Disability and Shopping

Customers, Markets and the State

Ieva Eskytė

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138105775
• eBook ISBN: 9781351590006
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Consumer Behaviour
• Index: Social Sciences

Disability and Shopping: Customers, Markets and the State provides an examination of the diverse experiences and perspectives of disabled customers, industry and civil society. It discusses how the interaction between the three stakeholders should be shaped at aiming to decrease inequality and marginalisation.

Shopping is a part of everyday modern life and yet businesses struggle to adequately meet the needs of 80 million disabled customers in the European Union single market. While there has been extensive research into how individuals engage in customer roles and experience, and how businesses and policies both shape and respond to these, little is known of the same dynamics and practices regarding people with impairments. This book addresses this need by revealing the perspectives, interactions and experiences of disabled customers and their interaction with policy and business.

It will be required reading for all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, marketing and customer relations.

1 Disabled people in the market

Disabled people’s exclusion and marginalisation in society is well documented. Alongside restricted participation in mainstream education (Barton, 1995, 1997, 2004, Buchner et al., 2014, Connor and Bejoian, 2014, Cook et al., 2001, Polat, 2011), limited access to health care (Iezzoni, 2011, Osborn et al., 2012, Ubido et al., 2002), family life (Anderson and Kitchin, 2000, Goodley and Tregaskis, 2006) and leisure (Devine and Dattilo, 2000, Tregaskis, 2003), people with impairments are not free and independent agents when choosing their position and activities in the market either as employers (Barnes, 1999, Barnes and Mercer, 2005, Ravaud et al., 1992) or as consumers (Baker, 2006, Baker et al., 2007, Chan and Puech, 2014, Department of Trade and Industry, 2000, Kaufman-Scarborough, 2001, Nemeth and Del Rogers, 1981). Historic marginalisation of older and disabled customers was partly premised on their limited spending power and market autonomy. Poor recognition as equal market participants manifests in the creation of special markets (Office for Disability Issues, 2010), their legal position as ‘vulnerable’ customers (Mansfield and Pinto, 2008) and is evidenced through an inaccessible shopping. In addition, tensions in professionals’ ontologies regarding accessibility (Pirie, 1979), insufficient user involvement in developing accessible environments and products (Heylighen, 2008, Imrie and Hall, 2001, Till, 2005) as well as business’ focus on non-disabled customers further the exclusion.

After ratification of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2006), it has been argued that in order to achieve independent life and full participation in society, disabled people have to have equal access to the private market and exercise equal consumer rights as non-disabled individuals. Even though the overall situation is improving, equality of practice is still more rhetorical than actual. Aiming to understand the nature and the roots of the phenomenon, the present chapter sheds light on three key dimensions: disabled people’s position in markets as consumers; shopping as an accessible shopping chain; and concepts of accessibility, reasonable accommodation and universal design (UD) in the context of consumer participation.

The discussion starts by addressing some changes in disabled people’s position in markets, related with consumption and consumer participation. Provided insights aim to grasp the rationale behind the current construction of people with impairments as ‘vulnerable’ consumers. It then proceeds to discuss shopping process as an accessible chain. It first sheds light on customer information, discusses the journey to the shop and then turns to navigation and interaction in retail premises. It suggests that society and industry’s orientation towards non-disabled citizens and customers is founded on ableism and is an important factor in shaping disabled consumers’ exclusion. This is followed by a discussion on how more accessibility could be introduced to retail markets. The chapter explores the notion of accessibility, provides a critique of user-centred design (UCD), addresses ontological tensions in developers’ professional realities and explores why principles of UD should be applied to retail markets.

Disabled people and markets: historical insights and current practice

This section provides an overview of disabled people’s transition from passive consumers to active customers. It sheds light on the way people with impairments were perceived as ‘useless eaters’, passive users of social care services, valuable clientele of special markets for disability products and ‘vulnerable’ customers in the mainstream private market. Understanding the changes over time and in different market types provides a better understanding of underlying structures that have been preventing disabled people from equal customer participation. The discussion starts by looking at the world wars and the interwar period that positioned people with impairments as wasters of national resources and measured their value by the ratio between consumption and production. It then addresses socially constructed role of passive recipients of rehabilitation goods and services before providing an overview of how personal budgets created new markets and market relationships that previously were inaccessible for disabled people. It then proceeds to discuss how special markets for disability products challenge dominant understanding of people with impairments as market participants who lack autonomy and positions them as valued customers. The section ends by a discussion on practices in current markets for mainstream goods and services. It suggests that private providers perceive people with impairments as ‘vulnerable’ customers and premise their vulnerability on individuals’ impairments.

