Resilience and well‐being production among vulnerable consumers facing systematic constraints

• Author: Rongwei Chu,Yimin Huang,Junjun Cheng
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12333
• Date: 01 December 2020
• Published date: 01 December 2020

ARTICLE

Resilience and well-being production among

vulnerable consumers facing systematic

constraints

Yimin Huang

1

| Junjun Cheng

2

| Rongwei Chu

3

1

Department of Marketing, Macquarie

Business School, Macquarie University,

Sydney, Australia

2

SHU-UTS SILC Business School,

Shanghai University, Shanghai, China

3

Department of Marketing, School of

Management, Fudan University,

Shanghai, China

Correspondence

Junjun Cheng, SHU-UTS SILC Business

School, Shanghai University, Shanghai,

China.

Email: chengjunjuncjj@gmail.com

Funding information

Shanghai Planning Office of Philosophy

and Social Science, Grant/Award

Number: 2019BGL034; National Natural

Science Foundation of China, Grant/

Award Number: 71832002

Abstract

This paper explores how vulnerable consumers within

systematic constraints of economic inequality, institu-

tional barriers, and social segregation in an urban envi-

ronment cope with their vulnerabilities to achieve their

well-being. Taking China's internal migrant workers as

a research context, our study examines their vulnerable

experiences and reveals the impact of systematic con-

straints on migrant workers' self-perception, interpreta-

tion, and actions. It discovers a staged process through

which migrant workers acquire resilience to optimize

life satisfaction by fulfilling a sense of control over their

migration life. Through a situated approach to capture

the contextual impact of systematic constraints on vul-

nerability experiences and the construction of resilient

pathways to achieve well-being, this paper puts forward

critical welfare issues such as inclusive marketplace,

social capital, and community empowerment which

are important to migrants' social integration and capa-

bility building. This calls for more coordinated efforts

to promote effective resilience building and sustained

well-being among resource-constrained consumers.

KEYWORDS

resilience, systematic constraints, well-being

Received: 28 March 2019 Revised: 21 August 2020 Accepted: 7 September 2020

DOI: 10.1111/joca.12333

© 2020 American Council on Consumer Interests

1328 J Consum Aff. 2020;54:1328–1354.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joca

The phenomenon of massive internal migration triggered by urbanization in developing coun-

tries has been long ignored by researchers (Mahajan, 2016). Through rural to urban migration

it was predicted that urban population size would be doubled by 2050 (Adamo and de

Sherbinin, 2011). The economists have resonated that migration is an escape route out of pov-

erty (Narayan et al., 2009). Within Chinese context, migrants are or have been migrating from

poor villages to urban cities to pursue remunerative livelihood opportunities in urban places.

Yet, they are experiencing discrimination and denial during the movement, largely due to a lack

of urban hukou, a social system linked with the entitlement and benefits for residents in China.

These chronic experiences have produced a state of internal powerlessness and exclusion from

the dominant marketplace among internal migrants. It is imperative for them to be resilient to

be able to cope with the adversity they face in an urban environment. While there is an emerg-

ing scholarship on the issue of systematic constraints and consumer vulnerability (Bone

et al., 2014; Huang et al., 2019), there remains a significant gap of knowledge in understanding

how internal migrants cope with the vulnerability originated from the systematic constraints to

produce their well-being. This research aims to take the perspectives of consumer vulnerability

and resilience to understand well-being production among internal migrants facing systematic

constraints. The findings will reveal the empirical realities where poverty, mobility, and depri-

vation coexist and interact to create migrants' vulnerability and trigger reconfiguration of

resources as coping strategies to gain resilience and achieve well-being.

Consumer vulnerability is commonly conceptualized as a state of powerlessness, which

arises from an interaction of individual characteristics (e.g., age, health, cognitive capacity,

socioeconomic status); individual states (e.g., life transitions), and external conditions

(e.g., discrimination) (Baker et al., 2005). Vulnerable consumers have also been referred to as

“at-risk consumers,”with limited ability to engage in a marketplace (Hoffmann and

McNair, 2018). Zooming in the consumer vulnerability among internal migrant workers in

China with a focus on consumer resilience, this research initiates a much-needed discussion on

the process of well-being production among vulnerable consumers. It makes three major contri-

butions to the existing literature. Our study firstly contributes to the consumer vulnerability lit-

erature by tapping into the under-researched area of consumer vulnerability that arises from

systematic constraints in a transitional economy, which represents a complex, dynamic

unresolvable situation (Pavia and Mason, 2014). Vulnerable consumers in transitional econo-

mies, such as internal migrants, are likely to face significant regulatory constraints, for example,

hukou in China, propiska in Russia, and caste in India. These constraints are different from the

institutional forces in other economies in that they trigger constraints in other domains,

resulting in a unique nexus of consumer vulnerabilities. There is burgeoning scholarship on the

issues of systemic restricted choices and consumer constraints in the marketplace (Bone

et al., 2014; Hill et al., 2015; Aiyar and Venugopal, 2020; Leary and Ridinger, 2020). However,

the complexity of person-environment interaction in transitional economies, as well as the

impact of systematic constraints on creating and coping with consumer vulnerability, are poorly

understood. The existing body of work has resulted in a prescribed range of coping strategies, as

if they are universals uninfluenced by social and economic contexts (Hutton, 2016).

Second, resilience has emerged as a contemporary theoretical concept linked to constraints

and vulnerability at both the individual level (Pettigrew et al., 2014) and the community level

(Ozanne and Ozanne, 2016), yet it remains broadly as an under-researched area within

consumer research and marketing discipline (Hutton, 2016). Resilience is argued to be a

strength-related resource and capacity to bounce back and forge lasting strengths in the strug-

gle. However, how is resilience acquired and practiced when consumers encounter systematic

HUANG ET AL.1329