This chapter provides a critical review of research concerning Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*, Queer, and other non-heterosexual people (LGBTQ+) 1 in the field of marketing and 1 While many phenomena are complex, dynamic, and contingent, sexual identities are a particularly contested discursive terrain (see Ghaziani, 2017;Weeks, 2007Weeks, , 2017. We understand sexuality as a fluid entanglement of desires, practices, and identity propositions that are continually negotiated by individuals and collectives. These characteristics pose a challenge to researchers seeking a parsimonious but accurate label that encompasses all nonheterosexual sexualities. The acronym LGBTQ+ refers to the five main identity categories within this collective -Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*, and Queer. Trans* is the umbrella term used by those who do not identify with the gender identity that they were assigned at birth (known as cis people; 'trans-' stems from the Latin word for 'across', while its antonym 'cis-' refers to 'this side of'). Words like transgender, transsexual, and transvestite are also used, but each has a different (and often controversial) meaning (Devor & Dominic, 2015). The asterisk (*) is borrowed from computer sciences where it represents a wildcard placeholder, meaning that trans* encompasses everyone who does not identify as 'cis'. The '+' is used to appreciate that even these five broad labels do not encompass the full variety of sexual and gender subjectivities, and can refer to asexual or questioning people, heterosexual allies, and intersexuals, amongst others. As discussed in the "Future Frontiers" section below,

How do historically stigmatized social groups consume strategically when they have achieved greater recognition, status, and respectability in society? Based on a seven-year interpretive social representations analysis of gay men in Germany, the authors first show that dominant, stigmatizing representations of such groups do not ameliorate uniformly and for all. Instead, they fragment into oppressive, enabling, and normalized societal representations that different consumers encounter to different degrees in their everyday lives. In the wake of these societal shifts, the stigmatized group itself disintegrates into five representational subgroups, referred to as underground, discrete, hybrid, assimilated, and post-stigma social groups. These subgroups use consumption for different and partly opposing strategic purposes, such as hiding and denial, collective resistance, and deconstruction of differences. The authors synthesize their findings into a conceptual model of consumption under fragmented stigma that extends prior research on consumption under dominant and total stigma configurations and suggests ways in which consumption can mitigate but also reinforce stigma. In doing so, they also shed light on the complex lived experiences of a vulnerable social group that has become almost equal.

In the popular imagination sex sells. Yet, marketing theory has relatively little to say about sexuality per se. Drawing on Žižek’s metaphor of critical theory as ‘short-circuiting’ the dominant discourse, we conceptualise marketing as a field that theorises sexuality only in a series of ‘closed circuits’. Knowledge becomes hierarchical when some topics, such as sexuality, are denied the theoretical freedom to roam in wider open circuits alongside other ‘mainstream’ marketing topics. We identify four ways in which certain topics are enclosed: theoretical, empirical, institutional and neo-colonial. We then seek to short-circuit this state of affairs by bringing together a heterogeneous group of scholars interested in sexuality. By crossing their critical insights like unexpected connections in a circuit, we create sparks of inspiration that challenge the contents, contexts and concepts that relate to marketing theories of sexuality. Our paper makes a specific theoretical contribution in arguing for sexuality to be treated as a phenomenon worth studying and theorising in its own right. However, it also makes a wider methodological and epistemological contribution in showing how various topics within marketing theory might be short-circuited to help flatten the hierarchies of knowledge created by closed and open circuits.

The rich tradition of stigma theoretics in marketing and consumer research develops understanding of consumer stigma management, mitigated via marketing-mediated solutions, broadly within a Goffmanian liberal frame. However, building on classic liberal formulations of stigma, sociologists of stigma further examine the impact of the neoliberal political economy in terms of where stigma is produced, by whom and for what purposes. Using the empirical illustration of the emergence of HIV PreExposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), this paper seeks to develop these stigma theoretics towards the concept of stigma diffraction exploring the multiple stigma effects that can be identified and conceptualised through a diffractive lens. This encompasses and theorises beyond traditionally stigmatised contexts, groups and individuals to conceptualise a dynamic and diverse field of ‘stigmas that matter’.

During a roundtable discussion at the 2022 GENMAC Conference, a group of researchers specializing in religiosity and spiritual consumption, using examples from their own fieldwork, reflected on how (i) researchers’ subject positioning—including their gender and sexuality—shape fieldwork in multifaceted manners; (ii) investigations of religious/spiritual fields would benefit from a heightened sensitivity to issues of gender and sexuality; and (iii) greater sensitivity to aspects of religion and/or spirituality can help gender and sexuality scholars better understand consumers and markets. Based on the above, in this commentary paper, we call for intersectional reflexivity, attention to vulnerability and discomfort during fieldwork, and critical sensitivity to the religious “context of context” during theorization. Furthermore, we argue that specific spiritual/religious imaginaries can foster new research approaches that can contribute to more nuanced fieldwork and theorization in marketing and consumer research.