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Service with(out) a smile: The reproduction of gendered consumer violence
Mälardalen University, School of Business, Society and Engineering. Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8057-9865
Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden.
2025 (English)In: Marketing Theory, ISSN 1470-5931, E-ISSN 1741-301X, Vol. 25, no 2, p. 263-281Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This paper critically examines consumer violations of employees in the Nordic retail sector. In bringing these violations to light, we analyse how employees become subjectified by the ideals of consumer sovereignty, and how service work is discursively and practically aligned with the notion of the sovereign consumer. We demonstrate how the discourse of consumer sovereignty intersects with gendered service work and the expectations of feminine sexual availability, and how this alignment reproduces gender and power inequalities. Drawing on studies of consumer violence and misbehaviour and feminist research on service work, we argue that the patterns of subjugation and consumer abuse are intrinsically embedded both in the ideal of consumer sovereignty itself and in the strategies that employees use to constitute themselves within prevailing market and gender orders. The study provides a critical understanding of how consumer sovereignty operates in tandem with gender structures to form subjugating practices that both enable and normalise consumer violations.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
SAGE Publications , 2025. Vol. 25, no 2, p. 263-281
Keywords [en]
Consumer sovereignty, consumer violations, gender, marketing, power, service work
National Category
Other Social Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-66605DOI: 10.1177/14705931241249624ISI: 001215767600001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105003235803OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-66605DiVA, id: diva2:1857986
Available from: 2024-05-15 Created: 2024-05-15 Last updated: 2026-05-19Bibliographically approved

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Yngfalk Fyrberg, Anna

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