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The USA is witnessing a conflict between LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) consumers/supporters and Christian fundamentalist service providers/opponents regarding whether service can be denied based on religious values. The purpose of this paper is to make a timely investigation into this conflict between marketplace inclusion (for LGBTQ consumers) and freedom of religion (for religious service providers).

The intersection of marketplace inclusion for LGBTQ consumers and religious freedom for service providers is examined by identifying appropriate strategies that address this conflict and reviewing how differing religious perspectives influence perceptions of LGBTQ consumer rights, all building off the social identity threat literature.

LGBTQ and religious identities often conflict to influence consumer behavior and service provider interactions. Such conflict is heightened when there is a lack of substitutes (i.e. only one service provider in an area for a specific service). Common LGBTQ consumer responses include changing service providers, providing justification for the provision of services and pursing legal recourse. Suggested strategies to address this conflict include highlighting common social identities and using two-sided messages for service providers, using in-group interventions for social groups and using government interventions for public policy.

Research has yet to examine the conflict between marketplace inclusion and religious freedom, particularly for the inclusion of LGBTQ consumers. Thus, this paper provides a novel conceptual model detailing these relationships to stimulate discussion among consumers, service providers, social groups and public policy in addition to serving as a foundation for future research.

The following ethnographic study was conducted to better understand the site-specific, qualitative impact of organizational, taken-for-granted assumptions and practices regarding gender and family life in the reproduction of on-the-ground gender inequality. More specifically, this case study considers the consequences of organizational assumptions consistent with Bem’s (1993) three “lenses of gender” – androcentrism, essentialism, and polarization – on direct service provision for homeless clients in a small, faith-based, social service provider.

Interview and participant-observation data were gathered during time spent volunteering with Integrity Intervention (pseudonym): a small liberal Methodist outreach ministry for the homeless. Data collection was guided by the following question: How do Integrity Intervention’s cultural models (or “schemas”) for gender and family life shape the ways the organization becomes a gendered social space?

I find that expectations for client behavior were deeply gendered, in a manner consistent with the “lenses of gender.” Additionally, normative expectations for subordinate masculinities were also informed and crosscut by race and class marginalization. Ultimately, my findings suggest that the “lenses of gender” may be imbued with class and race-specific interpretive meaning. I delineate forms of site-specific gendered, racialized, and classed cultural schemata for understanding poverty and homelessness, and explain how they ultimately work together to preclude inclusive and gender-equitable service provision.

This study is limited to providers and participants in one particular nonprofit organization.

The conclusions of the study bear implications for understanding the various forms through which gender inequality is reproduced – particularly in settings of faith-based social service provision.

Western liberal states are considered to be secular in nature, with a presumed neutrality of state laws from religious values and norms. However, this claim overlooks the inherent influence that religious groups (namely, dominant Christian churches and groups) have as informal institutions. According to neo-institutionalists, informal institutions, like these religious norms and values, interact with and influence formal state institutions. As such, it could be argued that the norms and values of dominant religious groups within the state have a role in shaping governmental policies and the law. This is evident when examining the debates around multiculturalism and religious freedom that arise in liberal democratic states such as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom (UK). In particular, the recent Sharia debates that have arisen in each of these jurisdictions illustrate that the secular state legal system is often positioned as “neutral” and free from religious influence – and thus incompatible with, and unable to, accommodate the religious orders of minority groups. However, this idea that the state is entirely free from religious values is a fallacy that ignores the historical role and influence of Christian churches in each state. In opposing the accommodation of Sharia in private dispute resolution, common arguments include the inherent patriarchal nature of the religion leading to further oppression and disadvantage of Muslim women when seeking resolution of personal law matters (i.e. divorce and property settlements). The secular state law is positioned against this (and religion more broadly) as the “fair” and “just” alternative for minority women – protector of individual rights. Though this ignores the inherent gender hierarchies embedded within formal state institutions, including the legal system that has been implicitly shaped by religious moral values to varying degrees – where minority women are also faced with a set of gender biases. When combined with the internal pressures from their communities and families this can often place them in a double-bind of disadvantage. In this paper, I draw on feminist institutionalism to examine the informal institutional norms that arise from dominant Christian churches in Australia, Canada, and the UK. In particular, the ways in which these informal norms have influenced the development of state laws, and continue to operate alongside the legal system to shape and influence governmental policies, laws, and ultimately the outcomes for Muslim women.

