Consumer Vulnerability

Susan Dunnett, Kathy Hamilton, Maria Piacentini

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367891732
• eBook ISBN: 9781351386517
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book demonstrates that marketing scholarship has much to contribute to our understanding of consumer vulnerability and potential solutions. It brings to the fore ways in which so?called vulnerable consumers navigate various marketplace and service interactions and develop specific consumer skills in order to empower themselves in such exchanges. It does so by exploring how consumer vulnerability is experienced across a range of different contexts such as poverty and disability, and the potential impact of vulnerability from childhood to old age. Other chapters extend focus from the consumer to the organisational perspective or consider more macro issues such as socio-spatial disadvantages. The fundamental aim of many of the contributors is to produce work that can benefit individual and societal well-being. They draw on various methodological approaches that generate both marketing management and policy-focused implications. A series of commentaries are also included to stimulate critical reflection and new insights into consumer vulnerability.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

Children as vulnerable consumers: a first conceptualisation

Fiona Spotswood^a and Agnes Nairn^b

ABSTRACT

Understandings of consumer vulnerability remain contentious and despite recent developments, models remain unsuitable when applied to children. Taxonomic models, and those favouring a ‘state’- or ‘class’-based approach have been replaced by those attempting to tackle both individual and structural antecedents. However, these are still overly individualistic and fail to progress from an artificial view that these dimensions work separately and independently. In contrast, the new sociology of childhood conceptualises childhood as a hybridised, fluid combination of structure and agency. This paper introduces this approach, new to the consumer vulnerability field, and proposes that it has considerable implications for the way that children’s consumer vulnerability is theorised and researched, and for the formulation of policy.

Introduction

Children are often considered a particularly vulnerable group in society to the extent that in 1990 the United Nations accorded those under 18 their own special rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 2015). These rights include the right to education, to family life and to be protected. Reflecting the view that society has a duty to protect children, Kofi Annan, the then UN Secretary General, declared that, ‘There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children’ (UNICEF, 2000). Most countries in the world have ratified this convention with the notable exceptions of the United States of America and South Sudan (UNICEF, n.d.).

Children are not only considered vulnerable world citizens, they are also seen by some as vulnerable consumers – particularly in relation to marketing. One UK study (Family & Parenting Institute, 2004) found that 84% of parents think that companies target children too much in marketing their products whilst a more recent survey (CIM, 2011) found that this number had grown to 90%. Perhaps reflecting this strength of public opinion the marketing literature often refers to children as vulnerable consumers as though this status were undisputed (e.g. Brusdal, 2007; Hogan, 2005b; Lundby, 2013).

However, the view that children are vulnerable consumers is not universally held and there are those who believe that children are perfectly capable of holding their own in the commercial world. Marketing consultants Lindstrom and Seybold (2003) for example vaunt the empowered tween consumer: ‘they are more savvy than you will ever be at understanding brands’ (p. 290), whilst plenty of research within the field of childhood studies emphasises their agency (Bluebond-Langner & Korbin, 2007; Tisdall & Punch, 2012). Understanding the truth about the vulnerability of child consumers has become important within policy circles to the extent that in the UK a previous Labour government commissioned a panel of academic experts to conduct a year-long review of the evidence around the ‘Impact of the Commercial World on Children’s Wellbeing’ (DCSF/DCMS, 2009), whilst the successive Coalition (Conservative and Liberal Democrat) government commissioned a follow-up report in 2011 (Bailey, 2011). The conclusion of the academic review was unfortunately inconclusive and reported that the evidence gathered ‘suggests that children are neither the helpless victims imagined by some campaigners nor the autonomous “savvy” consumers celebrated by some marketing people’ (DCSF/DCMS, 2009, p. 3). The vulnerability of the child consumer remains rather uncertain terrain.

Yet, unpicking the nature of this vulnerability is essential to both progress the limited body of knowledge and also in terms of policy, as warnings have recently been sounded about the link between the academic portrayal of consumer vulnerability and the way that the vulnerable are treated in policy terms (Hamilton et al., 2014; Pechmann et al., 2011). Depending on the conceptualisation of consumer vulnerability adopted, policy suggestions can range all the way from the removal of barriers and consumer empowerment (Baker, Gentry, & Rittenburg, 2005) to pre-emptive, protective policies (Commuri & Ekici, 2008).

Given that no attempts in the academy have so far been made to explore and elucidate what it means to be a vulnerable child consumer; given the divergence of views about the extent and nature of children’s consumer vulnerability; and given the resulting lack of clear direction for policy response, the purpose of our paper is to present a first conceptualisation of the nature of consumer vulnerability in relation to children.

