Spatializing Ageism in Commercial Spaces: Discursive Justifications and Lived Experiences of Age-Based Exclusion

Abstract This study examines how age-based exclusion is materially organized, discursively justified, and experienced within everyday commercial environments. Drawing on marketing systems theory and critical spatial theory, it conceptualizes commercial space as moral infrastructure through which market participation is organized. Using topic modeling of public discourse and in-depth interviews with older consumers, the study examines the discursive, material, and lived dimensions of age-based exclusion. Public discourse legitimates exclusion through five recurring justificatory themes: moral generalization, economic rationalization, youth-centered normalization, behavioral stigmatization, and institutional normalization. Interview accounts illustrate how material and operational arrangements, including kiosks, service practices, and youth-oriented spatial design, can shape older consumers’ participation and how participants experience and negotiate these conditions through discomfort, anticipatory withdrawal, behavioral self-regulation, and the internalization of market expectations. The findings suggest a spatial mechanism through which public discourse can legitimate exclusion, material arrangements can organize participation, and lived experience can shape expectations of belonging and non-belonging. The study contributes to business ethics by showing how age-based exclusion can be understood as a form of structural injustice reproduced through routine market coordination within marketing systems.