Consumer Vulnerability: Overview And Synthesis Of The Current State Of Knowledge And Future Service-Related Research Directions

Consumer vulnerability is understood as a consumer’s disadvantage in a marketplace, a lack of control against multiple marketplace forces, or a consumer’s generalized susceptibility to harm. The extant literature in marketing, consumer, and transformative service research is concerned with the conceptualization and exploration of consumer vulnerability. Despite the rising research interest in this area, a comprehensive understanding of the concept and an overview of the consumer vulnerability literature is lacking. To address this gap, this work draws on the service, marketing, and consumer research domains to consolidate the extant knowledge and identify future research directions. In a systematic literature review, 145 articles are identified and organized according to the three following themes: consumer vulnerability emergence, manifestation, and consequences. An organizing framework that maps the existing literature in the consumer vulnerability area is proposed, and future research potentials are discussed from a transformative service perspective.