Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the Journal of Consumer Research : A Curation and Research Agenda

Abstract

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has become ubiquitous in public and academic discourse. This is despite ongoing contests over definitions and the lack of a clear consensus about the relative importance (and even the appropriate order) of each component. For our purposes, diversity refers broadly to real or perceived physical or socio-cultural differences attributed to people and the representation of these differences in research, market spaces, and organizations. Equity refers to fairness in the treatment of people in terms of both opportunity and outcome. Inclusion refers to creating a culture that fosters belonging and incorporation of diverse groups and is usually operationalized as opposition to exclusion or marginalization. Taken together, DEI is typically accompanied by an axiological orientation toward procedural and distributive justice in organizations and institutions. In this curation, we highlight representative research published in the Journal of Consumer Research that directly and indirectly explores DEI issues primarily along the following axes of difference illustrated in figure 1: gender, age, and body; race and ethnicity; social class and social status; and religion and cultural identity. These, in many respects, define the visible contours of everyday life. They are at least representative and may not be exhaustive. In the figure, we depict them as distinct but connected “stations” where subjectivities and structures collide and cluster intersectionally, rather than as flat positions of longitude and latitude situated in Euclidian space. We also illustrate two overlapping lenses that focus attention on specific features of DEI’s ontology. Each promotes a situated perspective on the axes, with the “Marketplace structure, stigma, and consumer vulnerability” lens calibrated to structural issues associated with disparity and fairness in the marketplace. The “Consumer identity and agency, mobilization, and autonomy” lens is calibrated to agentic issues associated with identity and practice in everyday life. Although each lens promotes a situated perspective, what they bring into view is neither predetermined nor fixed. Either can bring into view a marketplace premised on equality that promotes well-being or one premised on inequality that promotes oppression. DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION IN CONSUMER RESEARCH A research curation necessarily involves imposing order on a disciplinary literature. But we begin by underlining our intent not to single out the small handful of articles we include as exclusive markers of quality. Rather, among the many that have contributed to a rich conversation in the journal, we highlight a representative set that exemplifies and draws the reader’s attention to certain features of each axis in figure 1. Given limited space, we provide a more comprehensive listing of representative work in the journal that touches on DEI issues in table 1. In addition, the reader will note that many articles we highlight are situated along multiple axes simultaneously, even when our discussion focuses on only one. We trust that upon reading this curation, the potential and generativity of existing DEI-oriented consumer research in the journal will be evident, as will be the need for consumer researchers to continue breaking new ground. Given its importance and seemingly natural connection to consumption and market systems, more research that cuts across numerous intersecting axes of difference and intentionally brings DEI implications to the fore is welcome and needed. EXAMPLES OF DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION (DEI) RESEARCH IN THE JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH Age Religion Age Body Race Ethnicity Body Gender Age Gender Status Race Culture Status Race Ethnicity Gender Age Age Religion Social class Age Sexual orientation Sexual orientation Health Age Gender Race Ethnicity Ethnicity Culture Ethnicity Culture Gender Gender Status Religion Age Social class Age Social class Body Gender Culture Ethnicity Cultural identity Age Social class Social class Status Religion Body Age Age Ethnicity Age Gender Social class Body Social class Social class Gender Cultural identity Ethnicity Cultural identity Social status Cultural identity Ethnicity Religion Social class Age Social class Social status Social class Social status NOTE.— This table provides a representative listing of a selection of JCR articles since 1983, exhibiting some connections to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Axes discussed in this article. This is not intended to be a complete or systematic review of JCR or the consumer behavior literature. We begin by highlighting Scaraboto and Fischer's (2013) work on Fatshionistas, which takes an inclusive axiological position in understanding the relationship between gender, body size, and consumption. Instead of problematizing women with heavier bodies as lesser consumers whose bodies need to be remedied by weight loss or dietary changes to participate in the market, the authors start with the premise that the market provides inadequate offerings for underserved consumers. They demonstrate how the stigmatization of body weight—exacerbated by beauty norms, fashion systems, and medicalized discourses that exclusively pathologize high body mass—contributes to the underserving of larger-sized women in fashion markets. The Fatshionistas’ market-changing project is notable because underserved consumers routinely choose not to pursue further market inclusion, due in part to internalized stigma and attenuated access to empowering cultural resources or strategies. But rather than accept inadequate market offerings and limit themselves to the “plus-size” niche, the participants in this study utilize their cultural and social capital to mobilize a collective identity and appropriate logics