Restoring balance: how consumers orchestrate family care following unplanned disruptions

ABSTRACT

How do consumers orchestrate multiple and complex practices of care when faced with unplanned disruptions to their lives, such as chronic health conditions? We conduct a qualitative study of families where a child was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes. Inspired by a dance metaphor, we explain how families (1) gather materials for movement, (2) link movements into phrases, and (3) develop an orchestrated style of care as they sense and respond to the dynamic requirements of caregiving when faced with insufficient or unfeasible market solutions. Adding this new perspective to the managerial view used by prior consumer research on family care, we propose an extended perspective on care, which better accounts for how families search to restore life balance in challenging circumstances. This extended perspective illuminates new aspects of consumer engagement with paid and non-paid service providers, and opens avenues for future research in the domain of family care.

KEYWORDS:

• Family care
• family management
• orchestration
• dance
• chronic health condition

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the participants and their families for opening their hearts and telling us their life stories. We also thank Wendy Mangeant for authorizing us to use her documentary and the Fundación Diabetes Juvenil de Chile for assisting us and opening their archives for our research.

This project has received financial support from CONICYT - FONDECYT Regular 2017- Project N° 1170558. All authors contributed equally to the crafting of this manuscript, author’s names are displayed in alphabetical order to reflect this.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Other persons mentioned in paper that are not in table are also pseudonyms.

2. An alpine skiing and snowboarding discipline that requires skiing around obstacles.

3. Considering it is difficult to represent movement in a two-dimensional figure, we invite readers to think of dance moves, as in the video in this link: https://youtu.be/nfWlot6h_JM.

Additional information

Funding

This project has received financial support from CONICYT - FONDECYT Regular 2017- Project N° 1170558.

Notes on contributors

Flavia Cardoso

Flavia Cardoso is Assistant Professor at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile. Her research interests include macro-level factors influencing consumer behaviour, market systems and activism. Her research projects cover distinct areas related to consumer experiences such as consumer activism, family consumption and retailing.

Pilar Rojas-Gaviria

Pilar Rojas Gaviria is Marketing Lecturer at University of Birmingham. Her work focuses on understanding the role of consumption in the construction of multicultural collective identities and solidarities. She draws on philosophical theories, poetry and research on consumer behaviour.

Daiane Scaraboto

Daiane Scaraboto is Associate Professor of Marketing at University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on theories of consumer culture and the ways in which consumers may create, shape, or destruct market opportunities.