Surviving in a material world - Evidence from ethnographic consumer research on people in poverty

This article examines the consumer "cycle of poverty" using a decade of eth nographic research on the material lives of the poor For the purposes of th is article, composite portraits of six different poverty subpopulations wer e developed in an attempt to capture the lived experience of such individua ls. These composites were written as six short stories that represent the s ource of ethnographic evidence used to inform five thematic categories. Imp lications for ethnographers, the broader consumer research community, and p ublic policy makers are provided in the close.