Degree
Master of Science in Marketing
Department
Department of Marketing
School
School of Business Studies (SBS)
Date of Submission
Fall 2025-5-15
Supervisor
Dr. Wajid Hussain Rizvi, Professor, Department of Marketing
Committee Member 1
Dr. Salman Bashir, Examiner I, Professor & Dean, Shaheed Benazirabad University
Committee Member 2
Dr. Muhammad Kashif, Examiner II, HoD, International Business & Marketing, NUST Business School
Keywords
Transgender community, intimate clothing, shopping experiences, Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA), Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), Theory of Structural Injustice
Abstract
This study explores how transgender community in Pakistan engages with shopping experiences and related challenges for intimate clothing and how shopping spaces shape these experiences. Using Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) as the primary lens and Young’s (2011) Theory of Structural Injustice as the secondary hook, the study examines how marketplace structures, socio-historic patterning of consumption, and institutional practices interconnect with gendered norms to structure access, consumption arrangements, and treatment. An interpretivist paradigm was taken up as the research design. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with thirteen transgender community participants, specifically gurus across multiple socioeconomic contexts. The narratives collected were analyzed using the Reflective Thematic Analysis (RTA) framework, generating six interlinked themes that trace a transition from early social misfit and misrecognition to tactical negotiation with shopping spaces. Findings reveal that intimate clothing is both a practical need and a way of identity construction. Transgender consumers face systematic exclusion in shopping spaces through limited variety, inappropriate interrogation, moral surveillance, and gatekeeping. Shopping interactions become scenes of harassment and humiliation, where gender policing is common. Despite these restrictions, participants do develop tactical literacies, including altering garments at home, visiting secondary markets to shop for intimate clothing, and timing shopping trips to avoid crowds and to assert dignity. The study contributed to consumer culture research by demonstrating how everyday shopping experiences are embedded with unequal and unjust structures and offers practical and social implications to improve shopping spaces for transgender community and development of policy reforms.
Submission Type
Thesis
Document Type
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