Countermarketing in the Courts: The Case of Marketing Channels and Firearms Diversion

Rarely has the field of marketing thought been closely associated with the topic of citizens' use of firearms in the United States, but it is now at the center of interest in this controversial and multifaceted area. Public policy has not yet resolved the challenges from conflicts among personal freedoms, fundamental rights, deaths, pain, and huge dollar expenditures to address the problems from guns used in crimes; it is still evolving in this area. A more recent addition to the public policy debate is a set of major judicial cases that raise issues about the U.S. distribution system for firearms, how it is designed and operated, and what role it should play with respect to contributing to the control of firearms diversion. In response, marketing academics have begun to conduct channels-of-distribution analyses to inform these judicial deliberations. This article presents the framework of one such analysis and reveals the considerable insights that marketing theory and concepts, especially countermarketing, demarketing, and channels-of-distribution theory, can bring to public policy makers' understanding of these issues. In addition, assessment of this framework should assist marketing scholars in explicating key topics for future attention in the realm of the marketing of other potentially harmful or dangerous products and services.