Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The study of consumption within the social sciences has a history stretching over a century or more, and has only recently been extended to the study of consumption of and on the Internet. The arrival of the Internet as a mass market technology in the early to mid-1990s throughout western countries and beyond has posed new questions for the multidisciplinary study of consumption and consumer culture, particularly as the Internet seems to facilitate the shift from mass consumption to increasingly specialized, flexible, and geographically dispersed forms of consumption. Some familiar intellectual debates are now being replayed in this new arena between social researchers who question the power relations inherent in consumption (and its relation to production) and market researchers who approach the study of consumption uncritically as a means of increasing its presence in everyday life. The study of consumption and the Internet has sought to critique the way in which online consumers (and therefore processes of online consumption) are researched within business and marketing schools, whether focusing narrowly on e-commerce or more broadly on the circulation of information in a liberalized market. Studies of consumption and the Internet are particularly concerned to critique accounts of consumer “needs” and “preferences,” the decoupling of consumption from production, and economistic ... log in or subscribe to read full text