Marketplace Access As An Individual and Collective Endeavour

Contemporary calls for research suggests exploring how those who are vulnerable can improvise, navigate, solve problems and gain access to consumption related experiences. Through forty in-depth interviews with teenagers we develop an understanding of individual and collective coping strategies employed to facilitate access to a significant adolescent ritual: the high-school prom. Findings suggest that coping strategies in low income communities are both planned and reactive with surrogate access supported by families and the wider community. This develops previous research which suggests that consumer coping is an individuated activity where negative tensions are dealt with by privately internalizing situational effects.