Summary
Contents
Subject index
The question of consumption emerged as a major focus of research and scholarship in the 1990s but the breadth and diversity of consumer culture has not been fully enough explored. The meanings of consumption, particularly in relation to lifestyle and identity, are of great importance to academic areas including business studies, sociology, cultural and media studies, psychology, geography and politics. The SAGE Handbook of Consumer Culture is a one-stop resource for scholars and students of consumption, where the key dimensions of consumer culture are critically discussed and articulated. The editors have organised contributions from a global and interdisciplinary team of scholars into six key sections: Part 1: Sociology of Consumption Part 2: Geographies of Consumer Culture Part 3: Consumer Culture Studies in Marketing Part 4: Consumer Culture in Media and Cultural Studies Part 5: Material Cultures of Consumption Part 6: The Politics of Consumer Culture
Prosumption Tribes: How Consumers Collectively Rework Brands, Products, Services and Markets
Prosumption Tribes: How Consumers Collectively Rework Brands, Products, Services and Markets
Introduction
This chapter deals with two important assumptions of consumer behaviour theories that are rooted in cognitive psychology and economics. The first is methodological individualism: the unit of observation is the individual consumer. The second is related to the nature of consumption activities: the consumer is seen as using (destroying) the utility created by companies and channelled through products and services.
Interpretive researchers (Beckmann and Elliott, 2000) have challenged these two assumptions as follows:
- Consumption is a collective phenomenon: groups just as individuals are capable of agency and, as such, they can be considered as the unit of analysis of the consumption process. Consumers ...
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