The growth of knowledge in marketing requires alternative interpretations of consumer behaviour to the prevailing trait and information processing models derived from structural psychology. Consumer behaviour may be construed as environmentally determined, an evolutionary process in which the...

The nature of interpretive consumer research is examined within the context of the contribution to the growth of knowledge played by the proliferation of tenaciously‐held rival theories. Dennett’s intentional stance is contrasted with a contextual stance in which behaviour is controlled by a...