Kathy Hamilton

Low-income Families and Coping through Brands: Inclusion or Stigma?

This article highlights the paradoxical coping strategies employed by low-income families. Based on in-depth interviews with 30 families in the UK, it is demonstrated that individuals initiate strategies to avoid the social effects of stigmatization and alleviate threats to social identity. In particular, families engage in conspicuous consumption, with emphasis on ensuring children have access to the ‘right’ brands. This can be interpreted in two opposing ways. Low-income consumers, in particular single mothers, may be understood as coping within the challenging context of consumer culture to improve the standard of living for their families. However, drawing on underclass discourse surrounding ‘chav’ culture and single mothers, it is demonstrated that the coping strategies employed to achieve approval in fact fuel further stigmatization and instead of creating inclusion have the opposite outcome of exclusion and marginalization.

Consuming love in poor families: Children's influence on consumption decisions

This paper explores consumption practices in poor families focusing on childrens influence on consumption decisions. Based on in-depth interviews with 30 such families, the study demonstrates that children exert considerable direct and indirect influence on family consumption decisions and practices. Consumption in poor families often revolves around children and parents make considerable sacrifices to ensure their children are not stigmatised by the visibility of poverty. Indeed, some parents place their own needs and desires on hold until their children are older. The findings are discussed with reference to love influence in family consumer research.

Tobacco consumption in the home: impact on social relationships and marking territory

Part 1. Introduction: A Tale of Two Disciplines. M.Wanke, Whats Social about Consumer Behavior? R.S. Wyer, Jr., R. Adaval, Social Psychology and Consumer Psychology: An Unexplored Interface. Part 2. The Construal of Consumer Judgments and Decisions. T. Eyal, N. Liberman, Y. Trope, Psychological Distance and Consumer Behavior: A Construal Level.Theory Perspective. A. Dijksterhuis, R.B. van Baaren, K.C.A. Bongers, M.W. Bos, M.L. van Leeuwen, A. van der Leij, The Rational Unconscious: Conscious Versus Unconscious Thought in Complex Consumer Choice. H. Bless, R. Greifenender, Brands and Successful Brand Extensions: A Social Psychology Perspective on Economic Questions. A. Chernev, R. Hamilton, Compensatory Reasoning in Choice. Part 3. Affective and Cognitive Feelings in Consumer Judgment. J. De Houwer, Conditioning as a Source of Liking: There is Nothing Simple About It. M.T. Pham, The Lexicon and Grammar of Affect-As-Information in Consumer Decision Making: The GAIM. N. Schwarz, H. Song, J. Xu, When Thinking is Difficult: Metacognitive Experiences as Information. Part 4. Social and Media Influences on Judgment and Behavior. S. Shavitt, A.Y. Lee, C.J. Torelli, Cross-Cultural Issues in Consumer Behavior. L.J. Shrum, Television Viewing and Social Reality: Effects and Underlying Processes. N.J. Goldstein, R.B. Cialdini, Normative Influences on Consumption and Conservation Behaviors. A. Kirmani, M.C. Campbell, Taking the Targets Perspective: The Persuasion Knowledge Model. Part 5. Goals and Self-regulation. A.Y. Lee, E.T. Higgins, The Persuasive Power of Regulatory Fit. M. Friese, W. Hofmann, M. Wanke, The Impulsive Consumer: Predicting Consumer Behavior with Implicit Reaction Time Measures. A. Fishbach, Y. Zhang, The Dynamics of Self-Regulation: When Goals Commit Versus Liberate.In this paper we move beyond viewing the home as a mere context for consumer decision-making to explore consumption practices and socio-spatial relationships within the home in relation to tobacco consumption. Based on focus groups conducted across ten European countries, our findings suggest that smokers view the home as a safe haven where they are sheltered from the outside regulatory environment. However, tension between smokers and nonsmokers demonstrates that consumption practices within the home may become a process of negotiation, resulting in smokers marking territory in efforts to avoid conflict.

Low‐income families: experiences and responses to consumer exclusion

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on low‐income families who are excluded from consumer culture. It explores their experiences and responses to material deprivation, social deprivation and stigmatization.Design/methodology/approach – Given the need for identification and calculation of exclusion thresholds to be supplemented by the voice of the excluded themselves, the study is based on qualitative analysis of 30 in‐depth interviews with low‐income families who encounter consumption constraints in the marketplace.Findings – While the harsh realities of consumer exclusion cannot be denied, findings also present a more positive outlook as excluded consumers can achieve empowerment through employment of stigma management strategies, creative consumer coping and rejection of the stigmatizing regime.Research limitations/implications – Research is based only on families with children under the age of 18; future research on older people and exclusion would prove a useful comparison.Practical implic...

