Consumers and consumption: from individual, to collective, and beyond

Consumer research has always been halfway between individual and aggregate approaches. Put roughly, psychologists and economists follow methodological individualism, while anthropologists and sociologists follow different forms of methodological pluralism. This means that the inherent social dimension of consumption has been approached from different perspectives: in individually oriented studies, cultural and societal issues are mediated by individual perceptions and motivations, while in pluralist studies they are the focus of analysis, although observed at different levels of aggregation (group, class, culture, and the society at large).