

We invite non-empirical papers on any topic within subsistence marketplaces for consideration for publication in the journal, Subsistence Marketplaces. These papers will be in a special section or special issue of the journal to be published in 2026.

Quarter of the way into the 21st century, the need for impactful research, education, and practice for resource-poor individuals, households, and communities around the world cannot be overstated. This special issue is intended to provide a forum for broad thinking and specific directions for research, education and practice, relating topics in the arena of subsistence marketplaces. As such, conceptual richness as well as detailed implications for research, education, and commercial, social, and governmental practice are central. Also welcomed are systematic literature reviews, summaries, curations, relevant contexts and logics. ��Papers need to cover what has come before not only in the immediate literature, but more broadly construed.����Exhaustive reviews are not a requirement unless authors craft a paper with this specific purpose. ��Sample topics are below purely for illustrative purposes.

• Subsistence consumers
• Subsistence entrepreneurs/consumer-merchants
• Subsistence entrepreneurship
• Value chains
• Marketplace literacy
• Micro-level elements of subsistence marketplaces

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• Meso-level theories that emerged from / or can be applied to subsistence marketplaces
• Domains of subsistence such as:

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• Environmental sustainability
• Social sustainability
• Sustainable development
• Ecosystems
• Product development
• Innovation
• Business models
• Social enterprise models
• Public policy

Three important elements of the paper are noteworthy:

1. Review of relevant literature
2. Conceptual lense(s), frameworks
3. Specific implications for research, education, and practice.

Details on��Subsistence Marketplaces, an interdisciplinary, inter-sector journal.

Objectives

1. To provide a forum for research, education, and practice at the intersection of a wide-range of low-income contexts and marketplaces.
2. To highlight work on subsistence marketplaces that is grounded at the micro-level or reflects ground reality and takes a bottom-up orientation.
3. To provide an ecosystem through the entire research and intervention value cycle from formulation to completion and translation to practice.

We emphasize an approach that begins from a bottom-up perspective of the micro-level of marketplaces, consumers and entrepreneurs, rather than the meso or macro levels . Thus, the journal welcomes a broad range of work at different units of analysis from individual to community to organization and society. Unique though will be an emphasis on grounding in the circumstances at different units of analysis. Thus, work may focus on any level of aggregation as long as it draws from grounded reality. In other words, perspectives that remain at a high altitude do not fit the journal whereas those that have connection to reality at the ground level conceptually and/or empirically fit well. We invite authors to write to the editor if there is any doubt as to fit as our goal is to be broad without diluting the unique focus.

Also unique will be an emphasis on practice with feedback on proposed studies/interventions, and a focus on translating findings to practice with specificity (e.g., such as through proposing and/or piloting specific initiatives for practice), rather than through implications that remain at a broad or generic level. Thus, implications of the work for practice will be emphasized heavily. The supporting web portal will provide a bridge between research, education and practice.

^[1]��Viswanathan, Madhubalan, and Jose Rosa, (2007),��“Product and Market Development

for Subsistence Marketplaces: Consumption and Entrepreneurship Beyond Literacy

and Resource Barriers,”��in��Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces:

Consumption and Entrepreneurship Beyond Literacy and Resource Barriers, Editors, Jose

Rosa and Madhu Viswanathan, Advances in International Management Series,

Joseph Cheng and Michael Hitt, Series Editors, 1-17, Elsevier.