Characterising Consumer Research Epistemologies: A Metatheoretical Framework to Investigate Consumer Research Methods Complementarity

摘要

Consumer research is undergoing changes concerning the perspectives of consumption phenomena and its research methods. Such changes might be caused by changes in human nature and the concepts of science, reality and truth pointed out by Postmodern thought. Does different epistemologies and consumer research methods reveal different aspects of consumption and consumer phenomena? This bibliographic and descriptive study aims, on the one hand, at discussing how methodological changes in consumer research relates to resulting consumption phenomena knowledge and, on the other hand, at developing a metatheoretical framework to understand a possible complementarity within different epistemological, and methodological consumer research approaches.