This paper examines the service experience in an online support community of consumers to understand the nature of social support and how it is experienced and enacted by vulnerable consumers. Design/methodology/approach: A netnographic study was conducted to examine vulnerable consumers' participation in an online support group for weight management. The Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) program was used and additionally data were coded using open coding. A hybrid approach to data analysis was undertaken using inductive and deductive methods. Findings: The findings suggest online social support groups can be used as an online "third place" to support vulnerable consumers, with vulnerable groups engaging with the online support group differently to those in the normal weight group. Social support was also found to be bi-directional in nature. Research limitations/implications: This study only investigates one online support group. To gain deeper insights other support groups should be examined over a longer period of time. Practical implications: This paper demonstrates that transformative services have the hidden capacity to optimize their services to enable vulnerable consumers to co-create social support in a safe place, thus providing a non-judgmental environment with the end goal of improving their health and wellbeing. Social implications: Findings reveal how services can enable marginalization and stigmatization to be overcome and inspire social action through the use of online support groups. 2 Originality/value: This research is unique in that it used a netnography approach to examine how vulnerable consumers such as the overweight and obese interact in an online service setting, reducing self-report bias and allowing for a natural research setting.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a state-of-the-art review of research on consumers experiencing vulnerability to describe the current situation of the consumers experiencing vulnerability literature and develop an up-to-date synthesised definition of consumers experiencing vulnerability.
Design/methodology/approach
This systematic review, guided by the PRISMA framework, takes a multi-disciplinary approach to identify 310 articles published between 2010 and 2019 examining consumers experiencing vulnerability. Descriptive analysis of the data is undertaken in combination with a thematic and text mining approach using Leximancer software.
Findings
A definition of consumers experiencing vulnerability is developed- “unique and subjective experiences where characteristics such as states, conditions and/or external factors lead to a consumer experiencing a sense of powerlessness in consumption settings”. The findings reveal consumers experiencing vulnerability have often been classified using a uni-dimensional approach (opposed to a multi-dimensional), focussing on one factor of vulnerability, the most prevalent of these being economic and age factors. A lack of research has examined consumers experiencing vulnerability based upon geographical remoteness, gender and sexual exploitation.
Originality/value
This paper is one of the first to examine consumers experiencing vulnerability using a systematic approach and text mining analysis to synthesise a large set of articles, which subsequently reduces the potential for researchers’ interpretative bias. Further, it is the first to generate a data-driven definition of consumers experiencing vulnerability. It provides targeted recommendations to allow further scholarly, policy and practical contributions to this area.
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