Intersectionality in Marketing: A Paradigm for Understanding Understudied Consumers

Intersectionality remains largely underexplored within marketing. To address this gap, this paper synthesizes literature to provide a framework for intersectionality in marketing, featuring a definition, a research design roadmap, a research agenda, and key takeaways for stakeholders. The definition is focused on three main components: 1) awareness and acknowledgment of overlapping (rather than isolated) social categories (e.g., gender, race, and class), 2) understanding of how differences in lived experiences at these intersections influence the marketplace, and 3) recognition of how power shapes these lived experiences. Literature synthesis and original analyses provide evidence of intersectionality's benefits to marketing on relevant and emerging topics: DEI and Identity, Technological Hyperconnectivity, Societal Fragmentation, and Humanitarian Crises. The novel research design roadmap features concrete theoretical and methodological approaches for marketing researchers from various backgrounds to engage with intersectionality: conducting exploratory subsample analyses, developing intersectional theory and hypotheses, conducting inclusive literature reviews, collecting and reporting detailed demographics, sampling understudied populations, and carefully situating conclusions. The research agenda provides questions for emerging topics at societal, organizational, and consumer levels. Engaging with intersectionality will help ensure that marketing remains socially relevant, develops inclusive theories, and more accurately reflects the lived experiences of understudied populations and communities.