Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper draws on Michel Foucault’s conception of "disciplinary power" to explore some of the ways in which consumer research is implicated in modern forms of social control. According to Foucault, power in western societies is characterised less by the exercise of physical force and violence than by discipline and training. It operates by subjecting individuals and whole populations to normative regulation through mass surveillance, social categorisation and corrective treatment. The origins of these disciplinary techniques, Foucault argues, lie in the human(agement) sciences such as consumer research. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to explore those disciplinary techniques invested in this discipline (marketing research, segmentation and communications) for governing consumer behaviour