Designing retail spaces for inclusion

This article delineates the existence of consumer groups with vulnerabilities, discusses the lack of attention paid to the topic of vulnerable consumers, and calls for both retailing academics and practitioners to work toward constructing frameworks for research and service provision that enhance the welfare of vulnerable consumers. Extant theories and frameworks comprising the foundational knowledge of the retailing and consumer service disciplines have largely explained the marketplace experiences of consumers, without investigating the needs of vulnerable consumer segments. Because the larger consumer base does not necessarily generalize to vulnerable consumers, little is known about how these specific groups of vulnerable consumers can realize the full value inherent in retail exchanges.