Consumer Vulnerability: Conditions, Contexts and Characteristics

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.

Kathy Hamilton, is Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Strathclyde UK; Susan Dunnett, is Lecturer in Marketing, University of Edinburgh, UK; Maria Piacentini, is Professor in Consumer Behaviour, Lancaster University, UK.