Interpreting Consumer Mythology: A Structural Approach to Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior depth interviews are grouped with other kinds of story telling--fairy tales, novels, psychological test responses, and myths--as imaginative statements that can be qualitatively interpreted for their functional and symbolic content. Drawing upon the Claude Levi-Strauss approach to the analysis of myths, a structuralist interpretation illustrates application to the age, sex, and social status dimensions of food consumption.