KOREASCHOLAR

This paper will discuss the role of humanship in marketing non-profit, for-profit, and public policy. Humanship is defined as leadership in one’s life or self-sponsorship through finding an optimal balance between awareness and action by focusing on one’s internal locus of control. In essence, it reflects the need to bring the ‘human’ back to the center stage as the end and not just the means to service, product, and policy delivery. In addition, strengths perspective is presented as the theoretical foundation of branding of such human strength—highlighting the benefit of tapping into one’s strengths in generating positive program outcomes (non-profit), favorable product image and increased sales (for-profit), and improved policy impact (public policy). The added value of branding humanship has to do with the consumers’ shift in seeking the virtues that define quality of life, happiness, and meaning in life as they relate to services, products, and policies. Since of the inception of the Association for Consumer Research (ACR) with the mission “to improve the quality of life and well-being of consumers,” consumer researchers contributed to Consumer Transformative Research (TCR) movement have investigated various areas of social problems such as poverty (Blocker, Ruth, Sridharan, Beckwith, Ekici, Goudie-Hutton, et al., 2013), health (Criag, Burton, & Netemeyer, 2009; Grier & Kumanyika, 2009; Anderson & Ozanne, 2009), motivation (Burroughs, Chaplin, Pandelaere, Norton, Ordabayeva, Gunz, & Dinauer, 2013) as well as multiple methodological considerations. There is much more to be done in this arena for future TCR research and application of humanship as a new concept to make the human agent the empowered driver of non-profit, for-profit, and public decisions for whom the ultimate benefits will return. The human-centered approach empowers the consumers and will ultimately closes the gap in the principal-agent dilemma—who is the end beneficiary—in the ever more contracted out development of services, products and policies in the context of seller- buyer relationships. This requires transforming the traditional model of focusing on the ‘how’ through transactional relationships—normalized by the ‘give and take’ interactions in market economy—to a new model that values the question of ‘why’ consumers will decide to use the services, products, and policies. Therefore, branding based on humanship becomes a significant strategy in any organizational management. This paper discusses benefits and challenges of branding human strength are discussed in the context of working with low-income consumers through two case studies: Transforming Impossible into Possible (TIP) in Chicago, USA and DAIL Community in South Korea.

• Philip Hong(Loyola University, USA)
• Wansoo Park(University of Windsor, Canada)