The methodological choices now confronting consumer researchers are daunting and for many years, researchers have wrestled with issues related to the nature of knowledge in the study of consumption phenomena. The authors of this book examine the philosophies and methods of consumer research both objectively and subjectively. First, they present philosophical concepts regarding the origin and content of knowledge relevant to consumer-behaviour phenomena. They then go on to consider a set of research methods aimed at implementing inquiry from the viewpoint of each particular philosophical...

Most of us probably think of America as being settled by British Protestant colonists who fought the Indians tamed the wilderness, and brought democracy--or at least a representative republic--to North America. To the contrary, Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman's research indicates the earliest settlers were of Mediterranean extraction, and of a Jewish or Muslim religious persuasion. Sometimes called Melungeons, these early settlers were among the earliest nonnative Americans to live in the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. For fear of discrimination-since Muslims, Jews,...