From Consumer to Citizen: Consumer Research as an Instrument for the ...

The current position of consumer research - since it rests on a market - purchase paradigm which reduces consumers to their role as buyers or customers - contributes mainly to the repair of market weaknesses. This narrow focus neglects people's need for self-determination in their own lives, which requires action competences that go beyond market transactions. Therefore a new type of understanding of the consumer has to include consumer acts also outside the market and their corresponding contexts. A few theses are base of this approach of consumer research fostering societal transformation towards sustainability, which are to be presented at the ICCR 2014 Conference.