Nuances of Cooperation and Competition among Lower-Class Consumers

The marketing discipline has recently displayed an increasing concern over lower-class consumers, giving rise to two overarching bodies of research. In the first, studies aim to design solutions for the alleviation of consumers' impoverished conditions, either through the market (e.g., Prahalad and Hammond, 2002), public policy (e.g. Varman, Skalén, and Belk, 2012; Viswanathan et al., 2012), or community entrepreneurship (e.g., Viswanathan, Rosa and Ruth, 2010). In the second, researchers seek to primarily understand the lived experiences of the dominated (Üstüner and Holt, 2007), vulnerable (Backer, Gentry, and Rittenburg, 2005), or simply put, poor consumers (Hill 2002). In both sets, studies attribute great importance to communal relationships and the social networks of these consumers either as a key to cope (Hill 2001; Hill and Stephens, 1997) and overcome objective conditions of deprivation (London, Anupindi and Sheth, 2010), or as the grounds from which identity projects will be produced (Üstüner and Holt, 2007). The underlying assumption is often that people experiencing similar conditions of deprivation would share a sense of collectivity and develop forms of cooperation and solidarity as belonging to the same class or "culture" (Bourdieu 1979; Hoggart 1970). However, the same social conditions that foster a sense of solidarity, can also originate tensions and competitive feelings and behaviors among social groups (Portes 1998).