Financial Insecurity and Deprivation Life Satisfaction, Self Determination, and Consumption Adequacy at the Bottom of the Pyramid How Economic Contractions and Expansions Affect Expenditure Patterns Living U.S. Capitalism: The Normalization of Credit/Debt Financial Deprivation Prompts Consumers to Seek Scarce Goods How Marketplace Performances Produce Interdependent Status Games and Contested Forms of Symbolic Capital

Abstract

Consumers worldwide are struggling with serious economic challenges. In virtually every nation, the disparity is growing between the wealthy and the poor. Consumer researchers are responding by trying to understand how consumers experience and cope with financial insecurity and deprivation. They are using an array of psychological, economic, and sociological theories coupled with methodological approaches ranging from experiments to econometrics to ethnographies. At one extreme is research that examines the “bottom of the pyramid” and attempts to understand factors that may mitigate the consequences of dire poverty. At the other extreme is research that considers how consumers who are not themselves currently facing diminished resources may modify their consumption behaviors when they perceive that others are spending less due to recessions or economic hardships. The research within this collection sheds new light on causes of financial insecurity such as the normalization, at a cultural level, of the use of credit and of indebtedness. It further highlights the consequences of perceived financial deprivation. For instance, people who regard themselves as financially deprived relative to peers may respond by seeking to attain goods that are in scarce supply. Contemporary consumer research also highlights strategies that may enable some who are born into poverty to attain greater financial security. For example, poor migrants to global cities may attain not only economic but also vital social and cultural capital through ongoing interactions as service providers to affluent consumers. As a whole, this research moves us closer to understanding the pernicious roots and pervasive consequences of financial deprivation and helps us to appreciate the complex challenges of ameliorating its impacts. This special collection begins with an article by Martin and Hill, who assembled data from more than 77,000 consumers across 51 developing and less developed nations to explore the link between societal poverty and life …