We begin by reviewing the current literature on vulnerable consumers concluding that available conceptualisations of consumer vulnerability, which mainly reference adults, cannot be easily applied to children. We contend that due to the particular nature of children’s agency in relation to societal structures, children should be considered a special case. We turn to the field of childhood studies, which has long grappled with the peculiarities of childhood, in order to seek a different lens through which to understand their vulnerability as consumers. We suggest that thinking within the very newest wave of the ‘new sociology of childhood’ paradigm (Prout & James, 1990/1997; Prout, 2011; Tisdall, 2012; Uprichard, 2010) provides a valuable perspective on how to conceptualise the vulnerability that child consumers can experience. We conclude that this important field can only be taken forward by using a multi-disciplinary approach to theory, research practice and policy underpinned by a conceptualisation of child consumer vulnerability that encompasses the hybridisation of the ‘structuring structures’ (Uprichard, 2010, p. 4) around children’s lives and their agency as individuals. We introduce a comprehensive future research agenda and hope it will be taken up by other scholars. We draw particular attention to the substantial methodological challenges inherent in the process of adult researchers and policymakers adequately accessing and acting on the authentic voices of children.

Conceptualising vulnerable consumers

We begin by locating children within the recent literature on consumer vulnerability, since beyond the ambivalence around the vulnerability of child consumers, the conceptualisation of vulnerable consumers in general, despite evolving considerably over recent years, remains highly contested (Andreasen & Manning, 1990; Baker & Mason, 2012; Halstead, Jones, & Cox, 2007; Mansfield & Pinto, 2008). Early work on what was termed the ‘disadvantaged consumer hypothesis’ (Andreasen, 1975, p. 7) saw consumer vulnerability (or ‘disadvantage’) in terms of the characteristics of a particular, easily identifiable set or class of citizens:

The disadvantaged consumer hypothesis argues that the problems of disadvantaged consumers are primarily attributable to their personal characteristics, the kind of people they are. It holds that the real problem is that disadvantaged consumers are just too old, too poor, too uneducated, too unsophisticated, too definitely of the wrong race, etc., to be able to be effective consumers in the urban marketplace. (p. 7)

Following this a great deal of research has investigated four specific demographic ‘classes’: income, education, race or ethnicity and age. Demographic approaches are about who experiences vulnerability in consumption, which implies that some categories of people are inherently vulnerable (Ringold, 1995; Smith & Cooper-Martin, 1997). As Smith and Cooper-Martin (1997, p. 6) explain, vulnerable consumers possess ‘a demographic characteristic generally perceived to limit the consumer’s ability to maximise utility and well-being in economic transactions’. Without exception the poor are considered more disadvantaged as consumers than the rich (Andreasen, 1975, 1976, 1993; Barnhill, 1972; Morgan & Riordan, 1983). Those with less formal education are viewed as more vulnerable than the highly schooled and trained (Mitra, Hastak, Ford, & Ringold, 1999; Ringold, 2005; Smith & Cooper-Martin, 1997). In a US context, African American and Hispanic consumers are seen as more disadvantaged (D’Rozario & Williams, 2005; Marlowe & Atiles, 2005; Peneloza, 1995) as are those with poor native language skills (Barnhill, 1972; Marlowe & Atiles, 2005). And, interestingly for our paper, most age-related research on disadvantaged consumers has concentrated on the particular vulnerability of the elderly (Andreasen, 1975, 1976; Barnhill, 1972; Morgan & Riordan, 1983).

However, this ‘class-based’ or demographic view of disadvantage or vulnerability has been questioned by authors such as Baker et al. (2005). Their contention is that it is unhelpful to suggest that just because someone is old or poor or of the ‘wrong’ race they are automatically vulnerable as consumers (p. 129). Instead, Baker et al. (2005) conceptualise vulnerability as a state of individual powerlessness that everyone and anyone may experience at some point in their lifecourse:

Consumer vulnerability is a state of powerlessness that arises from an imbalance in marketplace interactions or from the consumption of marketing messages and products. It occurs when control is not in an individual’s hands, creating a dependence on external factors (e.g. marketers) to create fairness in the marketplace. The actual vulnerability arises from the interaction of individual states, individual characteristics, and external conditions within a context where consumption goals may be hindered and the experience affects personal and social perceptions of the self. (p. 134)

This ’state’ conceptualisation differs from Andreasen’s (1975) class perspective in three ways. First, it shifts the focus away from a whole class of people to the individual and the self. Second, it introduces the idea of vulnerability in the face of ’marketing messages’ and thus includes consumers’ information processing abilities. Third, it introduces the idea that vulnerability is situation dependent, for example that it results from ‘an imbalance in marketplace interactions’ (Baker et al., 2005, p. 134). Below, we examine in more detail each aspect of this more recent conceptualisation.

