ABSTRACT
In 1978 Robert Mayer published an article in the American Behavioral Scientist entitled ‘Exploring sociological theories by studying consumers’ in which he noted that the increasingly voiced suggestion that marketers and consumer researchers could profitably make more use of sociological concepts could equally be matched by calls for sociologists to pay more attention to individuals in their role as consumers. He claimed that ‘sociologists have much to gain from focusing their empirical studies on consumers’, and that ‘the study of consumption is a useful setting for the testing and expansion of sociological theories’ (ibid.: 600). Whilst there is little evidence to suggest that many sociologists took much notice of Mayer’s remarks at the time, they can be seen, from the perspective of the 1990s, to have had a certain prophetic ring to them. Not that there has in fact been any rush to ‘test’ sociological theories by examining consumer behaviour, but there does now exist within the discipline a fairly widespread appreciation of the importance of focusing attention upon the sphere of consumption.
