A Tutorial in Consumer Research: Process Theorization in Cultural Consumer Research

Abstract

How do researchers studying the cultural aspects of consumption theorize change? We propose four analytical workbench modes of process theorization in combination with nine genres of process-oriented consumer research, each presenting a distinctive combination of assumptions about the nature of change in market and consumption systems and consumers’ role in these processes. Through this framework, we provide consumer researchers with a useful interpretive tool kit for deriving a process-oriented theorization from the unwieldy complexity of longitudinal data.