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CRM treats various profiles of customers or individual customers differently, purposively favoring certain customers while deliberately disadvantaging others. This research aims to provide insights into how advantaged (favored) and (non-favored) disadvantaged customers perceive fairness in retailers’ marketing tactics.

A multiple study approach has been adopted, influenced by a three-stage process, which involved exploratory interviews, pilot tests, and the main survey.

The results have provided marketers with a perspective on maintaining and enhancing relationships. Service and marketing communications concern the advantaged customers most, while pricing is the most important aspect for the disadvantaged customers.

In terms of handling customers, there are important implications from recognizing how those who are favored and those who are not so advantaged perceive their treatment. Failure to appreciate the pitfalls for visibly treating certain customers more favorably and others demonstrably less so, will have stark consequences for retail management and consumer marketing.

Contributions are made to the literatures on CRM and on unfairness, particularly in terms of how to address the inevitable inequities inherent in retailers’ CRM offerings. Identification of the advantaged and disadvantaged customers and their respective views allows marketers to develop more appropriate approaches for handling customers who are sensitive to perceived unfairness.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the implementation and effectiveness of an intensified activation scheme for very disadvantaged welfare recipients in Germany, used as a targeting device for a very generous wage subsidy (JobPerspective).

Using administrative data and a difference‐in‐difference approach, the authors analyse the implementation of the activation scheme and its impact on various labour market outcomes. To ensure that target and comparison group are comparable over time, the authors control for various individual, household and regional characteristics.

The activation of the target group of disadvantaged welfare recipients is modestly intensified directly after the scheme's introduction. This does not improve the prospects of the target group to work in regular jobs, but – as a first step – in subsidized jobs. Considering a later period, evidence was found for broader activation efforts together with some gains in the regular employment for disadvantaged welfare recipients. Overall, the results suggest that the implementation of activation for disadvantaged welfare recipients, as well as employment gains, need time.

This study analyses whether and how a scheme of intensified activation that leaves its design to local actors, without providing additional funding, makes job centres implement such a policy.

Digital literacy has become one of the key competences to ensure social cohesion, active citizenship and personal fulfilment. The objective of the project Digital Literacy 2.0 is therefore to develop and to implement an ICT‐based approach to lifelong learning addressing especially disadvantaged groups and vulnerable social groups of people with special needs. Since educational disadvantage is closely linked to social exclusion and poverty, there is a need to empower the really “hard to reach” learning distant groups and to enable them to make use of ICT. This paper seeks to address these issues.

The project partners are piloting a two‐step approach to attract learning distant groups by offering an attractive starting point to information and social bonding: staffs at non‐formal learning places like libraries will be trained for the use of ICT in their daily work with hard‐to‐reach target groups; they will gain competences in how to motivate socially disadvantaged clients to learn with the help of ICT/social media; adults from learning distant groups will be attracted to the places of non‐formal learning by the use of social media thus improving their motivation to learn and empowering them to participate in social life.

The project builds on the experiences gained so far in teaching digital literacy: special target groups can be attracted to learning offers by topics relevant to their daily life and offers that do require only a small first commitment to learning. Besides DLit2.0 will establish a new approach of non‐formal education with the help of ICT. Social media make it possible to provide learning offers tailored individually to the learners' needs and thus increase the learning effects. Taking also into account the new opportunities of online participation and user‐generated content, the concept of teaching digital literacy will be developed further in the project's lifetime and beyond.

The network develops an approach to improve the collaboration between the non‐formal education sector and the social sector. Staff from both areas will obtain knowledge and skills how to better understand the mode of practice of the other sector as well as to identify synergies and efficient procedures and to improve their collaboration. Information society has the potential to make a difference to the lives of people who often feel marginalized or isolated because of their social and cultural situation – DLit2.0 want to spread this issue to maximize this potential.

Disadvantaged students face social exclusion and undergo a different treatment than mainstream students. This alters their entrepreneurial intention subsequently. This study aims to investigate the factors affecting disadvantaged students’ intention in their willingness to undergo entrepreneurship education as a vocational course. The variables include self-efficacy, need for achievement (nAch) and family background. The paper further examines whether entrepreneurship education intention enhances their entrepreneurial intention.

