Who is disadvantaged retail change and social exclusion

In the UK, retail is the largest private-sector employer with 2. The importance of staff in our shopping experience is clear. Customers are 2. Yet their importance in society has been greatly undervalued. The nature of their social reach, means that encounters with happy, motivated staff can potentially create a significant positive ripple effect across our wider society. When the UK plunged into its first major national lock-down due to COVID, there was a change in the way retail staff were perceived.

A job rarely associated with great social importance was re-interpreted as critical to a functioning society. Retail has always been about people. If we analyse the broader value of each staff member, we get a glimpse into the greater value of the industry. Retail staff are more than shelf-stackers and cashiers. On many levels, they are educators and advisers. They need to be knowledgeable but also patient and empathetic.

We need retail staff to understand the importance of every moment of social interaction. They may offer the only moment of social interaction for a customer on that day. Staff need to understand when elderly customers need help or how an autistic or disabled customer might have different needs.

Such a complicated melting pot of required skillsets would present a recruitment challenge for any industry. With this in mind, retail staff must be treated with respect and regarded as experts.

A year earlier, British supermarket Morrisons and pharmacy chain Boots announced their stores as places for victims of domestic violence to seek refuge and contact social services. These initiatives are an example of the potential capacity that retail stores and their staff have to influence a community and its wellbeing. Initiatives like these instantly re-frame the role of supermarket and pharmacy staff.

Attending to domestic violence victims is normally handled by counsellors or police with specialised training - this is now becoming the remit of store staff, who must be trained to deal with these situations. Expanding their roles in such ways should surely elevate their status. One delayed morning train can cause moments of emotional tension across hundreds of workspaces.

Retail experiences have a less obvious but similar capacity. Negative moments caused by ineffective communication or a poorly designed in-store service can easily create inconvenience and aggravation. These stressors significantly add up, accumulating to a collective experience across a day or a week. These moments might compound to an even greater degree to influence the collective mood of a community.

Retailers need to take ownership of their role in the broader experience of local communities. Designing stores without friction is often a thankless endeavour. In contrast to a delayed train, an innovation improving the experience of parking or payment can improve experiences beyond that moment.

The store can be a setting for tension and stress, or moments of discrimination and exclusion. What needs to be understood is that our experiences in retail are so frequent that their cumulative effect can often impact our day to day mood. Consider how security protocols have an impact on the psyche of the local shoppers. Retail brands commonly understand that staff interactions are symbols of how a retail brand values its local customers.

What needs far greater consideration is how experiences in retail impact how customers view themselves. It may be easy for retailers to underestimate the impact of one moment within a store. Figure 1. Data Mapping This step involves constructing appropriate keywords and keyword structures. Data Refinement This step identifies the most relevant and reliable research among the publications. Data Evaluation During the data evaluation step, all the retained 75 articles were read in their entirety.

Inductive Analysis: Identification of Key Themes A qualitative inductive analysis was conducted based on the 56 journal articles, where the key themes of each article were identified, compiled and sorted [ 28 ].

Table 1 List of key themes and descriptions. Co-Occurrence Network Analysis: Formation of Theme Clusters The identified key themes serve as input for the co-occurrence network analysis. Figure 2. Psychological Dynamics between Loneliness and Nonhuman Attachment Green Cluster This cluster contains three key themes, namely, attachment to nonhuman , materialism and reciprocal effect of loneliness.

Paradoxical Motivations of Affiliation and Self-Affirmation Exemplified in Product Selection Blue Cluster The blue cluster contains three key themes, namely, product selection , self-affirmation and prosocial behaviour. Consumer Well-Being in an Ageing Society Red Cluster This cluster contains three key themes: marketplace relationships , mobility and disability issues , and consumer well-being. Anthropomorphic Companionship in Virtual World Lemon Cluster This cluster contains two key themes: anthropomorphism and brand.

Entering the Post-Pandemic Era: Conclusions and Proposed Research Agenda Considering the long-lasting impacts of COVID coupled with the societal structural changes, the feeling of loneliness is expected to prevail in the post-pandemic era. Coping with Psychological Loneliness with New Habits The review findings suggest a fundamental coping mechanism of loneliness among consumers by seeking secondary attachment to nonhuman agents [ 34 , 39 ]. Changing Market Segments of Loners and Conformers Our review study reveals the paradoxical motivations of self-affirmation and affiliation by the lonely consumers whereby they aspire to demonstrate the unique selves while conforming to the social majority [ 42 ].

Empowering the Disadvantaged with Technologies The findings of the review suggest a unique relational domain switch where the lonely consumers replace social interactions with marketplace relationships with salespersons, online consumption communities or even virtual companions with anthropomorphic features [ 30 , 56 ].

Therefore, we propose the following research questions for further investigation: To what extent does the lack of digital resources e. Anthropomorphism; Brand; Marketplace relationships; Internal and external attribution; Affiliation motivation Commercial implications Darcy, Yerbury and Maxwell [ 64 ] Mobile technologies work as assistant technology to support senior people with disability. Assistant technology; Digital inequality; Mobility and disability issues Social implications Das, Echambadi, McCardle and Luckett [ 31 ] Lonely consumers are more likely to use the web for information searching.

Personality Psychological implications David and Roberts [ 38 ] Phone snubbed consumers experience social isolation which leads them to social media to regain a sense of inclusion.

Multi-channel shopping; Mobility and Disability issues; Consumer well-being Social implications Dennis, Bourlakis, Alamanos, Papagiannidis and Brakus [ 62 ] social isolation leads consumers to participate in multi-channel shopping, which co-create values for consumers and shopping channels. Value co-creation; Multi-channel shopping; Mobility and disability issues; Consumer well-being Social implications Donthu and Gilliland [ 26 ] Single shoppers by choice or by circumstance demonstrate some unique shopping styles to compensate the feeling of loneliness, including variety seeking, risk aversion, price consciousness, brand consciousness, impulsiveness and TV watching.

