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Although marketers increasingly rely on customer data, firms have little insight into the ramifications of such data use and do not know how to prevent negative effects. Data management efforts may heighten customers' vulnerability worries or create real vulnerability. Using a conceptual framework grounded in gossip theory, the authors link customer vulnerability to negative performance effects. Three studies show that transparency and control in firms' data management practices can suppress the negative effects of customer data vulnerability. Experimental manipulations reveal that mere access to personal data inflates feelings of violation and reduces trust. An event study of data security breaches affecting 414 public companies also confirms negative effects, as well as spillover vulnerabilities from rival firms' breaches, on firm performance. Severity of the breach hurts the focal firm but helps the rival firm, which provides some insight into mixed findings in prior research. Finally, a field study with actual customers of 15 companies across three industries demonstrates consistent effects across four types of customer data vulnerability and confirms that violation and trust mediate the effects of data vulnerabilities on outcomes.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative perspective to the article on consumer vulnerability recently published in this journal by Russell-Bennett et al. (2024). Design/methodology/approach The approach is collegial but firm in its analysis of their discussion about how vulnerable consumers feel and react, as offered without appropriate review and details from previous research. Findings The perspective given by the authors is found to lack sufficient substance and foundation in the consumer vulnerability literature across several leading journals in the field. Alternative interpretations are presented and articulated. Originality/value All ideas expressed as a counter to their arguments come from decades of experiences working with vulnerable peoples across multiple contexts and communities.

Purpose The increasing financial burden and complexity of health-care services, exacerbated by factors such as an ageing population and the rise of chronic conditions, necessitate comprehensive and integrated care approaches. While co-created service design has proven valuable in transforming some service industries, its application to the health-care industry is not well understood. This study aims to examine how health consumers are involved in health-care service co-creation. Design/methodology/approach The study searched 11 electronic databases for peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2019. Additionally, hand searches of reference lists from included studies, Google© citation searches and searches for grey literature were conducted. The Whittemore and Knafl integrative framework guided the systematic review, and Callahan’s 6 Ws framework was used to extract data from the included articles, facilitating comparisons. Findings The authors identified 21 articles, mainly from the UK, North America and Australia. Despite the need for more research, findings reveal limited and geographically narrow empirical studies with restricted theory and method applications. From these findings, the authors constructed a conceptual model to enhance nuanced understanding. Originality/value This study offers four contributions. First, it introduces the Health Service Design Transformation Model for Comprehensive Consumer Co-Creation, illustrating health consumers’ multifaceted roles in shaping services. Second, consumer vulnerabilities in co-creating services are identified, linked to diverse consumer groups, power dynamics and decision complexity. Third, this study suggests broadening participant inclusion may enhance consumer-centricity, inclusivity and innovation in service design. Finally, the research agenda explores consumer experiences, organizational dynamics, value outcomes and co-creation theory for health-care service advancement.

Purpose This paper offers key methodological insights for scholars new to qualitative transformative service research (TSR). Design/methodology/approach The paper offers ten lessons on conducting qualitative TSR that the authors have gleaned, across more than 30 years (combined) of qualitative inquiries and engagement with other scholars conducting and publishing what may be now termed TSR. Findings The key lessons of conducting qualitative TSR work include: displaying ethics in conducting and presenting qualitative TSR; preparing for and understanding the research context; considering design, mechanics and technical elements; being participant-centric; co-creating meaning with participants; seeking/using diverse types of data; analyzing data in an iterative fashion, including/respecting multiple perspectives; presenting evidence in innovative ways; and looking inward at every stage of the research process. Social implications The paper provides implications for addressing the vulnerability of both research participants and researchers with the aim of improving research methods that lead to improved service research and well-being outcomes. Originality/value Clearly, the complexity and importance of the social problems TSR scholars investigate – poverty, war, disaster recovery, inadequate healthcare – requires preparation for how to engage in transformative service research. Importantly, the paper fits with recent persistent calls within the broader literature of services marketing to: use service research and design to create “uplifting changes” within society and broaden the paradigmatic underpinnings of service research to include dynamic, process-oriented approaches, which capture the dynamic and relational aspects of service ecosystems.

PurposeIn the online environment, consumers increasingly feel vulnerable due to firms’ expanding capabilities of collecting and using their data in an unsanctioned manner. Drawing from gossip theory, this research focuses on two key suppressors of consumer vulnerability: transparency and control. Previous studies conceptualize transparency and control from rationalistic approaches that overlook individual experiences and present a unidimensional conceptualization. This research aims to understand how individuals interpret transparency and control concerning privacy vulnerability in the online environment. Additionally, it explores strategic approaches to communicating the value of transparency and control.Design/methodology/approachAn interpretivism paradigm and phenomenology were adopted in the research design. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 41 participants, including consumers and experts, and analyzed through thematic analysis.FindingsThe findings identify key conceptual dimensions of transparency and control by adapting justice theory. They also reveal that firms can communicate assurance, functional, technical and social values of transparency and control to address consumer vulnerability.Originality/valueThis research makes the following contributions to the data privacy literature. The findings exhibit multidimensional and comprehensive conceptualizations of transparency and control, including user, firm and information perspectives. Additionally, the conceptual framework combines empirical insights from both experiencers and observers to offer an understanding of how transparency and control serve as justice mechanisms to effectively tackle the issue of unsanctioned transmission of personal information and subsequently address vulnerability. Lastly, the findings provide strategic approaches to communicating the value of transparency and control.

