To read this content please select one of the options below:

Marketplace accessibility: a service-provider perspective

Katharina C. Husemann (Department of Marketing, King’s Business School, King’s College, London, UK)
Anica Zeyen (School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, UK and Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa)
Leighanne Higgins (Department of Marketing, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK)

European Journal of Marketing

ISSN: 0309-0566

Article publication date: 17 October 2023

Issue publication date: 23 November 2023

621

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore the strategies that service providers use to facilitate marketplace accessibility, and identify the key challenges in that process. The authors do so to develop a roadmap towards improved accessibility and disability inclusion in the marketplace.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted eight semi-structured interviews with service providers (curators, visitor service coordinators and access managers) at museums who run access programmes for customers with visual impairment (VI), along with an embodied duo-ethnography of those programmes.

Findings

Service providers foster autonomous, embodied and social access. Resource constraints, safety concerns and exposed differences between customers compromise access. To overcome these challenges, service providers engage in three inclusionary strategies – informing, extending and sensitizing.

Research limitations/implications

This service provider- and VI-focus present limitations. Future research should consider a poly-vocal approach that includes the experiences of numerous stakeholders to holistically advance marketplace accessibility; and apply the marketplace accessibility findings upon different disabilities in other marketplace contexts.

Practical implications

This study offers a roadmap for policymakers and service providers on: which types of access should and can be created; what challenges may be encountered; how to manage these challenges; and, thus, how to advance accessibility beyond regulations.

Originality/value

This study contributes a service provider perspective on marketplace accessibility that goes beyond removing “disabling” barriers towards creating opportunities for co-creation; an approach towards marketplace accessibility that fosters inclusiveness while considering the inherent challenges of that process; and an illustration of posthumanism’s empirical value in addressing issues of accessibility in the marketplace.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants for their time.

Citation

Husemann, K.C., Zeyen, A. and Higgins, L. (2023), "Marketplace accessibility: a service-provider perspective", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 57 No. 9, pp. 2544-2571. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-04-2022-0280

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited

Related articles