Lisa Smith

2019 - to Present: PhD

How do socially inclusive marketing initiatives impact the wellbeing of gender-diverse consumers?

When researching equality and diversity in marketing, many scholars have looked at ‘multicultural marketing’ or ‘ethnic marketing’, (the two of which appear to be intertwined (Moro et al., 2019), and predominantly refer to marketing to racial minorities (Licsandru and Cui, 2018; Peñaloza, 2018; Licsandru and Cui, 2019)), LGBTQ+ (Oakenfull, McCarthy and Greenlee, 2008) and disabled consumers (de Faria and Casotti, 2019).  Many studies are framed by using marketing as a tool to promote social inclusion as an antidote for social exclusion (Alm and Guttormsen, 2021) rather than a route to increase consumer welfare including well-being (Mick, 2006; Visconti et al., 2014).  This is something that the Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) paradigm seeks to address (Mick, 2006; Demangeot et al., 2019), and will be the paradigm utilised throughout this paper. 

There are a number of minority groups within society, many of which have attracted stigma (Goffman, 1963), for example racial minorities (El Hazzouri and Hamilton, 2019) and homosexual individuals (Tsai, 2011).  One emerging stigmatised minority is that of individuals who identify with a gender differing from their sex assigned at birth (gender diverse) (Mintel, 2019).  This minority includes individuals identifying as non-binary, gender fluid, androgenous, transgender (trans), and any other variation on gender (Butler, 2006).  Hate crimes and discrimination are prominent (and rising) for such individuals based on the stigma attracted to diverse gender identity (Bachmann and Gooch, 2017; Bachmann and Gooch, 2018; Hunte, 2021) and often seek assistance from blogs and social media sites when contemplating entering the physical retail landscape (especially in relation to fashion) (Leonard, 2015; Day, 2019; Carbone, 2021). 

This project aims to understand the narrative surrounding socially inclusive campaigns targeted towards gender-diverse consumers and understand the impact that this has upon the wellbeing of such consumers.