Dimensões culturais do marketing: teoria antropológica, etnografia e comportamento do consumidor

The present article intends to discuss the use of the anthropological approach of the consumption and especially, the ethnographic method, in the academic area of Marketing. Initially, some classic texts in the fi eld of Anthropology of Consumption will be commented, in order to emphasize the specifi city of the contribution of that discipline to the studies about consumption - the perception that this phenomenon is, first of all, symbolic and collective. Then, we analyze the manners by which ethnography was used in the studies published in journals of Marketing and in the academic production of a research and teaching institute in Brazil. The anthropological refl ection found in the studies commented here serves, as a whole, to open new intellectual prospects, promoting a critical debate concerning the positivistic and reductionistic inclination present in the fi eld of investigations about the consumer in the area of Marketing.