This study uses a deductive quantitative study as the chosen approach as it ensures complete anonymity and hence researcher bias is minimized. The sample consists of the third year, final year and postgraduate first year disadvantaged students from different streams of engineering, economics, arts and commerce. The study was conducted with a total of 319 students completing the questionnaire which used a five-point Likert scale.

Using the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the results show that willingness of disadvantaged students to study entrepreneurship as a vocational course is highly driven by their family background followed by self-efficacy and nAch. The results further strengthen the TPB and has implications for educators of entrepreneurship and a possibility of a widening of entrepreneurship education in disadvantaged community.

The study measured attitudes and willingness with intentions, but not actual behavior as this was a cross-sectional study. Also, repeated observations could not be made and dynamics of change could not be captured.

This is one of the few studies focused on entrepreneurial intention of students who are socially excluded and therefore it offers a possibility of widening of entrepreneurship education in countries such as India which display a collectivist culture and provides an intention-based linkage to entrepreneurship education among disadvantaged students. This study also puts subjective norm as a strong predictor of intentions which previous studies have refuted. The findings also suggest that there is a strong intent to study entrepreneurship among disadvantaged students in India, which makes entrepreneurship education a seemingly acceptable choice of education and suggests promise for its wider reach and penetration.

This paper provides insight into the behaviour and attitudes of an under‐researched group of consumers, and identifies some useful pointers for future research on consumer disadvantage. More specifically, the paper explores the relationships between the potential causes of consumer disadvantage, forms of consumer disadvantage and accessibility. The exploratory study consisted of a combination of quantitative (diary survey) and qualitative (semi‐structured interviews) methods. The diary survey data were used to measure grocery retailing accessibility for each participant, while the semi‐structured interviews captured participants’ attitudes, preferences and expectations with regard to grocery shopping, which were then used to construct a context for the accessibility findings. The findings suggest a way in which consumer disadvantage can be conceptualised, recommend the use of qualitative methods when researching this area, and highlight issues of interest (such as identifying whether an individual shops through choice or constraint) which could be considered by future research designs.

The purpose of this paper is to identify enablers and inhibitors to the adoption of mobile internet services by socioeconomically disadvantaged people: an understudied population adversely affected by digital inequality.

A qualitative study combining a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. In total, 32 socioeconomically disadvantaged people explored mobile lottery services and subsequently were asked a series of semi-structured questions about their perceptions of the technology.

Users’ attitudes toward mobile internet services were ambivalent. They experienced some advantages of smartphones (including escaping spatiotemporal constrains, fashionableness, privacy, and cost-effectiveness) and conceived of mobile internet services in terms of social advantages (including their ubiquitous nature, fitting in socially and fear of being “left behind”). However, they also experienced barriers and concerns, such as limited mobile data packages, external barriers from mobile services (including security concerns, complex online help tutorials, irrelevant pop-ups, and a lack of personalized services) and internal psychological barriers (including technophobia, self-concept, and habitus).

The findings are of limited generalizability due to the small size of the sample. However, the study has implications for understanding the acceptance of technology among socioeconomically disadvantaged people.

The study has social implications for bridging digital inequality in terms of socioeconomic status.

While previous studies have primarily focused on enablers of adopting mobile internet services by active users, this study reveals both the promise of and the barriers to the use of such services by inactive users who comprise an under-served population.

Using a Shanghainese context, the purpose of this paper is to understand the effects of the public library in its community, as well as its ability to create social capital. Along with this, this paper aims to look at some socially disadvantaged groups within Shanghai and see the positive benefits that the Shanghai Library (SHL) has in society.

Using a total of 410 respondents from Shanghai through a questionnaire, this study investigates how different groups of disadvantaged groups (namely, students, elderly and unemployed) living in Shanghai perceived the social values, and contributions functions of the SHL to the local community, and its capacities to create social capital.

Findings of this study indicate that respondents expressed an overall highly positive outlook of the SHL’s value to the community, and they found it to have an important role in their daily lives.

This study will be useful for understanding the roles of the public library in a Chinese context, as well as the views and perceptions of the public library to disadvantaged user groups in China.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effects from perceptions of age disadvantageness when job candidates are interviewing with recruiters from different age groups. More specifically, the authors examine the issues of intergenerational recruiting through the lens of social identity theory (SIT) and relational demography. Using these theoretical underpinnings, problems that result from dissatisfaction with between group inequities in the recruiting process are explored.

