The world has not seen a global crisis like this in more than 100 years. It is a crisis of depression-era magnitude with incalculable political, economic and social impacts. It is a climate change crisis driven by extreme weather events that are increasingly deadly and frequent. It is an energy crisis, a global oil shock with impacts beyond the traditional limits of fossil fuels and more than the 1970s oil price shocks. It is a geopolitical crisis that reflects and accelerates epochal shifts in the global order and is amplified by the interconnectedness of the global economy and the human species.
When crises occur within strict national borders, people generally perceive domestic institutions as both responsible (in terms of moral legitimacy) and able to manage them. But when a crisis occurs beyond national borders, individuals perceive international institutions as agents with both the responsibility and the capacity to address it. They are often willing to collaborate with international institutions even if they do not agree on how to resolve the crisis’ local symptoms.
In addition to affecting consumption patterns and organizational relationships, global crises have implications for consumers’ dispositions toward globalization (e.g., global/local identities, consumer ethnocentrism, cosmopolitanism). The research opportunities are immense to better understand how consumers respond to and are influenced by global crises and their impacts on well-being. This is a particularly important area for international marketing scholarship given the growing importance of global and regional markets and the need to understand differences in consumers’ responses to products, services, brands, and organizations across the globe.