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This article examines what people do when they consume. In recent interpretive consumer research, three research streams have emerged, each portraying how people consume through a distinctive metaphor: co'nsuming as experience, consuming as integration, and consuming as classification. The research reported herea two-year observational case study of baseball spectators in Chicago's Wrigley Field bleachers-builds on this literature to systematically detail the universe of actions that constitute consuming. The resulting typology refines, extends, and synthesizes the three existing approaches to consuming and adds a fourth dimension-consuming as play-to yield a comprehensive vocabulary for descnbing how consumers consume. The usefulness of the typology is demonstrated by applying it to develop an alternative conception of materialism as a style of consuming.

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