ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a visual approach to consumer research, dislocating the consumption domain away from the attitude researcher’s laboratory, beyond the behavioural decision theorist’s rational model, and off the marketing strategist’s brand map, toward concerns about what consumers look at, what they see, and how they make sense of the visual world. Following the interpretative turn in consumer research, the perspective on the production and consumption of images draws from art history, photography and visual studies to develop an interdisciplinary, visual approach to understanding consumer behaviour. The chapter focuses on the image and its interpretation as foundational elements of elusive consumption, bringing together theoretical concerns about image and representation to build a multidisciplinary approach to consumption in what is called 'the image economy.'.
