Interracial interactions abound in the marketplace and are at the core of many consumer experiences across commercial, health, and social settings. The creation of harmonious interracial interactions is a focal target of private, nonprofit, and governmental efforts to transform consumer markets worldwide. Yet both research and practice highlight the challenge of achieving such interactions. Despite their centrality to consumer experience and social significance, interracial interactions have received limited attention in the consumer psychology literature. Understanding the particular role of interracial interactions in how consumers choose, buy, and consume products, services, and experiences is essential to address racial inequity in the marketplace. In this research, we identify extant interdisciplinary research to conceptualize the consumer psychology underlying interracial marketplace interactions. We analyze this literature to summarize the state of the knowledge, identify important research gaps, and develop an organizing framework for prior and future research. Our analysis highlights priorities for future research supportive of harmonious interracial interactions that promote consumer equity and contribute to societal well‐being.

Abstract Race has been a market force in society for centuries. Still, the question of what constitutes focused and sustainable consumer research engagement with race remains opaque. We propose a guide for scholars and scholarship that extends the current canon of race in consumer research toward understanding race, racism, and related racial dynamics as foundational to global markets and central to consumer research efforts. We discuss the nature, relevance, and meaning of race for consumer research and offer a thematic framework that critically categorizes and synthesizes extant consumer research on race along the following dimensions: (1) racial structuring of consumption and consumer markets, (2) consumer navigation of racialized markets, and (3) consumer resistance and advocacy movements. We build on our discussion to guide future research that foregrounds racial dynamics in consumer research and offers impactful theoretical and practical contributions.