Introduction

The study of consumer vulnerability is a growing and important field within business research: a field which moves beyond managerially focused work to represent those outside the market’s profitable mainstream. What began as a few notable studies has coalesced into a nascent research stream that plays a leading role in relating consumption to the rest of human existence. We define consumer vulnerability as an undesirable state catalysed by a number of human conditions and contexts. Vulnerability is not necessarily experienced as a permanent state and can often be felt in times of transition – job loss, bereavement, ill health, natural disaster, ageing, and the identity and lifestyle shifts required in becoming a parent. These conditions and characteristics affect how individuals experience, interpret and respond to the marketplace and often how the marketplace responds to them. The notion of vulnerability has been operationalised as a label for a particular group or demographic within society; we, however, like Baker et al. (2005), view it as a circumstance which all people may experience at some point in their lives.