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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.

Abstract
This paper explores consumer decision making in low‐income families. The focus is on the issue of conflict avoidance within the family when making consumption choices. Whereas previous studies have focused on conflict resolution strategies, this paper considers the ways in which families prevent conflict from arising in the first instance. These include individual control in purchasing and budgeting decisions, giving in to the requests of children and ensuring open communication about the family's financial situation. Importantly, the connections between the poverty narrative and the family decision making narrative are considered as the decision making strategies employed are not only aimed at avoiding conflict but also making experiences of poverty more manageable.
Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

PurposeThe 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/approachGiven 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.FindingsWhile 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/implicationsResearch 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 implicationsThe research raises a number of important policy issues in relation to social barriers to inclusion and the role of marketing in contributing to consumer exclusion.Originality/valueSocial policy studies surrounding social exclusion in terms of separation from mainstream society tend to focus on employment. This paper highlights that a social exclusion discourse can also provide a useful perspective to investigate exclusion in relation to consumerism.

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.

Central to the logic of the aesthetic economy (Entwistle, 2002) is celebrity culture, the two go hand in hand and the boundaries between them are increasingly blurred in the spirit and name of commerce, capitalism and marketing. Celebrity demands a stage, or better, an exhibition space, a frame for further performance and sustainment of appeal, a space to induce inspiration among followers and fans alike. Celebrity by this reckoning is less about advertising and the transfer of meaning through such overly narrow and confined media processes (McCracken, 1989); rather celebrity affect, as we seek to demonstrate in this paper, works through specific stagings, one such being the celebrity fashion exhibition, where the appeal of celebrity is broadened and staged anew to cultivate new forms of attraction, intimacy and public participation.

Abstract

Dance forms are a big business, highly marketable commoditized cultural universes, with a plethora of markets constructed around their spirit, vitality and possibilities. In this paper, we explore one particular dance form, that of Salsa, arguing that as consumer researchers we look for a more vibrant vocabulary and mindset with which to capture the experiential and transcendental nature of such social associations. We demonstrate that the metaphor of dancing is useful to revitalize our notions of consumer actions; taking them out of the grey mundane of calculative and rational action into the possibilities of emotional economies constructed around the effervescence and vitality of the social (cf. Maffesoli, 1996).


Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Consumer vulnerability is of growing importance as a research topic for those exploring wellbeing. This book provides space to critically engage with the conditions, contexts and characteristics of consumer vulnerability, which affect how people experience and respond to the marketplace and vice versa. Focussing on substantive, ethical, social and methodological issues, this book brings together key researchers in the field and practitioners who work with vulnerability on a daily basis. Organised into 4 sections, it considers consumer vulnerability and key life stages, health and wellbeing, poverty, and exclusion. Methodologically the chapters draw on qualitative research, employing a variety of methods from interview, to the use of poetry, film and other cultural artefacts. This book will be of interest to marketing and consumer research scholars and students and also to researchers in other disciplines including sociology, public policy and anthropology, and practitioners, policy makers and charitable organisations working with vulnerable groups.

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.

ABSTRACTIn consumer research, we frequently focus on the phenomenon of transformation, whether the transformatory effects of a particular consumption community or the great body of work being carried out under the banner of transformative consumer research. However, there is a particular transformation which occurs in the field of interpretivist consumer research that, we would argue, is overlooked—that of researcher transformation. We present as data our reflexive considerations on the ways in which our own research with vulnerable consumers has affected and changed us. We consider short‐term transformations in the field, reflecting on the various ways that researcher identity is carefully managed and negotiated to fit with the social–cultural setting. We also consider longer term transformations and discuss the enduring impact of the research process—the people we have met, the homes we have visited, and the stories we have heard. By reflecting on the shaping of identities 'in the field', we aim to deepen our appreciation of the interpretive consumer research process and contribute to theoretical understanding of transformative identity research. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract
We introduce the concept of therapeutic servicescapes, defined as consumption settings where emplaced, market-mediated performances compensate for sociocultural dilemmas. Our focus is on the localization of emotions that are emplaced in specific sociospatial features and collectively reproduced through ritualized consumer performances. This ethnographic study of religious pilgrimage consumption reveals that the therapeutic servicescape comprises three features: evocative spaces, ideological homogeneity, and restorative emotion scripts. These servicescape features catalyze the consumer rituals of therapeutic relations, therapeutic release, and therapeutic renewal. Our theorization of therapeutic servicescapes offers three contributions. First, we reveal how emotions are socially and geographically orchestrated and transformed in marketplace settings. Second, we demonstrate how therapeutic ritual performances reproduce emplaced, market-mediated emotion and compensate for embodied emotional restrictions. Third, we demonstrate how the negotiation of emotional ordering guides the therapeutic dialogue between religion and the marketplace.