Empowerment in marketing: synthesis, critical review, and agenda for future research

We comprehensively review consumer empowerment, which has received increasing attention from academics and has given rise to inconsistent theoretical frameworks. Building on a multidisciplinary approach and a review of power models, we begin with a conceptualization of empowerment, identifying the concept’s contours and origins. Then, we show how multidisciplinary advancements influence the marketing discipline through an assessment of the empowerment literature. We reveal important knowledge gaps on the topic related to different theoretical orientations and various levels of analysis and context. We then propose an organizing framework to help understand the underlying mechanisms induced in psychological empowerment by changes in the market structure and technological shifts, consumer-to-firm, state-to-consumer, and firm-to-consumer deliberate actions. Our critical review of the marketing literature reveals the limits of prior research, and we suggest directions for future theoretical and empirical research on the consumer empowerment theme.