Useless eaters

Disabled people’s exclusion due to their ‘deviance’ from established norms, standards and expectations in different history stages and social institutions and developments is well documented (Barnes, 1991, Priestley, 1997, Robert, 1995) dating back its origins in ancient Greece and Rome (Oliver and Sapey, 2006, Stiker, 2009, Vlahogiannis, 2003), and feudalism (Beier, 1974, Gillin, 1929, Priestley, 1997). Later, in industrialisation and liberal utilitarianism times, the philosophies and practices introduced by Social Darwinism and Eugenics movement continued positioning people with impairments as unworthy living or as a threat to a common welfare (Barnes, 1991, Gleeson, 1999). Economic instability brought by the world wars and political doctrines that emerged in the 20th century portrayed them as consumers of national resources, and the ratio between production and consumption was key measure for participation in society. As a result, disabled individuals were seen as not rendering back consumers of national resources, and this impacted governments’ actions. Since it was assumed that ‘the right to life did not exist intrinsically but rather must be continually earned and justified by a measure of personal productivity’ (Parent and Shevell, 1998:80), people with physical and cognitive impairments were seen as a ‘national burden’, ‘empty husks’, ‘ballast lives’ or ‘useless eaters’ (Burleigh, 1994, Mostert, 2002, Parent and Shevell, 1998, Thomas et al., 2006). Burleigh (1994) notes that human value was directly linked to contribution to the country and calculated by the amount of consumed food, water, drugs, clothing, beddings and salaries for staff in asylums. As a result, expenditure cuts on institutionalised disabled people’s needs were introduced in the second quarter of the 20th century – the most drastic saving measures being applied by the German government. Such policy agenda led to significant decrease in the number of institutions, beds and caring personnel (Proctor, 1988). As an example, Klee (1985) notes that since people with cognitive impairments occupied the lowest strata among those doomed as unworthy to live, the expenditures for meeting their needs dropped to 40–38 pfennig for one person per day, which often was insufficient for survival. Although the German Psychiatric Association questioned such measures (Burleigh, 1994), the position that spending for the disabled people from the national budget is irrational as they are unproductive (Hoche, 1920 in Burleigh, 1994) was deeply entrenched in national policies and dictated related decisions.

The association of human value with consumption and economic productivity and portrayal of disabled people as unproductive individuals (Proctor, 1988) led to the introduction of policies such as ‘mercy death’ or ‘alleviation of suffering’ (Mostert, 2002) that aimed to release the country from the ‘burden’ brought by people with impairments (Burleigh, 1994, Proctor, 1988). Likewise, sterilisation, castration, euthanasia, gas chambers and shooting (Burleigh, 1994, Mostert, 2002, Proctor, 1988) were common and justified as countries’, especially Germany’s, liberation from ‘useless eaters’ and their wasteful consumption. As a result, while the damnation of institutionalised disabled children and adults to cold or starvation with the hope for a natural death saved money that would had been spent on injections and gas (Thomas et al., 2006), sterilisation and euthanasia had the greatest effect on ‘rescuing’ the economy. For instance, sterilisation of 390,000 in 1936–1943 (Lifton, 2000) and the killing of 80,000 disabled individuals (Tamura, 2004) allowed Germany to save 10 million Reichsmark (RM) for medical insurance, expenditures for 22,800 nurses’ salaries and money for maintenance of 786 medical care institutions (Proctor, 1988). Altogether, the euthanasia operation had saved the German economy an average of 245,955.50 RM per day and 88,543,980.00 RM per year (Proctor, 1988:184). While the apogee of disabled people’s association with waste of resource and their killings aimed at de-burdening the economy was in Germany, some European countries (Thomas et al., 2006) and states of the United States also applied euthanasia as a means of preventing economic challenges (Silver, 2004). For Straight (1935 in Proctor, 1988), the logic of such policies is simply the combination of pure nation ideology and the ratio between consumption and production: ‘they could no longer manufacture guns in return for the food they consumed; because their death was the ultimate logic of the national socialist doctrine of promoting racial superiority and the survival of the physically fit’. While individuals who acquired impairments during the wars were treated as more valuable, a number of rehabilitation programmes were introduced aiming to return disabled war veterans into the labour market (Greasley and Oxley, 1996, Jongbloed and Crichton, 1990, Linker, 2011). The programmes aimed to get individuals off the compensation system (Jongbloed and Crichton, 1990), but since they were founded on the individual model, they positioned veterans with impairments as passive service users instead of active actors in physical and social rehabilitation process. The following section, therefore, discusses how such practice (service provision shaped around the individual model) eliminates disabled people’s agency and independency, and converts them into a passive service user.

