Dictionary

metaconsumer en · NOUN

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *me Proto-Indo-European *meth₂? Ancient Greek μετᾰ́ (metắ) Ancient Greek μετᾰ- (metă-)lbor. English meta- Proto-Indo-European *ḱe? Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Italic *kom Proto-Italic *kom- Latin con- Proto-Indo-European *upó Proto-Italic *supo Latin sub Latin sub- Proto-Indo-European *h₁em- Proto-Indo-European *-eti Proto-Indo-European *h₁émeti Proto-Italic *emō Latin emō Latin sūmō Latin cōnsūmōder. Old French consumerbor. Middle English consumen English consume Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzios Latin -āriusnom. Latin -āriusbor. Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz Proto-West Germanic *-ārī Old English -ere Middle English -ere English -er English consumer English metaconsumer From meta- + consumer.

Meanings

1. One who actively shapes the products that they purchase.
   • Some of the implications of the entrenchment of the metaconsumer in the era of postmodernity have been-recently recognized in the field of consumer research by researchers who are at the forefront of major leaps in methodological and theoretical movements in this field. 1991, A. Fuat Firat, “The Consumer in Postmodernity”, in Advances in Consumer Research, volume 18:
   • In the state of postmodern consumption, even producers-as-writers are transformed into metaconsumers whose response to new commodities such as the rental family is always masochistic, but is also highly creative. 2006, Takayuki Tatsumi, Full Metal Apache:
   • For "medium customers", the beginnings of the conception of the metaconsumer takes place on the base of many frustrations: the time of mistrust and the loss of privileges. 1996, Ulrike Schöneberg, Consumer Trends in Banking and Insurance, page 64:
   • In a conventional relationship between designer and consumer, the consumer places orders; a metaconsumer works on par with a metadesigner as “co-author.” 1994, Leonardo - Volume 27, page 423:
2. One who consumes or seeks out aspects of consumerism; a consumer of the experience of shopping and advertising (as opposed to the products bought).
   • Increasingly businesses are the market targeted by managed care organizations; as purchasers of health insurance options for their employees, businesses are the new metaconsumers of health care insurance (Sacramento Bee, 1995; Marion Merrell Dow, 1995). 1997, Meryl Beth Rappaport, Remodeling Home Care, page 110:
   • Oh, an ardent hermeneut might try to distinguish his or her own experience as more intensively "pop" than that of less authentic metaconsumers passing through Coke's world. 1999, James A. Boon, Verging on Extra-vagance:
   • A metaconsumer is not only a consumer of products and symbols but also an active participant in the shopping spectacle. 1995, Rob Kling, Spencer C. Olin, Mark Poster, Postsuburban California:
3. A person, system, or organization that purchases something on behalf of a group of consumers.
   • In other words, metaverse equals 'metacreator' and 'metaconsumer'. 2021 November 2, Jessica Goodfellow, “Who will control the metaverse?”, in Campaign US:
   • Most of these examples assume one producer and one consumer ( or aggregate them into one metaproducer and one metaconsumer ) . 1999, Herbert Dawid, Nonlinear Dynamical Systems and Adaptive Methods, page 127:
4. One who consumes (destroys) the act or possibility of consumption.
   • If it is possible thus to shift from a generically female consumer to a uniquely male metaconsumer (whose slaughter of the too-desirable peacocks would, however vainly, mark an all-consuming end of consumption itself) , this possibility has everything to do with the trick whereby Thackeray stages his consumption so that its feminizing—in a context of male rivalry, effectively homosexualizing—voractity gets transmuted into the distinguished distance, or the killing melancholic disavowal, constitutive, as Judith Butler has argued, of male heterosexuality itself. 1997, Joseph Litvak, Michèle Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Strange Gourmets: Sophistication, Theory, and the Novel, page 63:

Forms