Why do some consumers shop in this pharmacy? A cross-check of vulnerable characteristics and store types

Research on vulnerable consumers remains unfailing in macromarketing and social marketing. Yet it is unclear how to operationalize the vulnerable consumers by demographics and further to this it is rarely touched how the vulnerable consumers defined by different measures make decision when choosing the place to shop especially in pharmacy retailing sector. The authors conduct a comparative study of variously-defined vulnerable consumers for their shopping store types in an urban Chinese city to investigate how people with distinct backgrounds develop their decision making rules and choose different types of retail pharmacies. This paper casts light on customer heterogeneity associated with different dimensions of vulnerability by using consumer demographics, and indicates that four dimensions of vulnerability exist as cognitive capability, social relations, behaviors, and the institutional protection in health-related sector. These four aspects of vulnerability play a significant role in identifying different shop selection patterns. Findings suggest that efforts to boost store patronage targeting on various consumer groups should have different strategies to reach consumers’ mindsets.     

A conversational approach to consumer vulnerability: performativity,representations, and storytelling

ABSTRACT

This conceptual article provides a conversational analysis of consumer vulnerability, which unveils how vulnerability is made through conversations and interactions among actors holding different market power positions. Three types of conversations prove fruitful to pursue a transformative research agenda improving vulnerable consumers’ well-being: (1) performativity, which unpacks agency and finalism in conversations; (2) social representations, which reveal uneven power positions and normativity expressed by participants in a conversation; and (3) storytelling, which reveals alternative and more powerful persuasive mechanisms of conversations framed as stories. Illustration for these types of conversations comes from extensive review of the literature on consumer vulnerability and from a critical consideration of my life-as-researcher with consumers as varied as gays, homeless people, migrants, second-generation immigrants, and subcultures of consumption.     

Consumer vulnerability and complaint handling: Challenges,opportunities and dispute system design

Effectively designed complaint handling systems play a key role in enabling vulnerable consumers to complain and obtain redress. This article examines current research into consumer vulnerability, highlighting its multidimensional and expansive nature. Contemporary understandings of consumer vulnerability recognize that the interaction between a wide range of market and consumer characteristics can combine to place any individual at risk of vulnerability. While this broad definition of consumer vulnerability reflects the complex reality of consumers’ experiences, it poses a key challenge for designers of complaint handling systems: how can they identify and respond to an issue which can potentially affect everyone? Drawing on current research and practice in the United Kingdom and Australia, the article analyses the impact of consumer vulnerability on third party dispute resolution schemes and considers the role these complaint handling organizations can play in supporting their complainants. Third party complaint handling organizations, including a range of Alternative Dispute Resolution services such as ombudsman organizations, can play a key role in increasing access to justice for vulnerable consumer groups and provide specific assistance for individual complainants during the process. It is an opportune time to review whether the needs of consumers at risk of vulnerability are being met within complaint processes and the extent to which third party complaint handlers support those who are most vulnerable to seek redress. Empowering vulnerable consumers to complain presents specific challenges. The article discusses the application of a new model of consumer dispute system design to show how complaint handling organizations can meet the needs of the most vulnerable consumers throughout the process.     

Low literacy,policy and consumer vulnerability: Are we really doing enough?

A perennial issue in transformative consumer research and public policy is the plight of low‐literate vulnerable consumers. Low‐literate consumers have been observed misinterpreting labels, misusing products and purchasing the wrong item, which leads to devastating outcomes as they continue to make poor decisions out of ignorance. Based on a thorough review of past studies on consumer literacy and vulnerability, we explore how stigma and attribution operate as underlying mechanisms for influencing how low‐literate consumers behave in the marketplace. This paper problematises blanket statements that all low‐literate consumers are vulnerable and addresses the possibility that universal policy actions may inadvertently create further marginalization for those it is meant to protect. Our paper contributes by introducing a new typology of low‐literate consumer vulnerability to challenge conventional understandings of who the vulnerable consumers are in relation to their literacy level and actual marketplace behaviour. From a policy standpoint, the insights gained from our review speak to the need for differentiating low‐literate consumers in terms of their status of vulnerability, which inform public policy initiatives and effective consumer education for their empowerment and protection.     

