Beyond the Logic of ‘Open Doors’: Advancing Marketing for Social Inclusion from a Consumer Empowerment Perspective

EasyChair Preprint no. 1010

Abstract

Recent marketing studies highlight that, despite legislative frameworks, such as USA’s American Consumers with Disabilities Act or the UK’s Code of Broadcast Advertising, marketplace experiences of many consumer groups can leave them feeling mistreated, restricted in their decisions, vulnerable and disempowered. This research points to the need of going beyond conceiving inclusion as a passive concept equated with the logic of ‘open doors’ – e.g., that eliminating overt discrimination of consumers will result in all consumers feeling equally catered for. At the same time, a nascent stream of research (e.g., Ho et al., 2017; Demangeot et al., 2013; Baker and Mason, 2012) aims to advance conceptualisations and models of marketing actions drawing on concepts of empowerment and resilience. Because inclusion is subjectively constructed on the individual level (Licsandru and Cui, 2018) and consistent with the 2019 AMS World Marketing Congress theme ‘Enlightened Marketing in Challenging Times’, we propose a session bringing together early findings of empirical studies that critically explore consumer responses to marketing actions exemplifying either the advancement or the inhibition of market inclusion. Through examining varied contexts and consumer characteristics, the session covers four topics: 1.Sensory Identity and Inclusion in the Marketplace (Cross and Lin) 2.Effects of multicultural integrated advertising message framing on perceived benefits of multiculturalism (Kipnis and colleagues) 3.The Role of Marketing in Intercultural Relations in Post-Colonial Contexts (Vorster and colleagues) 4.Implications of marketing (mis)representation on wellbeing of consumers with disabilities (Kearney and colleagues)

Keyphrases: consumer empowerment, Consumer identity, consumer research, cultural diversity, Intercultural relation, Marketing for social inclusion, Multicultural Marketing, olfactory sensitivity, social inclusion, Transformative Consumer Research

@Booklet{EasyChair:1010,
  author = {Eva Kipnis and Samantha Cross and Catherine Demangeot and Meng-Hsien Jenny Lin and Lizette Vorster and Shauna Kearney and Chris Pullig and Cristina Galalae and Julie Emontspool and Oscar Ybarra and Kimberly Rios and Gaye Bebek and Ian Brittain},
  title = {Beyond the Logic of ‘Open Doors’: Advancing Marketing for Social Inclusion from a Consumer Empowerment Perspective},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 1010},

  year = {EasyChair, 2019}}