Hilary Downey

Beyond Poverty: Social Justice in a Global Marketplace

The social justice paradigm, developed in philosophy by John Rawls and others, reaches limits when confronted with diverse populations, unsound governments, and global markets. Its parameters are further limited by a traditional utilitarian approach to both industrial actors and consumer behaviors. Finally, by focusing too exclusively on poverty, as manifested in insufficient incomes or resources, the paradigm overlooks the oppressive role that gender, race, and religious prejudice play in keeping the poor subordinated. The authors suggest three ways in which marketing researchers could bring their unique expertise to the question of social justice in a global economy: by (1) reinventing the theoretical foundation laid down by thinkers such as Rawls, (2) documenting and evaluating emergent “feasible fixes” to achieve justice (e.g., the global resource dividend, cause-related marketing, Fair Trade, philanthrocapitalism), and (3) exploring the parameters of the consumption basket that would be minimally required to achieve human capabilities.

Researching vulnerability: what about the researcher?

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to explore researcher vulnerability and identify the ways in which research with vulnerable consumers can impact on consumer researchers.Design/methodology/approach – Provides a review of research literature aiming to raise awareness of researcher vulnerability.Findings – Researchers working in the domain of vulnerable consumers need to be aware that feelings of vulnerability may be reflected back to the researcher.Originality/value – Methodological concerns surrounding the research of vulnerable consumers tend to focus on the welfare of respondents; researcher vulnerability has been largely neglected within the consumer research literature. Historically, problems arising in the research process have tended to be disguised so as not to elicit negative feedback. This paper creates an awareness of such aspects of unthought‐of ethical and methodological problems.

Assessing the Societal Impact of Research: The Relational Engagement Approach

Marketing and policy researchers aiming to increase the societal impact of their scholarship should engage directly with relevant stakeholders. For maximum societal effect, this engagement needs to occur both within the research process and throughout the complex process of knowledge transfer. The authors propose that a relational engagement approach to research impact complements and builds on traditional approaches. Traditional approaches to impact employ bibliometric measures and focus on the creation and use of journal articles by scholarly audiences, an important but incomplete part of the academic process. The authors recommend expanding the strategies and measures of impact to include process assessments for specific stakeholders across the entire course of impact, from the creation, awareness, and use of knowledge to societal impact. This relational engagement approach involves the cocreation of research with audiences beyond academia. The authors hope to begin a dialogue on the strategies researchers can use to increase the potential societal benefits of their research.

Exploring Researcher Vulnerability: Contexts, complications and conceptualisation

Abstract Research involving vulnerable consumer populations is on the increase, and understanding the social consequences of consumption within different marketing contexts has become a common theme across Consumer Culture Theory, transformative consumer research, and critical marketing. Yet the diverse difficulties faced by researchers who investigate consumer vulnerability have not been sufficiently addressed. In line with the need for greater reflexivity in research, this paper reflects on our own research experiences, and highlights the complexities associated with conducting research on sensitive topics in challenging contexts. With reference to such experiences, we illustrate the phenomenon of researcher vulnerability and discuss its implications for knowledge generation within the marketing domain.

Autopoiesis and the home‐confined consumer: The role of personal communities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the consumption of a personal community and its role in the everyday life of the home‐confined consumer.Design/methodology/approach – Using a Radical Constructivist approach, three cases of home confinement were explored in depth over a period of two years. Ongoing “conversations” captured the consumption experiences with personal communities.Findings – In relation to the home‐confined context, the ability to attain individuality, empowerment and creativity are all heightened as a result of personal community construction. An underlying concern for home‐confined consumers is their removal from independent living to institutionalized living, and, as a result the need to construct, manage and maintain a personal community is of major concern.Research limitations/implications – Although the study addresses a home‐confined context, it is nevertheless reflective of concerns that are significant to all consumers, namely the attainment of individuality and indepe...

Poetic Inquiry, Consumer Vulnerability: Realities of Quadriplegia

ABSTRACT Alternative forms of research interpretation have been utilised within the social sciences. Poetic inquiry, an area of growing interest influences readership affectively as well as intelligently. Incorporating interview data as a poetic submission, this article intends to reflexively capture emotional intensity, hopelessness, liminality, voicelessness and self-transformative realities attendant to those experiencing vulnerability. The unintelligible language that can appropriate the poetic form, supports the elucidation of hidden narratives of more vulnerable inscapes. Consumer vulnerability lends itself to the power of poetry for legitimacy of the moment, where sensory imagery and nonce words attend hiatuses common in scientific discourse. The poetic inquiry, Vulnerability in Parts, is elicited from wider research with homebound consumers conducted over a two-year period, which draws on one homebound consumer’s experience of quadriplegia.

Responsibility and Well-Being: Resource Integration Under Responsibilization in Expert Services

Responsibilization, or the shift of functions and risks from providers and producers to consumers, has become an increasingly common policy in service systems and marketplaces (e.g., financial, health, governmental). Because responsibilization is often considered synonymous with consumer agency and well-being, the authors take a transformative service research perspective and draw on resource integration literature to investigate whether responsibilization is truly associated with well-being. The authors focus on expert services, for which responsibilization concerns are particularly salient, and question whether this expanding policy is in the public interest. In the process, they develop a conceptualization of resource integration under responsibilization that includes three levels of actors (consumer, provider, and service system), the identification of structural tensions surrounding resource integration, and three categories of resource-integration practices (access, appropriation, and management) necessary to negotiate responsibilization. The findings have important implications for providers, public and institutional policy makers, and service systems, all of which must pay more active attention to the challenges consumers face in negotiating responsibilization and the resulting well-being outcomes.