Explore the vast range of titles available.

Companies are more frequently taking public stands on often controversial social, political, economic, and environmental issues. Despite the importance of the topic, research on understanding the role of companies in societal change through activism is scarce. Using institutional theory, this article defines corporate activism as a company’s willingness to take a stand on social, political, economic, and environmental issues to create societal change by influencing the attitudes and behaviors of actors in its institutional environment. This framework conceptualizes corporate activism as a response to barriers that hinder the solution of an issue. These barriers stem from institutional actors’ attitudes and behaviors toward the issue, and corporate activism can address these barriers through influence and change strategies that can target the institutional environment “top-down” or “bottom-up.” This framework further investigates how the identity orientation of the company facilitates corporate activism. This research has important implications for managers, policy makers, and any other agents that aim to facilitate social change.

This session investigates how marginalized consumer groups gain legitimacy through marketing and consumption, with a special focus on the LGBTQi community. The papers approach this question using a variety of methodologies and a diverse range of samples, including LGBTQ-t communities, allies, and marketing professionals. Understanding the legitimation of marginalized groups is of increasing importance to society in general and marketing specifically. In sum, this work contributes to the literature on gender in advertising. There has been little research focus on LGTQ advertising and sexual and gender minorities, and much of this work has focused on heterosexual response to LGBTQ advertising. Additionally, there is little research in advertising literature that examines best practices to reaching LGBTQ communities. The present work addresses this gap both by identifying the importance of inclusively and authenticity in advertising messages targeted to LGBTQ communities, and defining what inclusive and authentic advertising is to LGBTQ consumers--nuanced representations, intentional visibility effects, and universal messaging.