Purpose Through adoption of the psycho-emotional model of disability, this study aims to offer consumer research insight into how the marketplace internally oppresses and psycho-emotionally disables consumers living with impairment. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws insight from the interview data of a wider two-year interpretive research study investigating access barriers to marketplaces for consumers living with impairment. Findings The overarching contribution offers to consumer research insight into how the marketplace internally oppresses and psycho-emotionally disables consumers living with impairment. Further contributions offered by this paper: unearth the emotion of fear to be central to manifestations of psycho-emotional disability; reveal a broader understanding of the marketplace practices, and core perpetrators, that psycho-emotionally disable consumers living with impairment; and uncover psycho-emotional disability to extend beyond the context of impairment. Research limitations/implications This study adopts a UK-only perspective. However, findings uncovered that the model of psycho-emotional disability has wider theoretical value to marketing and consumer research beyond the context of impairment. Practical implications The insight offered into the precise marketplace practices that disable consumers living with impairment leads this paper to call for a revising of disability training within marketplace and service contexts. Originality/value Extending current consumer research and consumer vulnerability research on disability, the empirical adoption of the psycho-emotional model of disability is a fruitful framework for extrapolating insight into marketplace practices that internally oppress and psycho-emotionally disable consumers living with impairment.

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a global social problem that includes using coercive control strategies, including financial abuse, to manage and entrap an intimate partner. Financial abuse restricts or removes another person’s access to financial resources and their participation in financial decisions, forcing their financial dependence, or alternatively exploits their money and economic resources for the abuser’s gain. Banks have some stake in the prevention of and response to IPV, given their unique role in household finances and growing recognition an equitable society is one inclusive of consumers with vulnerabilities. Institutional practices may unwittingly enable abusive partners’ financial control as seemingly benign regulatory policy and tools of household money management exacerbate unequal power dynamics. To date, business ethicists have tended to take a broader view of banker professional responsibility, especially post-Global Financial Crisis. Little scholarship examines if, when and how a bank should respond to societal issues, such as IPV, traditionally outside their ‘remit’ of banking services. I extend existing understandings of ‘systemic harm’ to conceptualise the bank’s role in addressing economic harm in the context of IPV, viewing IPV and financial abuse through a consumer vulnerability lens to translate theory into practice. Two in-depth stories of financial abuse further illustrate the active role banks can and should take in combating financial abuse.

Internet advertising, while enabling unprecedented commercial reach, has become a pervasive vehicle for deceptive practices that inflict measurable harm on consumers. This study empirically investigates the structural relationships between internet advertising falsity and consumer harm by integrating analyses of the mediating role of consumer cognitive processes and the moderating role of consumer vulnerability within a unified structural framework. Survey data were collected from 600 adult consumers with online purchase experience in the Republic of Korea—an advanced digital economy characterized by exceptionally high mobile-commerce penetration, mature e-commerce infrastructure, and evolving digital consumer protection regulation—and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS 24.0, supplemented by Hayes’ PROCESS macro Model 59 for conditional process analysis. All 13 hypotheses were supported, although path magnitudes varied substantially across falsity dimensions and mediator pathways—with direct effects ranging from β = 0.156 (false scarcity) to β = 0.224 (performance exaggeration), and indirect effects dominated by the risk assessment distortion pathway. Among the four sub-dimensions of advertising falsity—factual misrepresentation, performance exaggeration, price deception, and false scarcity—performance exaggeration exerted the strongest direct effect on consumer harm. The three cognitive mediators—perceived advertising credibility, risk assessment distortion, and purchase decision pressure—all demonstrated significant partial mediation, with risk assessment distortion emerging as the most powerful indirect pathway. All four consumer vulnerability dimensions—digital literacy level, demographic vulnerability, prior victimization experience, and impulsive buying tendency—significantly moderated the falsity–harm relationship, with low-digital-literacy consumers experiencing approximately 1.7 times the adverse effect of high-literacy counterparts. Moderated mediation analysis revealed that the conditional indirect effect for the high-vulnerability group was approximately 2.3 times that of the low-vulnerability group, confirming that the cognitive harm mechanism intensifies systematically for vulnerable consumers. These findings advance consumer vulnerability theory in the digital context and offer evidence-based implications for consumer protection policy, platform governance, and digital literacy education.

This study utilizes the National Financial Well-Being Survey (NFWS) from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to investigate the profiles of American consumers who experience mistreatment or a type of fraud in financial services (compromised accounts). An integrative consumer vulnerability framework was used as the theoretical framework to examine how disadvantaged consumer characteristics and vulnerable consumer characteristics are associated with mistreatment and compromised accounts. Consumers in vulnerable states, due to low financial capability, cognitive decline, material hardships, financial shocks, and more exposure to various financial services, were more likely to report experiencing mistreatment and having their financial accounts compromised. Consumers from higher socio-economic status were more likely to have been victims of mistreatment and compromised accounts in financial services. These findings offer implications for consumer financial education and protection.

The aim of this work is to find out if a customer's vulnerability to fake reviews can influence customer engagement, intention to adopt information and propensity to purchase on online review sites in order to safeguard the online customer experience from malicious marketing actions. This is very important today since fake reviews can unconsciously condition the purchasing and consumption choices of internet users. Despite the importance attributed to customer vulnerability as a determining factor in the adoption of malicious marketing practices, past research has not yet verified whether this vulnerability has any influence on the engagement processes or on the intentions of the readers of reviews during online decision-making processes. To address this gap in the research, this study proposes to test a multiple regression model that measures the relationship between vulnerability factors, customer engagement, the adoption of information and the purchase intention. A survey was administered to a sample of 183 American online review readers. https://www.yelp.com was chosen as a platform for restaurant reviews and hypothesis testing. The results show that vulnerability is a factor that acts both on customer engagement during the reading of review websites and on the customer’s choices. The characteristics of the review messages also seem to have an effect, above all on the intention to adopt the information. This study confirms the importance of testing the veracity of online reviews on review sites, especially since they affect customer engagement and purchase intentions.