metaconsumer

M3E1T1A1C3O1N1S1U1M3E1R1

noun

One who actively shapes the products that they purchase.

Scrabble 18

Meanings

nounmetaconsumer (plural metaconsumers)

plural metaconsumers

  1. One who actively shapes the products that they purchase.

    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
    3 more examples

    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

    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 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
  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).

    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
    2 more examples

    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
  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
    1 more example

    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.
    1 more example

    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

Origin

  1. Proto-Indo-European*me
  2. Proto-Indo-European*meth₂?
  3. Ancient Greekμετᾰ́ (metắ)
  4. Ancient Greekμετᾰ- (metă-)
  5. Englishmeta-
  6. Proto-Indo-European*ḱe?
  7. Proto-Indo-European*ḱóm
  8. Proto-Italic*kom
  9. Proto-Italic*kom-
  10. Latincon-
  11. Proto-Indo-European*upó
  12. Proto-Italic*supo
  13. Latinsub
  14. Latinsub-
  15. Proto-Indo-European*h₁em-
  16. Proto-Indo-European*h₁émeti
  17. Proto-Italic*emō
  18. Latinemō
  19. Latinsūmō
  20. Latincōnsūmō
  21. Old Frenchconsumer
  22. Middle Englishconsumen
  23. Englishconsume
  24. Englishconsumer
  25. Englishmetaconsumer

From meta- + consumer.

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

metaconsumer. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/metaconsumer

MLA

“metaconsumer.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/metaconsumer. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “metaconsumer,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/metaconsumer.

Source: metaconsumer on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.