This commentary aims to introduce a collection of articles that highlights the experiences, needs and challenges of vulnerable consumers within a variety of service contexts. As a research collection, the investigations reveal that service researchers have overlooked how service design and processes affect vulnerable consumers.

The commentary is a conceptual perspective based on the investigations put forward in this special issue, extant literature and the editors’ perspectives.

Many consumers enter service contexts in some type of vulnerable condition. These conditions may include those relating to deafness, hearing impairments, older age, sexual orientation, immigration status and acculturation, participation in sexual exploitation, geographical remoteness, mental health challenges, obesity, natural disasters, language barriers and being the brunt of service provider discrimination.

Service researchers are encouraged to consider how the service marketing’s foundational theories, frameworks, concepts and axioms generalize among vulnerable consumers.

Service practitioners need to realize customers often enter service contexts owing to some type of vulnerable condition that influences their expectations and perceptions of service quality.

This special issue expands the discipline’s understanding of vulnerable consumers and exposes an array of conditions that affect their experiences and journeys within service settings. Service organizations dedicated to enhancing consumer well-being must understand how they can help remedy, or lessen, the consequences associated with vulnerable conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the cover of research regarding Mosque Speechmakers (MSs) in the Arabic environment. The researcher tries to investigate the information-seeking behaviour of MSs in the State of Kuwait in terms of their thoughts, approaches, habits, preferences, tools and problems met when using of and accessing information.

The author employed a questionnaire, with a response rate 70.6 per cent (561/795).

The findings of the study revealed that most of MSs in Kuwait tend to be older (aged over 35 years), educated (mostly with BA degrees) and with an average monthly income over 300 KD ($1000 = 282 KD). The study showed that MSs were significantly seeking information to make a specific/general research, to collect necessary statistics, to make a speech/sermon and to present religious sermons/lectures. They preferred to use the home/personal library as well as the special library, specifically the Mosque library. The information-seeking behaviour of a large number of them indicated a preference for printed sources over electronic sources, and a good number preferred to access information through the audio-visual materials as well as the web. A very small number of them were looking for information for the purpose of making a speech (Friday speech/sermon). The study also showed that the most important sources of information MSs were seeking for were biographies, specialised books, particularly Islamic books, mass media (press, TV, videos, etc.). The study also showed that a large number of MSs were poor in the usage of foreign languages, and this in turn has negatively affected to take advantage of the vast information available in these languages. The unpretentious role of the library to deliver requested information, the use of foreign languages as well as the high cost of information were the most significant problems met by MSs when using of and accessing information.

This paper investigates the topic of MSs’ use of and access to information. This topic, unfortunately, has limited previous research, especially in the Arabic and Islamic environment.

The paper provides valuable insight into the information behaviour of a very important client group, namely, MSs.

Being the second one of its type throughout the Arab world, this study is characterised to be a distinguishing one among several studies conducted in the area of the information-seeking behaviour, especially with such a significant group of information users/seekers. Any findings resulted from this study may help in a better understanding of the MSs’ information-seeking behaviour, and may also help policy and decision-makers (Mosques and Islamic institutions) as well as religious information service providers to understand well the nature of these beneficiaries of information sources and to enrich the awareness of researchers and professionals on the topic of information-seeking behaviour of Mosque speechmakers.

This research aims to explore how racist language in service interactions in the health and education sectors affects service consumers belonging to the Sheedi community in Pakistan’s Sindh province. This research questions the use of racist language and proposes the use of inclusive language in service sectors to reduce the discrimination the Sheedi community faces because of such racist language.

This empirical study takes place in the health and education sectors in Sindh province. Using a qualitative and narrative approach, this study categorizes Sheedi service consumers’ personal experiences to gain deep and holistic insights into the racist language used in service interactions and proposes the use of inclusive language.