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community has commonly been considered a Dream Market segment for mainstream marketers in the United States (Penaloza 1996), with a purchasing power nearing $1 trillion (Green 2016). Within this community bi+ consumers make up the largest segment: about 40% (Pew Research Center 2013). Bi+ individuals are those that experience attraction to more than one gender (Burchard 2006). Despite being the largest group within the LGBTQ community, this social category remains understudied in consumer research. In response to this oversight, this study explores the consumer behavior of bi+ individuals, with an emphasis on how they interact with marketing communications and servicescapes. Given the scant academic knowledge of this social category, we employ a grounded-theory approach (Charmaz 2014; Glaser and Strauss 1967). We sampled twenty-two consumers who self-identify as bi+. They were recruited through LGBT Resource Centers on two different college campuses, one city Pride Center, informal networks, and snowball sampling. Informants ages ranged from 19 to 48, with interviews lasting between 25 and 95 minutes. Interviews covered informants generic experiences in the marketplace. They also included a projective section (Heisley and Levy 1991), in which the first author used mainstream LGBTQ-themed ads to further probe participants to share their experiences as consumers. Interviews were tape recorded and transcribed. Analysis relied on data-driven coding, the constant comparison method, memoing, and an iterative engagement with the literature on representation and stigma (Charmaz 2014; Spiggle 1994). We developed themes to represent informants distinctive consumer experiences. Bi+ individuals are the largest group in the LGBTQ community. Whereas one may think that this leads to them being well accepted, instead we find that they experience stigma both inside and outside the community. This dual stigma is shaped by two gender normative discourses. One is heteronormativity, a long-standing notion that prescribes as normal people who have sexual interest in what is culturally construed as the opposite sex (Meyer 2010). The other is homonormativity, a more recent expectation that emerged with the gay rights movement and further marginalizes queer identities that do not fit into traditional gender norms (Ng 2013). Bi+ identities are not visible in either heteronormative or homonormative representations. Bi+ individuals cope with this multi-layered stigmatization in two main ways, by seeking representation and confronting representation in the marketplace. Bi+ consumers look for representation of their identity in marketing communications. For example, Eleanor seeks out media that she feels offer positive representations of lesbian women. This tangential identification offers bi+ individuals the ability to feel a sense of belonging in the LGBTQ community. Bi+ consumers also actively search for representation. For example, Suzanne has started a LGBTQ book club. According to her, bi+ literary representations are not as vivid as visual depictions, or as easy to find as a bestseller, but they help individuals find some way of seeing their identity represented. In seeking representation, bi+ consumers find a sense of self that is often invisible in mainstream marketing communications. When confronting negative representations or invisibility, bi+ consumers are critical when interpreting ads and in their purchase behavior. Cherrie notes that anytime two women are pictured together they are assumed to be representing lesbianism, not bisexuality, and are hypersexualized. Jess recalls an experience when she and her partner attended a Pride event in the downtown part of their city and needed a place to stay overnight. Seeing the rainbow colors that signify Pride on the Marriott hotel, Jess felt secure in staying there. By using community signifiers, Marriott signaled that it is a legitimate brand of the LGBTQ community (Kates 2004), or a company that offers services to the community such as a sense of safety. Informants educate themselves about legitimate brands by paying attention to marketing communications, community initiatives, and how the brand ranks on workplace equality. These efforts help bi+ consumers avoid stigma and vulnerability (Rowe and Rowe 2015). In short, bi+ individuals hold a unique position, at the boundary between straight society and the LGBTQ community. Goffman (1963) discusses the ways in which members of a subordinate group face stigma at the hands of the dominant group. However, bi+ individuals make up a stigmatized identity status between the dominant (straight) and subordinate (LGBTQ) groups. They must cling to the closest representations they can find of bisexuality in mass media and patronize places that only occasionally embrace their marginalized identities. These findings offer insights for marketing academics and practitioners. First, businesses that wish to cater to the LGBTQ community may be unaware that the largest portion of the community feels unwelcome and unsafe in their establishments. Informants shared experiences of violence in mainstream establishments as well as those that serve the LGBTQ community. This work shines a light on a unique type of dual stigma that has implications for all service providers, especially those in the LGBTQ community. Second, consumers with bi+ identities challenge representational norms as they interpret advertising messages and firm motives. Informants are critical of negative representations and erasure of their identities (Bennett et al. 2016). Bi+ identities have been stereotyped as sexually greedy and non-monogamous (Meyer 2010). Therefore, an advertising norm, sex, does not sell within this demographic. Advertisers seeking to tap into this segment of consumers should educate themselves on community values and incorporate them into their marketing communications. While this project explores the consumption behavior of individuals with bi+ identities, further work must examine the consumption of other in-between identities, such as biracial and bicultural consumers. Bi+ individuals find themselves walking a tightrope at the boundary between two communities to which they should belong yet experience stigma at the hands of each. Additionally, bi+ individuals make up a distinct market segment, yet experience either negative, stereotypical portrayals or all out erasure in the marketplace. Similarly, biracial consumers live in two social worlds, experience invisibility of their unique identity, and make up a viable market segment (Harrison, Thomas, and Cross 2015). Future work must explore the similarities and differences between these multiple identities and further develop the notion of dual stigma.

While consumer diversity continues to grow in importance, evidence suggests that firms have yet to align their thoughts and activities with diverse consumers’ needs. This is especially true for consumers who have a hidden stigmatized identity. On the one hand, consumers with such concealable stigmatized identities must make the decision to reveal or conceal their identity in a variety of situations, including service environments. On the other hand, many service providers are working to offer inclusive service environments yet struggle to do so. Therefore, this ethnographic dissertation has two objectives: to 1) conceptualize practices unique to consumers with a concealable stigmatized identity as they interact (or not) in the marketplace, and 2) document the decision-making process of service providers who seek to create and maintain an inclusive servicescape. Concerning the first objective, I sampled bi+ consumers; they make up the largest portion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus community, yet experience stigma in many service environments. Thus, bi+ consumers provide a rich context for understanding how consumers with a concealable stigmatized identity experience service environments. Findings suggest that bi+ consumers conceal or reveal their stigmatized identity, at individual and collective levels. Due to their concealable identity, bi+ consumers co-create and map spaces that offer them refuge. As a result, this study examines an understudied phenomenon, consumer disclosure of such identities to service providers. Regarding the second objective, I sampled service providers who demonstrate some commitment to inclusion. Service providers who offer inclusive servicescapes are becoming more common. Findings suggest that service providers create an inclusive “vibe” with their physical layout, point-of-sale communications and interactions, and external communications. Service providers maintain inclusivity by dealing with ongoing challenges to their inclusive space. They do this by hiring diverse staff, training them on inclusion, and coping with the unpredictable. When a challenge occurs, service providers can successfully recover their inclusive space by taking a community-based approach to recovery.