Short Abstract (please see the Full Paper submission and Tables and Figures document in the next field)
Whereas research on consumer vulnerability has examined disadvantaged consumers in a number of contexts, the specific challenges faced by hundreds of millions of migrant workers as consumers in the marketplace remain largely understudied. Using a theories-in-use approach, we advance research on consumer vulnerability by building new theory and developing a conceptual model from a contextualized, empirical investigation of marketplace vulnerabilities experienced by internal migrant workers in India (Study 1). By focusing on migrant workers as a consumer population that faces a distinct set of vulnerabilities and intersectionalities, our research enriches the growing body of scholarship on disadvantaged consumers experiencing vulnerability, and on the design and delivery of products and services to mitigate vulnerability. We introduce the construct of family-centered upward mobility optimism, a consumer motivation that drives migrant workers’ intergenerational aspirations for upward mobility in the marketplace. Our findings identify six service categories where migrant workers experience vulnerabilities (i.e., breadth), and the intensity of these vulnerabilities (i.e., depth), to help direct targeted, mitigation efforts. We develop three digital innovation pathways to mitigate vulnerabilities faced by migrant workers as consumers and validate them in a Delphi study with experts (Study 2), extracting detailed recommendations for service firms and policy makers.
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