Findings demonstrate how some non-Sheedis used racist language against the Sheedi service consumers in the health and education sectors, and how such racist language was influenced by class consciousness and gender bias. Inclusive language, which emphasizes professional lexicon, culturally appropriate terminology, gender-neutral vocabulary and other socially acceptable terms, was proposed to be used in the service interactions with Sheedi service consumers.

This study makes a conceptual contribution to existing literature on the use of language in service interactions and documents how the Sheedi community is treated in Pakistan’s Sindh province. This research can help researchers expand research in contexts where the use of racist language hinders progress, while the use of inclusive language can lead to sustainable development of service sectors.

Purpose – Religious addiction treatment has experienced a rise both in its reach and exposure to attention from medical professionals. Largely autonomous conversion-based programs have received unprecedented support and legitimacy. We investigate “Victory Ministries,”11The organization ‘Victory Ministries’ is a pseudonym. Any resemblance to actual locales of this name or similar is entirely coincidental. All names have been change to protect the identity of the participants. a large Midwestern evangelical rehab facility, exploring the similarities and differences between formulations of addiction-as-disease found in “secular” rehab and the moral binaries that guide Victory's program.

Methodology/approach – Qualitative case study: Interviews and ethnography.

Findings – Working from in-depth interviews, we explore the inner workings of Victory's curriculum and program design, as it transmutes dominant therapeutic concepts and methods into its own Manichaean frame. Aided by superior financial resources and support of a tight-knit network of churches, it delivers its most successful clients into a new life “redeemed by Christ.”

Social implications – Proponents of conversion-based service provision position religious institutions as the primary agents of willing compassion and generosity beyond the family compass, stripping the rest of civil society of any claims to promote the greater good. In Victory's metaphor of “invisible war,” a Manichaean vision is quite explicit. Every definition of recovery and reintegration in terms of conversion and submission to religious authority inherently suggests that substance use stems largely from immorality and that the unsaved in general are sinful and dangerous. By funding a conversion-based shadow welfare apparatus, we argue, the US government is intensifying the criminalization of poverty, the steady downgrading of more inclusive institutions, and ultimately the materialization of Victory's Manichaean vision in a polarized nation.

The potential for segmenting and targeting consumers, using ethnicity as a segmenting variable, is widely recognised in the marketing literature. However, attention to the problems of identifying and reaching a single, often relatively small, ethnic group, as opposed to some aggregate of groups, has been minimal. This paper proposes a framework for ethnic marketing research that is currently lacking. A method for conducting exploratory qualitative research of an ethnic group, for which little published information is available, is discussed with particular attention given to the sampling process. The proposed methodology, involving a symbiosis of symbolic interaction with phenomenological description, yields rich information about the group.

The influx of refugees and asylum-seekers over the past decade into the European Union creates challenges to the health systems of receiving countries in the preparedness and requisite adjustments to policy addressing the new needs of the migrant population. This study aims to examine and compare policies for access to health care and the related health outcomes for refugees and asylum-seekers settling both in the UK and Germany as host countries.

The paper conducted a scoping review of academic databases and grey literature for studies within the period 2010-2017, seeking to identify evidence from current policies and service provision for refugees and asylum-seekers in Germany and the UK, distilling the best practice and clarifying gaps in knowledge, to determine implications for policy.

Analysis reveals that legal entitlements for refugees and asylum-seekers allow access to primary and secondary health care free of charge in the UK versus a more restrictive policy of access limited to acute and emergency care during the first 15 months of resettlements in Germany. In both countries, many factors hinder the access of this group to normal health care from legal status, procedural hurdles and lingual and cultural barriers. Refugees and asylum-seeker populations were reported with poor general health condition, lower rates of utilization of health services and noticeable reliance on non-governmental organizations.

This paper helps to fulfill the need for an extensive research required to help decision makers in host countries to adjust health systems towards reducing health disparities and inequalities among refugees and asylum-seekers.