Transformative Service Research (TSR) highlights the fundamental importance of resource integration for consumer well-being.
However, recent research suggests that resource integration can be problematic and imperfect, particularly for vulnerable consumers with complex and ongoing resource requirements.
Such vulnerable consumers may face transition challenges and end up in an uncertain “in-between” experience of liminality, where the linkage to resource integration remains under-researched.
In response to recent service prioritization challenges, we explore how vulnerable actors experience liminality and resource integration in service systems.
The vulnerable actors highlighted in this study are parents in families of children with life-long conditions (e.g., autism spectrum disorder/ASD and Down syndrome).
We reveal a new form of liminality as a persistent, relational phenomenon that interdependent vulnerable actors with ongoing complex resource needs collectively experienced within service systems.
Further, we identify the dynamics of persistent liminality as Precipitating, Subsisting, and Resisting. Finally, in line with TSR, we shed light on the resource constraints that decrease the well-being of vulnerable consumers. We also identify implications for theory, practice, and future research.
Presenter: Deirdre is a Professor of Marketing in the Department of Management and Marketing at the Kemmy Business School in the University of Limerick. She has almost 30 years’ experience as a researcher, educator and academic leader. Her research critically explores the intersection between marketing, consumption, vulnerability and social/public policy within a number of key contexts including debt and austerity, sustainability, family caring, and co-creation and consumer well-being in complex services.
Reference: O’Loughlin, D., Gummerus, J., and Kelleher, C. (2024) “’It Never Ends’: Vulernable Consumers Experiences of Persistent Liminality and Resource (Mis)Integration”, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp.327-345