Resilience and well-being production among vulnerable consumers facing systematic constraints

This paper explores how vulnerable consumers within systematic constraints of economic inequality, institutional barriers, and social segregation in an urban environment cope with their vulnerabilities to achieve their well-being. Taking China's internal migrant workers as a research context, our study examines their vulnerable experiences and reveals the impact of systematic constraints on migrant workers' self-perception, interpretation, and actions. It discovers a staged process through which migrant workers acquire resilience to optimize life satisfaction by fulfilling a sense of control over their migration life. Through a situated approach to capture the contextual impact of systematic constraints on vulnerability experiences and the construction of resilient pathways to achieve well-being, this paper puts forward critical welfare issues such as inclusive marketplace, social capital, and community empowerment which are important to migrants' social integration and capability building. This calls for more coordinated efforts to promote effective resilience building and sustained well-being among resource-constrained consumers.     

Supporting Social Enterprises to Support Vulnerable Consumers: The Example of Community Development Finance Institutions and Financial Exclusion

This article examines the role of social enterprises in providing fair services to vulnerable consumers, focusing on the vulnerability of low-income consumers to high-cost exploitative credit as a result of a lack of access to mainstream financial services. It will be argued that both the state and the corporate sector have a role to play in providing the means with which vulnerable consumers can overcome financial exclusion, through access to fair services. However, this cannot and should not be achieved through increased welfare provision or through reliance on corporate social responsibility initiatives alone. In rejecting solutions focused on increased welfare or voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives, this article suggests that regulatory support for the development and growth of social enterprises, such as community development finance institutions, will most effectively give rise to a social framework in which vulnerability and unequal opportunity with respect to financial services is addressed.     

Vulnerable consumer engagement: How corporate social media can facilitate the replenishment of depleted resources

Technology may facilitate health and wellbeing consumer engagement. When there is scant public health provision and socio-cultural norms marginalize consumers stigmatized from cancer, we reveal how a brand’s corporate social media campaign can support vulnerable consumers with resource constraints. Drawing from a transformative consumer research lens, we investigate five years of computer-mediated communications facilitated by the Indian brand Dabur Vatika. Through a grounded theory and an abductive reasoning approach, we unveil how vulnerable consumers directly or indirectly affected by cancer leverage brand's social media to replenish resources. First, we identify how vulnerable consumers engage to replenish depleted emotional and social support resources. We further expand consumer engagement scholarship by offering a preliminary definition of “vulnerable consumer engagement”. Second, we provide a nascent classification of vulnerable consumers in a consumer-producer role, Principal Vulnerable Consumers and Associate Vulnerable Consumers, distinguished by their proximity to the vulnerable context. Lastly, we reveal how brands may perform a transformative role, to replenish social, emotional and operant resources at the micro level through the engagement of vulnerable consumers with corporate social media. This insight is informative for policymakers, advertising practitioners and transformative consumer research academics.     

Toward a conceptualization of the online shopping experience

This research article explores the content of consumers′ experience when they shop online and proposes a first step in conceptualizing the ‘online shopping experience′ (OSE). First, we carried out an extended literature review and proposed an integrative conceptual framework. Then, we relied on a consumers discourse analysis with four focus groups with consumers who differ in terms of age, gender and online shopping experience.We define the OSE and propose a conceptualization through four core dimensions: the physical, ideological, pragmatic and social dimensions. Connections are established between the flow concept and the ‘traditional’ dimensions of experience, and specific shopping values are identified. Moreover, an appropriation process of commercial websites is revealed; beyond purchase intentions and rituals, the OSE is embodied by the use of online tools and patronage routines. Finally, social interactions with Facebook friends are one of the new practices considered.     

Choice Architectures in the Digital Economy: Towards a New Understanding of Digital Vulnerability

In the digital economy, consumer vulnerability is not simply a vantage point from which to assess some consumers’ lack of ability to activate their awareness of persuasion. Instead, digital vulnerability describes a universal state of defencelessness and susceptibility to (the exploitation of) power imbalances that are the result of the increasing automation of commerce, datafied consumer–seller relations, and the very architecture of digital marketplaces. Digital vulnerability, we argue, is architectural, relational, and data-driven. Based on our concept of digital vulnerability, we demonstrate how and why using digital technology to render consumers vulnerable is the epitome of an unfair digital commercial practice.

