Karin M Ekstrom is associate professor at the place of education of Economics and Commercial Law at Goteborg University.

Karin M Ekstrom is associate professor at the place of education of Economics and Commercial Law at Goteborg University, Sweden and director of the Center for Consumer Science (CFK) driver's seat 600, 405 30 Goteborg, Sweden, 46-31-7731480 karin.ekstrom@cfk.gu.se The author would like to thank the editor, the anonymous reviewers, Russell W Belk, James W middle class Lennart Hast, and Thomas C O'Guinn for their valuable notes Carina Holmberg for contribution to an earlier draft of this paper, and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation for funding this plot Also, in reference to the topic of application of mind the author would like to expres her appreciation to the Association for Consumer Research, their colloquys and newsletters, which have made her be wrought up part of a family of consumer researchers at times when there have been relatively hardly any consumer researchers in Sweden.

One of the moot points facing the field of contemporary consumer behavior research is similar to in what manner children, especially teenagers, going end an identity crisis might be warmed - they are not assured where they came from, for what purpose and certainly not where they are going. They are unsure with what intent parts of their family don't interact with the other, on what account they may not play with their positivist/interpretivist cousins, visit their skeptical cognitive uncle or their suspiciously semiotic aunt. Their identity, as well as consumer behavior researchers' scholarly location, is believed to be affected by dint of an understanding of family history. An awareness of the past will help themunderstand their family better - who their family members are, for what reason relations of different strength and character have been formed from one side of to the other time, and what has kept the family together or separated. Historical knowledge will also be useful when thinking of what may occur hereafter consumer behavior research.

While a comprehensive genealogy is beyond the space of this paper, the family metaphor might help to describe [i]clavis[/i] moments, developments, breaks, and reconciliations in the unravelling of consumer behavior as a field of consideration and to illustrate how consumer behavior researchers act and interact (or not). Its contribution is to provide disciplinary geography and to make the dynamic growth of consumer behavior and the relations to our research "family" (or families) to a topic for discussion and reflection. by means of studying the key moments in the genealogy of consumer behavior, we will better recognize sources of inspiration, sources of schism, and perhaps paths to meaningful reunion.

We are born or married into a family, just as we as researchers are thrust or introduced into a family of researchers, by dint of choosing a particular research orientation when starting PhD studies or when working forward joint research projects. To be part of a family involves weights of happiness as well as importances of anxiety. The perception of whether something is beneficial or bad and strategies for dealing with different situations differs among family members, just as it differs among researchers. I believe that family question s should be brought out into the unclose Vigorous discussions around the family dinner table are favored from one side of to the other asking individual family members to be quiet or sending them for therapy. any family members may find the tone of voice a bit offensive. The aim is, however, to be conception provoking, challenging, and to stimulate discussion of consumer research for the coming time

This paper is organized as follows: First, the family metaphor is situated and applied to illustrate processe and aspects of academic life, primarily although not necessarily limited to research in consumer behavior. A review of elucidation historical familial disciplinary moments is then showed building on previous researchers' (Arndt 1986; Belk 1995) reflections as well as additional literature reviews. newly come developments, new versus old perspectives, and paradigm shifts are of special interest for understanding today's situation. The family metaphor is then expanded to the history of our consumer behavior research family. The last section deals with the family's that will be involving inquiries on how research is to be convoyed what will drive the research questions, for whom research will be mannersed and how to keep the family together, etc The answers are set forthed in family terms and rhetoric and are likely to hang on the definition of our family and field of study

THE FAMILY METAPHOR

Metaphors are often met with among humans, even social scientists. "Metaphor is the backbone of social science writing. Like the spine, it bears weight, permits motion is buried beneath the surface, and links parts together into a functional, coherent whole" (Richardson 1994 p519) Metaphors are used to describe something in names of something else. By comparison or analogy, metaphors allow us to make the implicit more explicit and understandable. by dint of using a metaphor, it is possible to transfer meaning and structur knowledge from a familiar to a novel domain (Gregan-Paxton 1998) Metaphors can also disentangle the researcher's imagination and thus contribute to research (Goodwin 1996 p31) Zaltman (1997 p425) discusses by what mode metaphors can be used as a research rule as a means of finding hidden deliberations and feelings and stresses: "without metaphors we cannot imagine: they are the engines of imagination." It is important that a metaphor hides many different aspects of the particular phenomenon studied and that the metaphor is not contradictory in itself. Of course, a metaphor may be able to explain specific aspects of a phenomenon, nevertheless not all aspects (Goodwin 1996; Lakoff and Johnson 1980) Cultural values are coherent with metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) and should also be considered when choosing a metaphor.