Consumer Vulnerability, Predatory Marketing Practices, and the Ethics of Targeting in Nigerian Financial Services Markets

This study examines consumer vulnerability, predatory marketing practices, and the ethics of targeting in Nigerian financial services markets, developing an original analytical framework for understanding the marketing ethics of vulnerability exploitation in African emerging market contexts. Financially vulnerable consumers, including low-income borrowers, digitally illiterate mobile money users, and elderly pension recipients, represent disproportionately large segments of the Nigerian financial services market. Evidence from regulatory enforcement actions, consumer complaints data, and journalistic investigations suggests that predatory marketing practices targeting vulnerable segments are prevalent, yet the theoretical and empirical marketing literature addressing this phenomenon in Nigerian contexts is negligible. Grounded in consumer vulnerability theory, marketing ethics frameworks, and the capability approach to consumer welfare, the study constructs an original tri-level analytical framework distinguishing structural vulnerability (poverty, illiteracy), situational vulnerability (crisis-induced financial distress), and cognitive vulnerability (limited financial literacy), and maps predatory marketing practice types onto each vulnerability dimension. A critical mixed-method design employs 60 in-depth interviews with vulnerable consumers, 25 interviews with financial services marketing managers, and regulatory documentation review. The study delivers original theoretical contributions to the marketing ethics literature by contextualising vulnerability-based predation within the institutional ecology of Nigerian financial markets and proposes a regulatory and ethical marketing framework for protecting vulnerable consumers. Keywords: consumer vulnerability, predatory marketing, marketing ethics, financial services, Nigeria