Consumer Psychological Empowerment in Digital Marketplaces and Its Implications for Marketing Practice in Nigeria

This study investigates consumer psychological empowerment in Nigerian digital marketplaces and develops an original theoretical framework for understanding how empowerment dynamics reshape the marketing relationship between digital platforms and consumers. Consumer empowerment theory, which posits that digital tools and information access transfer power from firms to consumers, has been developed in Western digital market contexts characterised by high digital literacy, robust consumer protection regulation, and mature e-commerce infrastructure. In Nigeria, where consumer empowerment dynamics are shaped by intersecting factors including digital literacy gaps, informal market norms, and weak consumer protection institutions, the theoretical assumptions of standard empowerment models may not apply uniformly. Drawing on psychological empowerment theory, consumer agency literature, and the Nigerian digital consumer ecology, the study constructs a context-sensitive empowerment model identifying three empowerment dimensions (informational empowerment, social empowerment, and transactional empowerment) and theorises their differential marketing implications. A multi-method design employs 50 in-depth interviews, a large-scale nationally representative survey of 700 digital consumers across all six geopolitical zones, and digital trace data analysis from cooperating platforms. Grounded theory techniques and multi-group SEM are employed. The study delivers an original consumer empowerment framework for Nigerian digital markets and provides marketing scholars, digital platform operators, and consumer protection regulators with theoretically grounded practical guidance. Keywords: consumer empowerment, digital marketplaces, marketing practice, digital consumers, Nigeria