Passive service users

In the rehabilitation market, disabled people are usually perceived as passive users and have limited choice and control over acquired goods and services. According to Zola (1977:59), the ‘expansion of what in medicine is deemed relevant to a good practice of life’ is one of the factors in positioning people with impairments as passive receivers, who have limited possibilities to actively participate in the decision-making process about which goods and services they receive. The decision on what should be purchased usually depends on an individual and the professional. However, having historically and legally established control over technical procedures and medication prescriptions (Zola, 1977), professionals seem to dominate in the process. Due to the use of legitimate power, language and culture to label disabled people as ‘special’, ‘needed to be fixed’ or ‘vulnerable’ (Albrecht, 1992), professionals entrench individuals’ low status and promote a dependency culture. This leads to de-powerment and exclusion from choosing needed and purchased goods and services (Eskytė, 2013, Finkelstein, 1999, 1999a). While Finkelstein (1999, 1999a) identifies professionals who practice such professional behaviour as professionals allied to medicine (PAMs), Broom and Woodward (1996:375) refer to them either as to overtly authoritarian professionals or to professionals who are ‘inadvertently paternalistic in their efforts to avoid what they felt to be disabling medicalisation’. Either way, they control the amount of provided information about an individual’s condition and the manner in which it is presented. The communication between this type of professionals and service users is insufficient, and this leads to uncertainty, lack of cooperation and misperceptions of service receivers’ needs and experiences (Skipper and Leonard, 1965). In such a context, the potential for disabling conditions to be identified and cooperative relationships regarding the creation of more enabling practice to emerge is not exploited.

On the other end of the spectrum is interaction between service users and professionals allied to community (PACs; Finkelstein, 1999, 1999a), or the third group of health-care service providers, as described by Broom and Woodward (1996). This type of professionals acknowledge that medical knowledge and expertise may not provide comprehensive understanding. They prioritise collaborative relationships, recognise the impact of social environment and people’s position within the society (Broom and Woodward, 1996) as well as involve individuals in the service planning and provision process. Such practice enables service providers to better understand users’ needs and preferences (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995), position them as experts of needed care (Tait and Lester, 2005) and reduce stigma that often accompanies impairments and especially mental health conditions (Rutter et al., 2004).

Evidence from Lithuania and the United Kingdom suggests that despite changing political and professional discourse in health care and the rehabilitation service market (Juškevičius and Rudzinskas, 2014, Shakespeare et al., 2009), the interaction between professionals and service users is often founded on unequal power relations and positions a person as a passive receiver. As an example, Butkevičienė et al. (2006) demonstrate that disabled children and their parents in Lithuania often do not receive sufficient or relevant information, and feel devalued and excluded from service planning and provision. Likewise, Petrauskienė and Zabėlienė (2014) note that despite Lithuanians with mental health conditions positively evaluate social workers’ informal communication and provided services, they often lack information about services and do not feel like being a part of the proces...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Disabled people in the market
• 2 Accessibility in the EU markets
• 3 Communicative action and the EU markets
• 4 The chain of an accessible shopping
• 5 The lifeworld of accessible markets
• 6 Access to the discourse and power relations
• 7 Summary and conclusions
• Index