ABSTRACT
If the 'welfare' of consumers is taken as the normative and strategic reference point of consumer research and consumer policy, it can readily be shown that this welfare is influenced either positively or negatively by three types of actors. These actors include manufacturers or suppliers of goods and services consumed within the domestic household; the state, especially in its capacity as a judicial and legislative power; and individual consumers and their organizations. The principle of continuous structural differentiation is evidenced in such processes as the division of labour, and in the separation of manual and mental labour, labour and capital, state and society, law and morality, and state and church. The concept of 'consumer' has no distinct basis in social reality, because the sphere of action related to consumption is not yet clearly delimited from other spheres of action such as work, politics and family life.
