This paper explores how haunting operates across three interlinked dimensions—material, social, and discursive—to reveal systemic exclusions within marketing and consumer culture. Haunting is not a metaphor but a method of attending to occluded labours, erased identities, and silenced knowledges. Materially, the market is haunted by a mismatch between commodity fetishism and reification, where the conditions of labour are masked, giving rise to spectres of estranged workers and forgotten social relations. Socially, haunting emerges through exclusion—structural conditions that deny vast populations their place as market subjects or participants, erasing communities and histories. Discursively, spectres arise from absences created through power-laden knowledge production, where dominant ideologies manage discourse to suppress dissent and innovation. The archive, shaped by institutional bias, excludes alternative knowledges and the very marketers whose practices disrupt orthodoxy. Marketers thus act as both architects of market worlds and figures subject to disappearance. Attending to these hauntings demands ethical engagement and reflexivity, challenging researchers to confront what has been structurally erased and to imagine more inclusive market futures. Markets, as designed spaces, must be reimagined as sites of justice, not just exchange.

This paper conceptualizes crises not as external disruptions but as actor-oriented events that reframe societal and market structures. Crises highlight the vulnerabilities within systems and present opportunities for reconfiguring future trajectories. Central to this reorganization is the notion of value, which is viewed as relational and interactional, shaped through the practices, communications, and exchanges between market actors. These exchanges are not homogenous; they involve diverse actors and vary in relational depth, thereby generating different forms and legacies of value. During crises, businesses and governments play pivotal roles in shaping new practices and institutional responses. The process of rebuilding involves restoring ontological security—actors’ sense of continuity—through familiar routines, communicative acts, and enduring exchange structures. Of these, exchanges leave the most lasting impact by reconfiguring social and economic norms. Crisis-induced practices, such as resource sharing and cooperative ventures, often crystallize into institutional memory. Moreover, crises foreground the emergence of collective identities and novel solidarities, challenging firms to act not just as economic agents but as civic participants. By examining the dynamics of value, exchange, and actor agency, this study offers a framework for understanding how crises catalyze alternative futures and forge the moral and structural contours of post-crisis markets.

This research investigates the paradox within market-oriented organizations, where marketers, despite a strong aversion to management fashion, adopt consultative selling practices to disseminate market knowledge. Specifically, the study explores how individuals transitioning between marketing and consulting roles navigate these cultural shifts, and how marketers evolve into "cultural hybrids". The research addresses the crisis of identity within marketing and the increasing marginalization of marketing departments within organizations. By applying a social constructionist lens, this study contributes to understanding the intersection of marketing and consulting identities, and the role of marketing in fostering innovation and boundary-spanning practices. Empirically, the research uses phenomenological interviews to capture the narratives of individuals transitioning between marketing and consulting, offering insights into the dynamics of organizational knowledge and legitimacy within evolving market contexts.