Product Selection; Anthropomorphism; Utilitarian and hedonic products Commercial implications Fitch [ 24 ] The accessibility of local food and retail stores is assessed for socially excluded consumers Retail reform; Accessibility; Mobility and disability issues Social implications Gao and Mattila [ 49 ] Socially excluded consumers favour distinctive vs.

Self-affirmation; Green consumption; Prosocial behaviour; Product selection; Distinctive and popular products Commercial implications Gentina, Shrum and Lowrey [ 39 ] Loneliness leads to passive and active coping strategies associated with different types of materialism, which increases or decreases unethical behaviours among young consumers Materialism; Unethical behaviours Psychological implications Goodwin and Lockshin [ 27 ] The concept of solo shoppers is proposed and differentiated from lonely shoppers.

Sole shopper; Commercial implications Hwang and Mattila [ 44 ] social isolation causes negative emotions e. The relationships are more salient among female consumers.

Culture; Individualism and collectivism; Persuasion; Feelings and reasons; Commercial implications Jiang, et al. Self-regulation; Time orientation Social implications Kemp, Moore and Cowart [ 52 ] Lonely consumers respond more favourably to self-referent advertising appeals Persuasion; Self-affirmation Commercial implications Kim and Jang [ 18 ] Lonely consumers tend to cope with loneliness with experiential consumptions such as dining out, travel and drink.

Age differences are explored. Feelings and reasons; Persuasion Commercial implications Mead, Baumeister, Stillman, Rawn and Vohs [ 33 ] Socially excluded consumers use spending and consumption to seek affiliation, where they sacrifice personal and financial well-being for the sake of social well-being. Extended self; Attachment to nonhuman; Gender; Product selection; Experiential and material products Commercial implications Mourey, Olson and Yoon [ 30 ] Consumers attach to anthropomorphic products as an alternative to interpersonal interactions to gain social assurance.

In-store interaction; Marketplace relationships Social implications Snyder and Newman [ 57 ] Lonely consumers express a higher intention to join brand communities in seek for belongingness. The motivation of control restoration and belongingness maintenance influence their switching behaviour.

Product selection; Distinctive and popular products; Self-affirmation; Stable or unstable exclusion Commercial implications Wang, Zhu and Shiv [ 42 ] Lonely consumers are more likely to choose minority-endorsed product to maintain their feelings of loneliness, but they choose to conform with the majority when their choice is under public context.

Social distancing; Personality; COVID Social implications Whelan, Johnson, Marshall and Thomson [ 56 ] Consumers with interpersonal insecurity turn to marketplace relationships with brands and salespersons as a compensation strategy. Anthropomorphism; Privacy Commercial implications Xu and Jin [ 55 ] When consumers are socially excluded, they are more likely to have a problem-solving tendency choose utilitarian products.

By contrast, when consumers imagine being socially excluded in the future, they are more likely to use emotions to solve problems and choose hedonic products. Product selection; Utilitarian and hedonic products; Time orientation; Feelings and reasons Commercial implications Yang, Yu, Wu and Qi [ 46 ] Socially excluded consumers prefer experiential purchases over material to fulfil relational needs.

The effect is stronger among consumers with interdependent self-construal. Product selection; Experiential and material products; Independent and interdependent; Self-construal Commercial implications Yi, Kim and Hwang [ 48 ] Socially excluded consumers tend to choose ordinary products to restore threatened self-concept.

Author Contributions Conceptualization: X. Institutional Review Board Statement Not applicable. Informed Consent Statement Not applicable. Data Availability Statement Data sharing not applicable.

Conflicts of Interest The authors declare no conflict of interest. References 1. Sullivan M. Close knit: Using consumption communities to overcome loneliness. Her E. Why not eat alone? The effect of other consumers on solo dining intentions and the mechanism. Mittal S. Never truly alone, we always have our purchases: Loneliness and sex as predictors of purchase attachment and future purchase intentions. Smith B. Lonely consumers and their friend the retail salesperson. Lee J. Conspicuous consumption versus charitable behavior in response to social exclusion: A differential needs explanation.

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Who is disadvantaged? Retail change and social exclusion. Fitch D. Retail Distrib. Donthu N. The single consumer. Goodwin C. The solo consumer: Unique opportunity for the service marketer. Elo S. The qualitative content analysis process. Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Mourey J. Das S. The effect of interpersonal trust, need for cognition, and social loneliness on shopping, information seeking and surfing on the web. Suresh A. Mead N. Social exclusion causes people to spend and consume strategically in the service of affiliation.

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Support Center Support Center. External link. Please review our privacy policy. Response to brand communities, such as brand attitude and brand participation. Attachment to materials or products as a replacement of interpersonal relationships. Physiological restrictions that cause loneliness and social isolation, which are often associated with senior consumers. Behaviours for social well-being, such as helping others, donation and green consumption, which are demonstrated by lonely consumers to gain social inclusion.

Physical and mental conditions of consumers, which are often impaired by loneliness but improved via several coping strategies. Macro-level cultural impacts on lonely consumers, such as collectivism vs. Preferences for experiential or material consumption by lonely consumers.

Information processing mechanisms, which can be affect-based or cognition-based in response to persuasions. Gender as a moderator of various behaviours of lonely shoppers. Importance attached to owning symbolic material possessions, which is not only the cause but also a consequence of loneliness. Consequences of loneliness, which in turn reinforce loneliness, which depicts the dynamic impacts of loneliness, such as materialism.

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