What the Eyes Don’t See, The Heart Can’t Feel? Investigating Experiences of Purchase for Visually Impaired in Retail Clothing

Abstract

Despite the significant number of the population of Individuals with Disabilities, one can see that, in the field of consumer research in retail organizations, the lack of research on the issues concerning them is notorious. This observation is even more remarkable when one takes into account the work involving the visually impaired. It is precisely because of this gap in literature that there was the interest in conducting a research based on the following problem: How do blind people live in retail their shopping experiences of products, services, artifacts, and symbolic images related to clothing? As a theoretical contribution, we considered the literature concerning the experiential approach and consumption symbolism. The method chosen to obtain data was the in-depth personal interviews with 11 visually impaired. As a result, it may be noted that visually impaired consumers surveyed defined their shopping experiences as something more than seemingly ordinary situations, while they expressed various values through consumption, celebrating their connection to society as a whole. From these observations, it was possible to better understand the shopping experiences of these consumers.