Stigma in marketing and consumer research: A literature review and research agenda

Abstract

Stigma is a discrediting attribute that emerges in social interactions, playing different roles in different contexts. Several fields (e.g., sociology and psychology) have dedicated special attention to this phenomenon as it significantly impacts people's lives. Although there is some interest in the idiosyncrasies of stigma in marketing and consumer behavior, the literature investigating such a concept is still fragmented. This systematic literature review addresses the stigma concept in marketing and consumer behavior studies by analyzing 82 articles directly approaching stigma in empirical studies. As to the contributions of our study: (1) it synthesizes the literature on stigma in marketing and consumer research, presenting the state-of-the-art in this domain; (2) our two-step thematic analyses combine a descriptive assessment of our sample by using consolidated models from socio-psychology and an examination of the articles from the perspective of the dynamic nature of stigma in the marketplace and the processes of stigmatization and destigmatization; (3) it put forward a future research agenda suggesting research avenues worth exploring by marketing and consumer behavior researchers to advance knowledge on marketplace stigma. We found that stigma is a topic that fits in a wide range of theories, contexts, and methods in marketing and consumer behavior literature.