Vanessa Gail Perry
Frederick F. Wherry

Tribute: Establishing a tradition of research on race and consumers in the marketplace: A tribute to the late Dr. Geraldine Henderson and the late Dr. Jerome Williams

Frederick F. Wherry
Vanessa Gail Perry

Editorial: Anti-black currents in consumer affairs: An introduction to the special issue
The United States is experiencing a racial reckoning that has exposed the injustices experienced by Black and Indigenous People of Color. It is now untenable to declare the marketplace is a liberated space that discards the constraints imposed by race, sexuality, religion, or place of birth. Research studies and media reports have debunked the idea that consumers can navigate their worlds in any way they choose, so long as they have enough purchasing power, the willpower to plan, and the discipline to engage in the “right” behaviors. Instead, civilians and consumers have different encounters, some of them less than liberating, based on race. These encounters occur between civilians and police officers; patients and doctors; customers and salesclerks; borrowers and lenders...

Terri Friedline
Zibei Chen

Digital redlining and the fintech marketplace: Evidence from US zip codes
The rise of digital technologies enables new manifestations of racialization in financial services with marketplace implications. Akin to redlining in the lending market, racialization in the spatial availability of digital technologies—including financial technologies or “fintech”—may raise the costs of banking in black and brown communities. This paper investigates associations between communities' racial makeup and rates of fintech by leveraging 2015 Esri Business Analyst Market Potential data from the universe of high-poverty zip codes. Poor black and brown communities experience a form of digital redlining by having the lowest fintech rates. Every percentage increase in a community's black population was associated with an 18% decrease in their rate of high-speed internet access, 1% decrease in smartphone ownership, 12% decrease in online banking, and 3% decrease in mobile banking. Relationships were opposite for communities with increasing white populations where whiteness attracts higher rates of fintech, even amidst high poverty.

Ryan M. Goodstein
Alicia Lloro
Sherrie L.W. Rhine
Jeffrey M. Weinstein

What accounts for racial and ethnic differences in credit use?
Racial and ethnic differences across U.S. households in use of bank credit (e.g., credit cards) and nonbank credit (e.g., payday loans) are striking. We examine whether household characteristics and residential location can explain these differences. We use a novel dataset with information on previously unexplored factors, including income volatility, subjective attitudes about banks, geographic proximity to financial providers, and neighborhood population characteristics. We find that much of the raw disparities in credit use are attributable to observable household characteristics. Accounting for neighborhood population characteristics meaningfully reduces the disparities further. However, the residual racial and ethnic disparities remain large in magnitude. We show these disparities are not likely attributable to unobserved differences in households' family background, financial literacy, subjective attitudes, or credit scores. Instead, they are most likely attributable to unobserved supply-side factors, such as racial and ethnic differences in households' exposure to marketing. We conclude with implications for policy.

Steven Shepherd
Ted Matherly

Racialization of peer-to-peer transactions: Inequality and barriers to legitimacy
Racial disparities exist in how different peer-to-peer (P2P) business activities are treated. Adapting from institutional theory, whiteness theory, and stereotyping research, we find across a series of experiments that P2P activities are rated more negatively and lower in normative legitimacy when their actors are perceived to be Black as opposed to White. Local acceptance and regulative legitimacy increased normative legitimacy ratings for P2P activities in a Black community, but did not erase the normative legitimacy gap. Moreover, we find that popular terms for P2P businesses (“sharing economy” and “side hustle”) have racial associations, influencing perceptions of normative legitimacy. However, we also show that this may potentially be altered by the legitimating action (an advertising campaign) of a major P2P company employing these terms. Our results suggest that policymakers and programs for improving entrepreneurial achievement need to explicitly consider these racial associations and perceived differences in legitimacy.

Roland L. Leak
Kimberly R. McNeil
David Crockett

Does history really matter: Investigating historical branded executions' effects on contemporary consumer attitudes
Marketing executions (e.g., advertisements, packaging, and brand imagery) incorporating racial or ethnic stereotypes are present in many brands' histories. Over time, these executions have been updated to comport with societal norms, but much of the dated brand information remains accessible to consumers, especially via various digital platforms and archives. Over four studies, we investigate how exposure to these historical remnants affects contemporary consumers' held brand attitudes, showing that these executions have a detrimental influence in certain marketplace subsegments. Respondents generally report more negative brand attitudes upon exposure to the historical execution based on perceived offensiveness (Studies 1, 2, and 3). Study 4 rounds out these findings by identifying that offensiveness perceptions are differentially tied to how consumers (majority vs. minority) utilize their egalitarian beliefs.

Kyoung Tae Kim
Soo Hyun Cho
Sharon A. DeVaney

Racial/ethnic differences in holding a retirement saving motive: A decomposition analysis
Establishing a retirement goal facilitates one's long-term financial planning behavior. Yet, the portion of U.S. households who achieve this goal is relatively small. Further, the percentage is much lower among racial and ethnic minorities. This study investigates racial/ethnic disparities in motives for holding a retirement savings and contributing factors to explain the gaps. Results from the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) indicate that White respondents were more likely to hold a retirement saving motive than were other racial/ethnic groups, even after controlling for various socio-economic characteristics. Decomposition analysis shows that homeownership, objective financial knowledge, planning horizon, and age were the most important determinants that explain the racial/ethnic gap in withholding a retirement saving motive. This study provides evidence in support of the importance of tailored educational interventions among racial/ethnic groups.

Cassi Pittman Claytor

Dreaming in Black: Middle-class Blacks' aspirational consumption
When Blacks think about making it big, do they wish for the same types of things as other Americans? How does their race affect what makes it onto their wish lists? Drawing on interviews with 54 middle-class Black New Yorkers this paper investigates their imagined future consumption. The findings reveal that for most middle-class Blacks their combined race and class status influenced how they envisioned their aspirational consumption. By analyzing their aspirational consumption, it became clear that they were embedded in a materialistic society that links the achievement of the American Dream with the acquisition of specific things. Yet for many middle-class Blacks their aspirational consumption also departed from traditional individualist goals, as their commitment to racial uplift was evident in their aspirational consumption. However, there was a small group for whom the pleasure and status that comes from the acquisition of material possessions weighted heavily in their consumption fantasies.