Exploring researcher vulnerability: Contexts, complications, and conceptualisation

Abstract

Research involving vulnerable consumer populations is on the increase, and understanding the social consequences of consumption within different marketing contexts has become a common theme across Consumer Culture Theory, transformative consumer research, and critical marketing. Yet the diverse difficulties faced by researchers who investigate consumer vulnerability have not been sufficiently addressed. In line with the need for greater reflexivity in research, this paper reflects on our own research experiences, and highlights the complexities associated with conducting research on sensitive topics in challenging contexts. With reference to such experiences, we illustrate the phenomenon of researcher vulnerability and discuss its implications for knowledge generation within the marketing domain.

Waste, Art, and Social Change

“…This places demands on our time and imagination, while requiring emotional and physical labor that only the motivated can provide, but which is sometimes unavoidable if we see ourselves as empathetic and change oriented actors (e.g. Jafari et al 2013). This axiology is encapsulated in the response to Vik's question about the demands of the project he has in mind.…”

Exiting fieldwork “with grace”: reflections on the unintended consequences of participant observation and researcher-participant relationships

“…Besides being another friendly researcher/volunteer residents could chat with, she minimised the impacts of her observer role by not participating in the provision of tech-help (unless a resident sought help from her). The reflective fieldnotes of both authors were analysed to develop the findings (see Hamilton et al, 2012;Jafari et al, 2013).…”

“…This paper responds to calls for marketing researchers to critically reflect on the social impacts of research projects (Bettany and Woodruffe-Burton, 2009;Jafari et al, 2013). We have responded by considering the participant and researcher wellbeing impacts of fieldwork, and our endeavours to enable researchers to exit fieldwork with grace.…”

“…In these situations, researchers can struggle with competing demands of being objective versus subjective, sympathetic versus detached, being friendly versus honest (Fine, 1993). This range of feelings attests that researchers can also be impacted by their fieldwork (Hamilton et al, 2012;Jafari et al, 2013), making exit a potentially heart-wrenching experience.…”

“…The aim of this paper is to understand fieldwork exit processes and their implications. While there are calls for marketing scholars to critically reflect on the impacts of their research activities on participant and researcher well-being (Bettany and Woodruffe-Burton, 2009;Davis and Ozanne, 2018;Hamilton et al, 2012;Jafari et al, 2013), discussions over managing relationships formed with participants and the exit stage of fieldwork are underdeveloped. In contrast, methodological discussions outside of marketing on fieldwork exit are established and point out various ways that participants and researchers can be negatively impacted.…”