Towards an embodied understanding of consumers with disabilities: insights from the field of disability studies

This paper is an attempt to bridge the embodiment-related theoretical frameworks to the experiences of consumers with disabilities. It draws on the interdisciplinary field of disability studies to examine how disability scholars have shifted from a poststructuralist to an embodied theorization of disability. It then reviews how the vulnerability-inducing factors facing consumers with disabilities have been documented by marketing scholars. Finally, it identifies previously unexplored avenues that pertain to these consumers’ embodied sensations, embodied imagination, and meaning ascriptions. The main contribution of the paper is thus to highlight how a more embodied perspective could extend the marketing literature on consumers with disabilities and marketplace barriers.