Susan Dunnett

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.

The Stigma Turbine: A Theoretical Framework for Conceptualizing and Contextualizing Marketplace Stigma

Stigmas, or discredited personal attributes, emanate from social perceptions of physical characteristics, aspects of character, and “tribal” associations (e.g., race; Goffman 1963). Extant research has emphasized the perspective of the stigma target, with some scholars exploring how social institutions shape stigma. Yet the ways stakeholders within the sociocommercial sphere create, perpetuate, or resist stigma remain overlooked. The authors introduce and define marketplace stigma as the labeling, stereotyping, and devaluation by and of commercial stakeholders (consumers, companies and their employees, stockholders, and institutions) and their offerings (products, services, and experiences). The authors offer the Stigma Turbine as a unifying conceptual framework that locates marketplace stigma within the broader sociocultural context and illuminates its relationship to forces that exacerbate or blunt stigma. In unpacking the Stigma Turbine, the authors reveal the critical role that market stakeholders can play in (de)stigmatization, explore implications for marketing practice and public policy, and offer a research agenda to further understanding of marketplace stigma and stakeholder welfare.

Consumer vulnerability: introduction to the special issue

The last decade has seen a burgeoning body of research which moves beyond the mainstream to draw attention to vulnerable consumer groups and consumer experiences of vulnerability. Since Baker et al.’s (2005) seminal piece, a range of studies, including some published in the Journal of Marketing Management, have highlighted the complexity, reach and multi-faceted nature of consumer vulnerability. This special issue was inspired by our successful ESRC seminar series on consumer vulnerability which clearly revealed that there remain significant unexplored areas worthy of attention from marketing and consumer research scholars. In this special issue, we aim to bring to the fore ways in which so-called vulnerable consumers navigate various marketplace and service interactions, developing specific consumer skills in order to empower themselves in such exchanges (Adkins & Ozanne, 2005; Baker, 2006; Hill & Stephens, 1997; Wong & King, 2008). Yet, we also recognise the need to move beyond the subjective lived experience of vulnerability to consider the role of macro forces, including marketing, in contributing to consumer vulnerability. The importance of such an approach is effectively articulated in Stearn’s (2015, p. 66) recent book chapter entitled ‘Consumer vulnerability is market failure’. Stearn suggests that efforts to overcome consumer vulnerability need to go beyond the individual and consider ways of making the market work effectively for all consumers. Baker, Labarge, and Baker (2015) identify three approaches that have been followed in prior studies on consumer vulnerability; isolating particular populations of people, isolating particular environmental conditions and isolating meanings and processes of vulnerability. We present a series of articles and commentaries that encompass each of these perspectives and overall, contribute to our understanding of consumer vulnerability. Through both empirical and conceptual papers, the authors draw on various different contexts and theories that offer conceptual development and new insights into consumer vulnerability. Fiona Spotswood and Agnes Nairn’s article, Children as Vulnerable Consumers: A First Conceptualisation, explores the differing perspectives that exist about children’s experience of consumer vulnerability and argues that there is a need for greater clarity about the relationship between children and vulnerability in order to better inform policy. Their article begins with the assertion that existing models of consumer vulnerability are unsuitable when applied to children. Drawing on childhood studies literature, and in particular, the new wave of the ‘new sociology of childhood’ paradigm, they put forward a new conceptualisation of child consumer vulnerability that encompasses three strands. First, they advocate a hybrid perspective that embraces the interrelationship between structure and agency and recognises the fluid nature of childhood. Second, they suggest that a transdisciplinary research agenda is needed to fully support this hybrid perspective and third, they highlight the need for methodological innovation in assessing and JOURNAL OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT, 2016 VOL. 32, NOS. 3–4, 207–210 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2015.1121601