Rethinking consumer resistance through institutional entrepreneurship

Damien Chaney and Karim Ben Slimane

This article adopts an institutional view to rethink consumer resistance. Two types of consumers who resist market domination are identified: "rebels" and "entryists." Rebels are able to consume but do not want to and oppose all or part of the market, whereas entryists want to consume but are kept out of the market.

Introduction

The marketing literature mostly conceptualizes consumer resistance as a microlevel phenomenon, focusing on individual characteristics, dispositions to resist, and actions against the market (Penaloza & Price, 1993; Roux, 2007; Valor, Diaz, & Merino, 2017). The literature thus restricts the study of consumer resistance to the individual straitjacket that hinders marketing from grasping the institutional determinants and outcomes of resistance behaviors. In line with cultural explanations of consumption, consumers are embedded in social and cultural contexts that shape and dictate their behaviors (Chaney & Ben Slimane, 2014). Although previous literature has helped to understand consumers' motivations to resist, we argue...

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