A qualitative study of subsistence consumer-merchants (SCMs) in Chennai, India, reveals that they sustain relationships in three interdependent relationship domains: vendor, customer, and family. Relying on long interview data, the authors interpret the subsystems as closed-loop and self-sustaining relationships. Subsystems are managed by SCMs through buying and selling activities alongside the receiving and granting of credit, and these activities engender three facets of commitment: continuance, affective, and normative. Different facets of commitment underlie the relationships in the three subsystems. Through different role-based activities, SCMs enhance or diminish commitment levels to keep all three types of relationships viable while moving their scarce time, energy, and financial resources into the domain with the greatest need. Activities and the management of commitment are performed within 24-hour business cycles, with negligible resources, and in highly unstable environments, providing valuable theoretical insights and managerial implications that guide recommendations for firms wanting to serve subsistence markets successfully.

No abstract

A study of the decision making and coping of functionally illiterate consumers reveals cognitive predilections, decision heuristics and trade-offs, and coping behaviors that distinguish them from literate consumers. English-as-a-second-language and poor, literate consumers are used as comparison groups. The strong predilection for concrete reasoning and overreliance on pictographic information of functionally illiterate consumers suggest that companies should reconsider how they highlight the added benefits of new products or the differentiating aspects of existing product offerings across channels such as advertising, in-store displays, and positioning. Concrete reasoning also has strong implications for the execution and presentation of price promotions through coupons and in-store discounts, because many consumers are unable to process the information and thus avoid discounted products. Finally, the elaborate coping mechanisms identified and the loyalty that functionally illiterate consumers display toward companies that are sensitive to their literacy and numeracy deficiencies reveal a potential for loyalty programs aimed at this population that do not involve price discounts.

In this article, the authors explore the origins and evolution of product markets from a sociocognitive perspective. Product markets are defined as socially constructed knowledge structures (Le., product conceptual systems) that are shared among producers and consumers-sharing that enables consumers and producers to interact in the market. The fundamental thesis is that product markets are neither imposed nor orchestrated by producers or consumers but evolve from producer--eonsumer interaction feedback effects. Starting as unstable, incomplete, and disjointed conceptual systems held by market actors-which is revealed by the cacophony of uses, claims, and product standards that characterize emerging product markets-product markets become coherent as a result of consumers and producers making sense of each other's behaviors. The authors further argue that the sensemaking process is revealed in the stories that consumers and producers tell each other in published media, such as industry newspapers and consumer magazines, which the authors use as data sources. Specific hypotheses pertaining to the use of product category labels in published sources and the acceptability of different product category members throughout the development process are tested for the minivan market between 1982 and 1988. The findings suggest that category stabilization causes significant differences between consumers and producers in how they use product category labels for emerging and preexisting categories. The findings also show that, as stabilization occurs around a category prototype, the acceptability of particular models changes without any physical changes to the models. T he notion of "product markets" is fundamental to marketing theory. Product markets are regarded as the meeting grounds for buyers and sellers of goods (e.g., Robinson 1933). They are the bounded arenas in which prices and quantities for substitutable goods and services are negotiated by consumers and producers and are separated from other bounded arenas by gaps in demand between the product groupings. Considerable attention has been given to product market structure and the boundaries between product categories from cognitivist (e.g., Day and Negundadi 1994; Wedel and Steenkamp 1991*) and organizational (e.g., Myers and Tauber 1977*;Porter 1980) perspectives. Research also has attended to consumer and producer roles in defining product market structure (e.g., Day, Shocker, and Srivastava 1979;Ratneshwar and Shocker 1991) and the dynamic forces at play within product market boundaries (e.g., Dickson 1992). The study of product markets remains important as the marketing field ponders questions such as how markets function and evolve, whether market bound-*Authors were limited in the number of references used in text, therefore, those references marked with an * are available at www.

No abstract

Consumer research holds potential for expanding society's understanding of how people experience poverty and mechanisms for poverty alleviation. Capitalizing on this potential, however, will require more exploration of how consumption experiences shape individual and collective well-being among the poor. This article proposes a framework for transformative consumer research focused on felt deprivation and power within the lived experience of poverty. The framework points to consumer choice, product/service experiences, consumer culture, marketplace forces, and consumption capabilities as research streams with potential to help alleviate poverty. Future research in these areas will expand pathways for transforming the lives of the poor by alleviating stress, engaging marketplace institutions, fulfilling life aspirations, leveraging trust and social capital, and facilitating creativity and adaptation.

No abstract

This research explores the influence of consumers’ body‐related information on beliefs and purchase intentions toward products for which the consumption experience is significantly and directly determined by body‐related information (e.g., feel, fit, sense of safety) when the products are bought in body‐absent purchase environments such as the Internet. We examine the effects of consumers’ body esteem (i.e., like or dislike of one's body) and body boundary aberration (variation in the perceived location of the edges of one's body) in the context of apparel purchases that are made on the Internet. Body esteem had a positive influence on involvement with apparel, and body boundary aberration had a negative influence on consumers’ overall concern with the fit of apparel. Involvement with apparel and overall concern with fit, in turn, significantly influenced consumers’ intentions to purchase apparel online. Consequently, consumers with high body esteem were less likely to buy on the Internet and those with high body boundary aberration were more likely to buy.