Individual vulnerability

The notion of vulnerability as applicable to individuals rather than a group draws to some extent on Morgan, Schuler, and Stoltman’s (1995) investigation into the US courts‘ interpretation of vulnerable consumers across 100 years of product liability cases. They conclude that the US courts define vulnerable consumers as those ’whose idiosyncratic sensitivities have contributed to their product-related injuries‘ (p. 267). Morgan et al. (1995) go on to propose four particular groups of individual ’idiosyncrasies‘, namely physical sensitivity, physical impairment, mental impairment and lack of sophistication. Baker et al. (2005), refocusing on the individual and the self rather than the class, also strongly reflect a large and dominant literature within the consumer research academy on the psychology of the individual consumer (John, 1999) and in particular their cognitive competences and processes. This is echoed vigorously in Ringold’s (2005) interpretation of consumer vulnerability as an inability to ’navigate the marketplace‘ (p. 202) and as manifest in limitations in individuals’ decision-making capabilities. ‘Vulnerable consumers fail to understand their own preferences and/or lack knowledge, skills or freedom… to act on them’ (p. 202). Other allusions in the consumer vulnerability literature which concur with this individual psychological approach include mentions of consumer ‘powerlessness’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘coping strategies’ (Broderick et al., 2011), ‘lack of control’ (Baker et al., 2005), ‘consumer independence’ (Rinaldo, 2012) and loss of ‘competency and control’ (Baker, 2009).

Vulnerability to marketing messages

This psychological view of individual consumer vulnerability tends to visualise the lone consumer confronting the might of corporate marketing structures and in particular the information power imbalance that may ensue in the face of persuasive commercial messages. Friestad and Wright (1994, p. 1), for example, claim that, ‘one of a consumer’s primary tasks is to interpret and cope with marketers sales presentations and advertising’. Importantly for our endeavour, it is within this stream of research that the child consumer has very often been situated. Indeed, a great deal of research into children as vulnerable consumers has sought to understand whether children are capable of understanding marketing messages and what effect advertising and marketing has on them in the short and long term. The pinnacle of this approach is the child ‘consumer socialisation’ literature, which has sought to identify categorically at what age children have developed the various levels of cognitive capacity required to render them invulnerable to the pressures of marketing. For example, John’s (1999) landmark study, almost exclusively underpinned by cognitive, developmental psychology, aims principally to understand how individual children accrue – across predictable ‘age-stages’ (Piaget, 1960) – an increasing level of sophistication in interpreting marketing messages and operating competently and autonomously within the market place (e.g. Chaplin & John, 2007, 2010; John, 1999; Oates, Blades, & Gunter, 2002). This paradigmatic lens privileges a view of consumption as a force exerted by marketers on individual children and has tended to focus public debate on definitions of ‘fair’ marketing and specifically on pinpointing the age at which children are cognitively and socially capable of being ‘savvy’ and thus no longer ‘vulnerable’ to undue external commercial pressures (Cross, 2004; Langer, 2004).

Underpinned by this view, Ringold’s (2005) contribution to the vulnerability literature makes the point that individual adolescent consumers are not necessarily vulnerable because, she maintains, they have the cognitive competence to ‘protect’ themselves. According to Ringold (2005, p. 206),

essentially, adolescents appear to understand the nature and function of advertising, brands and product categories, retail environments, and prices as a product of demand and supply.

Ringold goes on to cite John’s (1999, p. 204) assertion that adolescents exhibit sophisticated decision-making skills and abilities ‘adapting strategies to ask in [an] adult-like manner’ and demonstrate a ‘fully developed understanding of value based on social meaning, significance and scarcity’. Ringold adds that ‘John’s findings are remarkably consistent with those of Berti and Bombi (1988) and a more recent review that emphasized children’s understanding of their own economic and financial behavior as well as their understanding of the “adult” economy (NCEE, 1999; Webley, 2005)’ (p. 206). This view conceptualises children as cognitive individuals who, once capable of understanding persuasive intent, are no longer vulnerable.

Of course, whilst this socialisation approach is based on individual cognitive competency it is also a highly class-based approach – thus posing a dilemma when trying to define consumer vulnerability in relation to children. Whilst treating the individual cognitive competence of children, it implies that all children are ‘automatically’ not vulnerable onc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – Consumer vulnerability
• 1 Children as vulnerable consumers: a first conceptualisation
• 2 Exploring spatial vulnerability: inequality and agency
• 3 Neither passive nor powerless: reframing economic vulnerability
• 4 Exploring the impact of packaging interactions on quality of life among older consumers
• 5 Understanding the vulnerability of blind consumers: adaptation in the marketplace, personal traits and coping strategies
• 6 Unpacking the interplay between organisational factors and the economic environment in the creation of consumer vulnerability
• 7 Poetic inquiry, consumer vulnerability: realities of quadriplegia
• 8 Poverty as we never knew it: THE source of vulnerability for most of humankind
• 9 A conversational approach to consumer vulnerability: performativity, representations, and storytelling
• 10 Vulnerable consumers in the ‘fourth age’: theoretical reflections upon the case of Sandra Bem
• Index