Coping with Poverty through Internalization and Resistance

Abstract

Marketing and consumer research literatures have been enriched through a growing interest of academics and practitioners for poverty research, which have mostly focused on describing the life and culture in poverty and the coping strategies of the poor. In this study, we go one step further, showing how low-income consumers’ reactions and coping strategies differ, in relation to the impact of the marketing institution on their lives. We thus contribute to the previous literature through investigating the interplay between internalization and resistance, in shaping consumers’ reactions to their poor conditions in particular, and to the marketing institution in general. Discourses produced by our informants reveal the significant use of religious beliefs by the poor in developing certain coping strategies and in the different stances they take towards poverty. We propose a framework to articulate this role of religion by identifying the resistance and internalization processes as a response to poverty.