When marketplaces fail: How market challenged consumers navigate the marketplace

This paper examines the challenges permeating the experiences and strategies of market challenged consumers (MCCs). We employ a multi-method approach, combining discourse analysis of personal reflection essays with grounded theory analysis of interview data in the context of consumers with disabilities. Findings reveal that MCCs experience both material and social marketplace challenges that shape three distinct yet interrelated tensions: desiring normality while needing accommodation, managing visibility while needing acknowledgement, and negotiating privacy while needing to participate. We demonstrate that MCCs enact coping strategies (reconciling and (re)positioning identity, counterbalancing (in)visibility, and armoring themselves) which subsequently both mitigate and reinforce inner tensions. This study argues that the marketplace must intervene, given the incessant nature of the challenges, inner tensions and resulting coping strategies, thus shifting the onus of coping from the MCC to the marketplace. We provide theoretical and managerial implications to better understand how marketplaces can alleviate MCCs’ marketplace challenges.