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.

Social labour : exploring work in consumption

This article develops understanding of consumer work at the primary level of sociality in the context of social networking sites. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and netnography, we reveal these sites as distinctive spaces of consumer-to-consumer work. To explain this work in consumption, we introduce the concept of social labour which we define as the means by which consumers add value to their identities and social relationships through producing and sharing cultural and affective content. This is driven by observational vigilance and conspicuous presence, and is rewarded by social value. This draws attention to the variety of work consumers enact within their social lives, indicating that consumer work is broader than previously acknowledged.

Poverty in consumer culture: towards a transformative social representation

Abstract In this article, we consider the representations of poverty within consumer culture. We focus on four main themes – social exclusion, vulnerability, pleasure and contentment – that capture some of the associations that contemporary understandings have made with poverty. For each theme, we consider the portrayals of poverty from the perspective of key agents (such as marketers, media, politicians) and then relate this to more emic representations of poverty by drawing on a range of contemporary poverty alleviating projects from around the world. We conclude with a set of guidelines for relevant stakeholders to bear in mind when elaborating their representations of poverty. These guidelines may act as a platform to transform marginalising representations of poverty into more empowering representations.

Commercialised nostalgia: Staging consumer experiences in small businesses

Purpose – The purpose of this paper was to develop a framework linking the concept of nostalgia and experiential consumption, articulating the transformation of a mundane activity to a special experience, using the context of the small business and afternoon tea. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is based on a grounded theory approach and draws on multiple methods of data collection including participant observation, in-depth interviews with afternoon tea room managers, researcher introspection and consumer interviews. Findings – By employing nostalgia cues through product, ritual and aesthetics, an idealised home can be constructed emphasising belonging and sharing. The small business owner can be effective in transforming an ordinary activity to an experiential event. Contemporary tea rooms do not replicate tradition; they use it as a cultural resource to construct something novel. Research limitations/implications – This paper demonstrates how the careful configuration of the retail space can be a key success factor, not only for marketers in large flagship brand stores, but also for smaller, independent and local businesses. The essential interplay between product, ritual and aesthetics creates positive moods of belonging and sharing and may increase satisfaction. Practical implications – Understanding the emotional value of everyday experiences is a point of differentiation in a crowded marketplace and may directly influence consumer loyalty. Staging experiences is a key competitive strategy. Originality/value – This paper is one of the few to empirically assess links between the nostalgia paradigm and experiential consumption. Existing research has emphasised large retail spaces; in contrast, the authors demonstrate how consumer experiences can be staged in smaller, independent and local businesses.

Consumption lives at the bottom of the pyramid

Over the last decade, there has been increasing recognition of the value of understanding the lives of people throughout the world who experience impoverishment. ‘Bottom of the pyramid’ is the term used to describe people living in absolute poverty who, despite economic limitations, can be ‘resilient entrepreneurs’ and co-creators of new market opportunities that result in win-win situations for companies and consumers (Prahalad, 2004: 3). A range of metrics are used to define and describe people living in poverty, and although these metrics help identify the neediest across the world, such measures exclude people living in developed nations where poverty exists on a large scale, but where welfare policy provides a safety net. In this essay, we discuss some of the issues for those living in poverty in both developed and developing countries and argue that this will lead to a deeper understanding of the consumption experiences of those living in poverty.

Waste, Art, and Social Change: Transformative Consumer Research Outside of the Academy?

Films and documentaries can be highly useful pedagogic and research tools. They take complex topics that are theoretically and empirically rich and distill them into vehicles having the potential to deeply affect the way we look at marketing, consumer behavior, and the natural environment. They illuminate how our current consumption patterns are fundamentally problematic in ways that we rarely register because they are far removed from our sight. Using the work of Zygmunt Bauman on moral distance as well as two recent documentary films that bring the subject of waste to the fore, we explore these and related issues. Trashed (Brady 2012) highlights our planet’s finite resources and the hazards stemming from various waste disposal practices. Waste Land (Walker 2010) draws our attention to excess by profiling an example of how waste can be transformed into art. We make a case that these accounts can contribute to the “estrangement effect” articulated and praised by Herbert Marcuse and concomitantly provide us with examples of Transformative Consumer Research outside of the academy.