The FIAS Framework: a practice ecosystems, macro-social marketing approach addressing gender inequality in action sport

Purpose
The authors take a macro-social marketing approach to understanding and addressing gender inequality in mountain biking. The authors advance macro-social marketing research by illustrating how a practice ecosystems perspective can help understand entrenched gender inequality in a range of interrelated practices and support a collaborative, long-term, sociocultural approach to social impact.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors explore the research, development and implementation of the Fostering Inclusive Action Sports (FIAS) framework. The authors set out the underpinning research methodology (stage 1); summarised research findings (stage 2); how the authors worked with policy and community stakeholders to translate the original research into the FIAS framework (stage 3); and a brief overview of some of the ways the FIAS framework has been implemented and is fostering social impact across multiple practices in the ecosystem (stage 4).

Findings
Through the case study the authors illuminate how a practice ecosystems perspective provides a transformational resource for macro-social marketing; for understanding and mapping the multiple intersecting sociocultural practices that co-evolve to reinforce and shape gender-exclusive consumption context. It helps inform assumptions about the mechanisms for social change, particularly by focusing on how inequalities are ingrained in the organisation of multiple practices, across a range of sites, that are interconnected and scaffold the everyday lived experiences of marginalised consumers.

Originality/value
Practice ecosystems thinking complements and advances macro-social marketing by focusing research and impact on the habituated cultures of exclusion that can be locked into everyday practices across the nexus, including practices that are at significant distance from the consumption site in question.