Transdisciplinary Consumption
For the past 100 years, research about consumption has stemmed from two main disciplines: (a) consumer studies/sciences (including consumer policy and education) (a spin off from home economics) and (b) consumer behaviour research (a spin off from marketing). The former focuses on protecting the consumers’ interest vis-à-vis business activities, often through consumer protection policy, corporate regulation policy, and consumer information and education. This discipline also focuses on family and consumer economics and resource management with the intention of ensuring economic efficiency and, more recently, ecological effectiveness and sustainability. The consumer education component strives for consumer empowerment and efficacy, recently augmented with a global citizenship perspective. The latter, consumer behaviour, has its roots firmly entrenched in marketing. It focuses on helping businesses better understand consumer behaviour so that this behaviour can be influenced using advertising, branding, market segmentation, opinion leadership, persuasion, and behaviour modification. Corporations have recently turned their attention toward consumers’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility and its impact on consumer loyalty and attendant consumer behaviour.
Each of these disciplines (consumer studies and consumer behaviour) assume a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from economics, political studies, sociology, psychology, history, anthropology, and administrative/management sciences. Only those consumer scholars trained in home economics can claim an interdisciplinary approach, and even then interdisciplinarity brings disciplines together (either in person or theoretically) with no commitment to change the boundaries and relations between them. Since the inception of both disciplines, the world has changed. A global consumer culture has evolved predicated on materialism, the consumerism ideology, the neo-liberal market ideology, the conservative political ideology, and corporate led, top-down economic globalization. The result is further entrenchment of haves and have nots, a situation now deeply exacerbated by the innocuous action of consumption. We now live in a world where less than 20% of the world’s population controls 85% of the world’s resources and holds nearly 100% of the world’s wealth. The economically affluent Northern consumer is engaging in consumer behaviour that is having a profoundly negative impact on Majority World citizens (often called the Southern World or developing countries). In addition to consumer choices leading to the oppression, exploitation and harm of fellow human beings who make most products and deliver most services consumed in the world, these choices have completely compromised the ecological integrity of Planet Earth and the thousands of other species other than humans.
We have consumed, produced and de-legislated ourselves into human condition and ecological polycrises. 21st century human and planetary problems are so complex that they cannot be solved from the perspective of one or two disparate disciplines anymore. This paper makes the case for consumer studies and consumer behaviour scholars to turn to the transdisciplinary methodology. Consumer scholars would move beyond studying symptomatic issues of credit acquisition practices, indebtedness, financial wealth, financial literacy and income security. Consumer behaviour (marketing) scholars would move from prescriptive approaches of how to influence consumer behaviour so as to improve the bottom line through brand loyalty, consumer confidence and consumer satisfaction.
Both disciplines would grapple, instead, with human and ecological problems that manifest and mask themselves as symptoms of ill thought out consumption and greedy corporate behaviour. These global, complex, emergent transdisciplinary issues include: poverty and unequal wealth distribution; uneven economic, social and human development; human freedom, security and justice; self-determination; harmonious access to and distribution of resources; power relationships; human aggression; and, prevailing world views, ideologies and paradigms. Consumer studies and behaviour scholars would do this from a transdisciplinary stance, which involves removing the boundaries among disciplines within universities and between the academy and civil society, where the human condition and ecological integrity play out on a daily basis and are deeply shaped by global consumption patterns and ideologies.
Transdisciplinary Consumption
Sue L.T. McGregor http://www.consultmcgregor.com
For the past 100 years, research about consumption has stemmed from two main disciplines: (a) consumer studies/sciences (including consumer policy and education) (a spin off from home economics) and (b) consumer behaviour research (a spin off from marketing). The former focuses on protecting the consumers’ interest vis-à-vis business activities, often through consumer protection policy, corporate regulation policy, and consumer information and education. This discipline also focuses on family and consumer economics and resource management with the intention of ensuring economic efficiency and, more recently, ecological effectiveness and sustainability. The consumer education component strives for consumer empowerment and efficacy, recently augmented with a global citizenship perspective. The latter, consumer behaviour, has its roots firmly entrenched in marketing. It focuses on helping businesses better understand consumer behaviour so that this behaviour can be influenced using advertising, branding, market segmentation, opinion leadership, persuasion, and behaviour modification. Corporations have recently turned their attention toward consumers’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility and its impact on consumer loyalty and attendant consumer behaviour.
Each of these disciplines (consumer studies and consumer behaviour) assume a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from economics, political studies, sociology, psychology, history, anthropology, and administrative/management sciences. Only those consumer scholars trained in home economics can claim an interdisciplinary approach, and even then interdisciplinarity brings disciplines together (either in person or theoretically) with no commitment to change the boundaries and relations between them. Since the inception of both disciplines, the world has changed. A global consumer culture has evolved predicated on materialism, the consumerism ideology, the neo-liberal market ideology, the conservative political ideology, and corporate led, top-down economic globalization. The result is further entrenchment of haves and have nots, a situation now deeply exacerbated by the innocuous action of consumption. We now live in a world where less than 20% of the world’s population controls 85% of the world’s resources and holds nearly 100% of the world’s wealth. The economically affluent Northern consumer is engaging in consumer behaviour that is having a profoundly negative impact on Majority World citizens (often called the Southern World or developing countries). In addition to consumer choices leading to the oppression, exploitation and harm of fellow human beings who make most products and deliver most services consumed in the world, these choices have completely compromised the ecological integrity of Planet Earth and the thousands of other species other than humans.
We have consumed, produced and de-legislated ourselves into human condition and ecological polycrises. 21st century human and planetary problems are so complex that they cannot be solved from the perspective of one or two disparate disciplines anymore. This paper makes the case for consumer studies and consumer behaviour scholars to turn to the transdisciplinary methodology. Consumer scholars would move beyond studying symptomatic issues of credit acquisition practices, indebtedness, financial wealth, financial literacy and income security. Consumer behaviour (marketing) scholars would move from prescriptive approaches of how to influence consumer behaviour so as to improve the bottom line through brand loyalty, consumer confidence and consumer satisfaction.
Both disciplines would grapple, instead, with human and ecological problems that manifest and mask themselves as symptoms of ill thought out consumption and greedy corporate behaviour. These global, complex, emergent transdisciplinary issues include: poverty and unequal wealth distribution; uneven economic, social and human development; human freedom, security and justice; self-determination; harmonious access to and distribution of resources; power relationships; human aggression; and, prevailing world views, ideologies and paradigms. Consumer studies and behaviour scholars would do this from a transdisciplinary stance, which involves removing the boundaries among disciplines within universities and between the academy and civil society, where the human condition and ecological integrity play out on a daily basis and are deeply shaped by global consumption patterns and ideologies.