from adjacent fields such as the Fat Acceptance Movement to transform mainstream market offerings into something they could accept. Of course, such a remedy will not be available to every underserved consumer who is potentially stigmatized on any number of bases. The Fatshionistas seek to transform markets based on relative social advantages that exist in contradistinction to their stigmatized bodies. Barnhart and Peñaloza (2013) explore age as a relatively neglected identity that is often invisible in research and practice, despite increasingly older populations around the world. They show that consumption is never a solitary pursuit for people with diminished physical capabilities (due to aging, disability, or both). They investigate the role of what is often an ensemble of family members, service providers, and friends in providing support to aging adults as they lose independence. The ensemble shapes and co-produces aged consumer identities and inscribes and affirms consumption meanings. The authors show how this co-production of aged identity is fraught with contest and negotiation, based on tensions between aging consumers and their care ensemble, as well as misalignments between old age as a subject position and aging as an identity project shaped by dominant cultural discourses and understandings about “getting old.” They show that despite a cultural shift toward seeing aging more positively, the marketplace still largely constructs it as a stigmatized identity. They also highlight the ways that care can appear to enable aged consumers while actually repressing or discouraging them and stripping them of agency. They discuss ways co-consumers (and co-producers) of care ensembles can generate supportive, dignified, and positive meanings while providing assistance. In understanding the practices of consumers who may frequently need interpersonal or market-based assistance, one should include and acknowledge joint consumption and intersubjective production of consumer identities. In sum, this research finds that consumers’ gender, body type, or age may be treated as stigmatizing attributes that influence their marketplace experiences. Women in particular face unique and often magnified challenges based on body type norms. Furthermore, personal characteristics like disability or elderly status can diminish an individual’s transformative capacity by rendering them not merely less apt to be respected but also dependent on others’ resources to participate in the marketplace. A prominent perspective on race and ethnicity in DEI-oriented consumer research examines it through the lens of disadvantage or vulnerability. In that vein, Bone, Christensen, and Williams (2014) identify marketplace restrictions experienced by Black and Hispanic consumers seeking financial services. The authors lay bare the “systemic, chronic, and uncontrollable” restrictions on options these consumers confront based on service providers’ race and ethnic bias and the corresponding downstream impact on well-being and judgments about the marketplace. They employ a multi-method approach to uncovering insights into the experiences of Black and Hispanic consumers, who are not widely represented in consumer behavior research. This includes an innovative “mystery shopper” field study approach, where a multi-racial and multi-ethnic group of study confederates visit banks as loan seekers. They find that non-White (vs. White) loan seekers are treated more poorly by loan officers in objective terms. They were asked to provide more documentation and offered less information in response to their queries, acts of discretion with direct implications for the potential outcomes of the loan application process. They reveal the psychological impact of such restrictions on consumers through a series of depth interviews, in which non-White (vs. White) consumers correctly perceive a subordinated position that limits their ability to pursue self-directed goals and whatever freedoms the market might provide. They conduct an experiment to identify the underlying psychological mechanisms of this perception, namely diminished self-esteem and autonomy. That is, when Black and Hispanic consumers experience racial and ethnic discrimination in financial services, they liken the loan seeking experience to a hopeless battle. As decades of research have demonstrated, this harms their financial prospects and well-being. We note that discrimination in financial services also has the potential to harm the bank’s brand. Cultural identity is another perspective on DEI in consumer research. Using that lens, Rodas, John, and Torelli (2021) examine the perception of bicultural consumers, who internalize two cultural identities (e.g., Hispanic-American, Asian-American). The authors propose that bicultural (vs. monocultural) consumers will find “paradox brands,” which reflect contradictory meanings (e.g., a brand personality that is both rugged and sophisticated), relatively more appealing. In a series of experiments, including a field study of Latino and White participants in their respective community markets, they find that bicultural consumers tend to favor paradox brands. This preference for paradox brands is driven by cognitive flexibility. That is, bicultural consumers can be more or less cognitively flexible (with more or less integration among their multiple identities). As cognitive flexibility and cultural identity integration increase for bicultural consumers, so does their preference for paradox brands. For monocultural consumers (e.g., non-Hispanic White), priming cognitive flexibility also increases their favorability toward paradox brands. The underlying process provides important insights into how the lived experiences of bicultural consumers shape their perceptions of marketplace offerings. That is, bicultural consumers, based on internalizing multiple (sometimes contradictory) cultural identities, value and appreciate brands with multiple identities. 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