     

Credit Counseling to Help Debtors Regain Footing

In-depth interviews with 22 debt-ridden consumers who are enrolled in debt management plans reveal the vulnerability they experience in various life domains. Additional interviews with 19 credit counselors and agency executives illustrate how the practices of a credit counseling agency can help indebted consumers regain their footing. This research sheds light on how consumers can recover from their vulnerable situations and what aids this process.     

Vulnerability of the unbanked: evidence from a developing country

Financial exclusion is an apparent phenomenon globally, the majority of people without bank accounts living in the developing countries. Those who lack access to financial services could experience vulnerability. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to unfold the vulnerability of the low‐income unbanked consumers in a Pakistani context. Qualitative data were gathered from low‐income unbanked consumers through in‐depth interviews. The findings suggest that unbanked consumers are vulnerable in many ways. The participants faced several negative consequences due to their financial exclusion, which resulted into their personal, economic and social detriment. Based on our study findings, we provide managerial and public policy implications for the well‐being of the low‐income unbanked consumers. Lastly, study limitations and future study guidelines are discussed.     

Unraveling the Personalization Paradox: The Effect of Information Collection and Trust-Building Strategies on Online Advertisement Effectiveness

Retailers gather data about customers’ online behavior to develop personalized service offers. Greater personalization typically increases service relevance and customer adoption, but paradoxically, it also may increase customers’ sense of vulnerability and lower adoption rates. To demonstrate this contradiction, an exploratory field study on Facebook and secondary data about a personalized advertising campaign indicate sharp drops in click-through rates when customers realize their personal information has been collected without their consent. To investigate the personalization paradox, this study uses three experiments that confirm a firm's strategy for collecting information from social media websites is a crucial determinant of how customers react to online personalized advertising. When firms engage in overt information collection, participants exhibit greater click-through intentions in response to more personalized advertisements, in contrast with their reactions when firms collect information covertly. This effect reflects the feelings of vulnerability that consumers experience when firms undertake covert information collection strategies. Trust-building marketing strategies that transfer trust from another website or signal trust with informational cues can offset this negative effect. These studies help unravel the personalization paradox by explicating the role of information collection and its impact on vulnerability and click-through rates.     

Comparing retailer purchase patterns and brand metrics for in-store and online grocery purchasing

ABSTRACT

Research on how vulnerable consumers navigate various marketplaces and service interactions, developing specific consumer skills in order to empower themselves during such exchanges, has received inadequate attention. This paper contributes to this area by empirically drawing on a multi-perspective go-along travel study, consisting of a combination of in-depth interviews and observations of consumer and service provider interactions in mobility services. It addresses both factors that are a source of vulnerability and forms thereof during service interactions, thus unearthing critical mechanisms that explain why vulnerability comes into being. Further, the finding of four distinct forms of active coping strategies, building on the dimensions of proactiveness/reactiveness and explicit/implicit articulation, and how these are related to different forms of vulnerability, provides an understanding of coping with vulnerability during consumer and service provider interactions.     

Consumer responses to offline and online low price signals: The role of cognitive elaboration

Low price signals (LPS), pricing tools where retailers promise to match or beat competitors' prices, have been increasingly popular in offline and online markets. We compare consumer evaluation of offline and online LPS as a function of how deeply they process the signals. Results of an experiment indicate that regardless of retail media consumers accept an LPS as an indicator of low price when they do not elaborate sufficiently on the signal. However, at high levels of elaboration, consumers challenge the assumptions underlying their acceptance of the signal at lower levels of elaboration whereby they become more skeptical of an online signal than an offline signal resulting in lower efficacy of the former. Implications of these findings for consumer vulnerability to false low price signaling are discussed along with other theoretical and managerial implications. Additionally, directions for future research are provided.     

The double-edged impact of social media on online trading: Opportunities,threats, and recommendations for organizations

While we understand well how social media channels sway consumers, there is little understanding of their influence on online trading behavior. We argue that social media are creating a new class of self-directed online traders by simultaneously encouraging and biasing trading decisions. Through an empirical study, we show that heavy social media users are more likely to engage in online trading but are largely affected by online herding behavior, and are four times more likely to blindly follow other traders. Bloggers, influencers, social network contacts, and social media news shape these users’ online trading behaviors. As online traders influenced by social media are unlikely to receive adequate returns, companies face an ethical dilemma: They could leverage social media to efficiently access funds but they risk inappropriately exploiting the inexperience of online traders biased by social media. We offer a set of nine practical recommendations for organizations to respond to these new challenges.     

