The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies

Consumer Culture Theory (CCT)

SØREN ASKEGAARD

University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

DOI: 10.1002/9781118989463.wbeccs54

Consumer culture theory (CCT) is a stream of research focusing on consumption patterns as a social and cultural practice. Scholars who espouse CCT are predominantly, albeit not exclusively, employed in marketing or management departments in universities and business schools in Europe and North America, though there is a growing interest in this type of research in Latin America, for example. Based on the legacy of earlier social psychological approaches to the symbolic nature of consumer behavior as expressed in, for example, the work of Sidney Levy from the 1950s, CCT slowly grew from the early 1980s onward as an increasingly significant addition to the traditional econometric and cognitive psychological approaches to the study of consumer decision making and consumer behavior in business schools.

CCT is also an emergent formalized scholarly association which has organized its own annual conference since 2006. Its most significant and prestigious publication outlet is the Journal of Consumer Research, although this is shared with consumer researchers working from the more dominant perspectives of cognitive psychology/behavioral decision theory and econometric modeling of consumer behavior. Other outlets with significant contributions from CCT scholars are the journals Consumption, Market and Culture, Journal of Consumer Culture, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal ...