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The Transformative Service Research (TSR) movement has focused a growing number of service researchers on the topic of improving human well-being in service experiences and service systems. Recently, ServCollab (a human services nonprofit based on the logic of TSR) expanded its mission:“to serve humanity through research collaborations that catalyze reducing suffering, improving well-being, and enabling well-becoming”(servcollab. org). Well-becoming is the process of becoming prepared to experience well-being in the future. A recent Journal of Service Research Service Research Priorities article selected “Services for disadvantaged consumers and communities” as one of its research priorities (# 7) and proposed the sub-themes of “addressing inequities in service provision and outcomes” and “putting humans first.” In this paper, we propose the new concept of “enabling marketplaces” to enumerate transformative aspects of marketplaces that actively work with consumers to enable well-becoming and inclusion; that put humans first.

Consumer vulnerability has been a frequent research topic. The prevailing perspective on consumer vulnerability is deficits-based. Such a perspective focuses on what a person lacks instead of focusing on the marketplace circumstances that create vulnerability. Adopting a strengths-based approach to vulnerability, we choose instead to “consider the strengths that consumers bring to an experience of vulnerability” focusing on the embodied resources consumers use to deal with such situations. We will outline these embodied resources as a key part of enabling marketplaces. Previous research argues …