ABSTRACT
The idea of a consumer identity has been associated with the advent of the market economy and the growing mountain of commodities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The awareness of consumers having a critical role in the society accentuated in the aftermath of World War II, as many Western economies gradually shifted from austerity to affluence. The concept of the citizen-consumer introduces dilemmas and conflicting identities of consumers that stretch beyond the antagonism inherent in the transactional relationship between consumer and providers of goods and services. Empowerment not only rests on consumers' ability to acknowledge their identity as consumers, but also their capacity to organize themselves, exercise power and achieve their own goals. Attempts have been made to construct typologies of consumer protection regimes. The post-war concept of a citizen-consumer identity was formed by the political efforts to overcome class distinctions and to leave behind the turmoil that threatened to tear apart the industrialized societies during the mid-war period.