Using these theoretical underpinnings, problems that result from dissatisfaction with between group inequities in the recruiting process are explored. Results from a survey of 176 undergraduate students actively pursuing sales positions provide evidence that candidate perceptions are influenced by age of the interviewer.

The results support that sales job candidates do indeed feel disadvantaged when interviewed by older recruiters. Compared to interviewers from a more similar age in-group interviewer, the respondents felt a greater difficulty in establishing commonality and credibility and they felt the need to establish dependability, demonstrate professionalism, energy, and enthusiasm with an older out-group interviewer. Interestingly, sales job candidates did not feel lower levels of job confidence relative to the age-group of the interviewer.

The study reflects the perceptions of sales job applicants sampled from only two universities in the same region of the USA. Generalizations outside of this job applicant population (i.e. major and geography) cannot be made based on this limited group of respondents. Additionally, outcomes were not explored in this paper, so there is no way to know with certainty that these feelings of disadvantageness translate to concrete differences in results, such as lower job acceptance.

From a recruiting/hiring managers’ perspective, they should be mindful that younger sales job candidates may feel uncomfortable or disadvantaged relative to age/generational differences. This could potentially even impact a recruit's desire to consider a company and accept a job offer, based on perceived organizational cultural differences. Educators need to prepare college students for the interview process. They should make students aware that they may feel the need to compensate for feelings that stem from intergeneration differences.

From a theory perspective, the study applies the SIT to a human resource and recruiting context to better understand possible recruiting barriers that may be particularly relevant in today's changing recruitment environment. This represents one of only a few empirical research efforts that has attempted to explain intergenerational recruiting issues relative to SIT. In addition to the use of SIT and relational demography, this paper introduces a unique context.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the social and economic disparities across social groups in rural Uttar Pradesh. The paper demonstrates that the structure of the rural economy in India is characterised by deeply ingrained prejudices and social discrimination. The four-village study undertaken in one of the most populated states in India, Uttar Pradesh, clearly reveals that there is a huge disparity in terms of various social and economic indicators and that the so-called high growth has hardly helped in bettering their lives.

The paper is based on primary data collected from the Census survey of villages exploring socio-economic disparities across social groups by using decomposition models.

The results evidently lend credence to the postulations that a large proportion of the disadvantaged groups are prone to multiple deprivations, both in the society and in labour markets. The inquiry reveals this phenomenon clearly.

From the policy point of view, it is therefore imperative to ensure the direct and focussed provision of basic human requirements in terms of education, employment and income of the state. The implementation of direct policy interventions is an absolute necessity if the state has to guarantee convergence and the inclusive growth process on a sustained basis.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the inequality among the social groups in terms of education, employment, income and livelihood opportunities in selected villages of four districts of Uttar Pradesh.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue on “Disadvantaged workers in the labour market” and to draw some policy implications that are common to the studies included in the special issue.

The paper introduces several econometric methodologies adopted in the special issue. Such methodologies represent an excellent overview of the typical approaches developed by applied economists to address the issue under discussion. They include: dynamic probit models allowing for unobserved heterogeneity and endogenous initial conditions; propensity score matching; the non parametric Ñopo decomposition to take into account sample selection bias; endogenous switching models to estimate employment choice; and fixed effects models and Arellano and Bond dynamic panel estimator.

The articles in the special issue highlight several common factors that make the disadvantage at the labor market emerge. The first factor is the recent financial crisis which especially affects young people. Differences in common support – generally due to segregation in low pay jobs – are also important. Several factors favor persistence of the disadvantage, namely the inefficiency of the educational system and the lack of financial support to the weakest groups.

The paper adopts the EU definition of “disadvantaged workers”, namely workers who find it hard to enter the labor market without assistance. The authors show the relevance of the analysis produced in this special issue to design specific policies fine‐tuned to the needs of disadvantaged workers. In addition, institutional reforms, and/or interventions on structural variables are also in order.

The paper introduces a number of articles proposing innovations in the interpretation and application of a wide range of theoretical approaches and econometric methodologies.