Creating Value for Customers,Clients, Partners and Society: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Food Waste

ABSTRACT

Roughly one-third of edible food produced in the world is wasted, that is, it is never consumed by humans, despite the persistent demands for nutrition throughout the world. The American Marketing Association defines marketing as “…the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” When it comes to food, an increasing number of these key stakeholders question how a global marketing system that routinely wastes a startling fraction of its product comports with “…value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large,” and whether the food marketing system can do more to sustainably convert scarce planetary resources into global nutrition. We introduce the articles in this special issue, which provide an intellectual and empirical basis for exploring how the global marketing system generates a substantial amount of food waste and how the food marketing system can do more to reduce the amount of wasted food.