Consumer engagement behaviors in the online wildlife trade: Implications for conservationists

This study investigates consumer engagement behaviors in the online wildlife trade, drawing implications for conservationists. The first study undertook a quantitative content analysis of 500 Facebook posts in wildlife trade lateral exchange markets to show how creative strategies, media type and persuasion tactics influence the number of likes and comments that posts receive. The second study then undertook a thematic discourse analysis to develop a rich understanding of the culture, beliefs and motivations that influence how consumers engage in the markets. Findings showed that an overwhelming majority of posts use a functional or informational strategy and that when posts use overt persuasion tactics the number of comments decrease. A conceptual model of how cultural factors may impact the success of marketing strategies is then proposed. These findings have implications for conservationists who seek to build engagement with wildlife trade consumers online.     

The phenomenon of purchasing second-hand products by the BOP consumers

This study explores the motivations and consequences of purchasing second-hand (SH) products by the rural and sub-urban (RSU) base of the pyramid (BOP) consumers using a qualitative phenomenological approach. This study has also examined the preferred purchase points for buying SH products by the RSU BOP consumers. Findings revealed that the RSU BOP consumers preferred their personal sources over offline and online retails while buying a SH product. The economic motivations, need for fulfilling aspirations, apathy towards cheap brands, need for social recognition, and pester power of school/college going children were found as the motivations behind the purchase of SH products by the RSU BOP consumers. This study has also identified that increasing consumption of branded SH products results in compensatory consumption, increased consumerism, and overwhelming recurring cost at the RSU BOP. This study has put forth a conceptual model leading to a comprehensive understanding of the purchase points, motivations, and consequences of SH purchase by the RSU BOP consumers. It has advanced the social comparison theory and the theory of compensatory consumption in the context of SH buying by BOP consumers. This study would fill the gap in the literature on consumer behaviour and BOP by examining such a novel issue. The practical and social implications of the study have been discussed.     

Information search and consideration set formation in a web-based store environment

The research reported here attempts to understand information search and consideration set formation in a web-based choice environment. A conceptual model is used to propose hypotheses that link information search and consideration set formation with two task environment influences that are typical of online settings. A study that simulates information search and consideration set formation in a web-based choice environment is conducted to test the hypotheses. The results offer insights into how the number of available alternatives and the amount of time available may have an effect on search and evaluation in a web-based store. The research has implications for understanding how consumers shop in online stores.     

We’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem

Consumers are adopting increasingly active roles in co-creating marketing content with companies and their respective brands. In turn, companies and organizations are looking to online social marketing programs and campaigns in an effort to reach consumers where they ‘live’ online. However, the challenge facing many companies is that although they recognize the need to be active in social media, they do not truly understand how to do it effectively, what performance indicators they should be measuring, and how they should measure them. Further, as companies develop social media strategies, platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are too often treated as stand-alone elements rather than part of an integrated system. This article offers a systematic way of understanding and conceptualizing online social media, as an ecosystem of related elements involving both digital and traditional media. We highlight a best-practice case study of an organization's successful efforts to leverage social media in reaching an important audience of young consumers. Then, we conclude with several insights and lessons related to the strategic integration of social media into a firm's marketing communications strategy.     

Neither passive nor powerless: reframing economic vulnerability via resilient pathways

ABSTRACT

Resilience, as an emerging construct within the contemporary field of consumer vulnerability, has received limited empirical attention within the context of economic adversity. This paper examines how low-income women strive to reframe their relationship to the market via resilient pathways. It establishes how through active agency, self-care practices and relational coping, women maximise care of self and care of others with limited economic means. Comprised of multidimensional coping resources for positive adaptation, resilient pathways offer vulnerable consumers distinct trajectories to well-being and overturn deficit-focused views about how those facing chronic economic disadvantage, (re)assert themselves in vulnerable consumption contexts.