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This paper provides the aspects of consumer research that could be linked with Foucault’s theory of “the panopticon and power”. These aspects were classified into three broad spheres. When it is to consider a gap from the seventeenth of “the panopticon” to the twenty-first centuries, to differentiate new surveillance from old surveillance is significant . While the latter was focused on subjecting and refined the individual to continuous inspection, the latter is less invasive and more dependent on technology with still continuous observation. Foucault argues that modernity allowed the power of surveillance by the state as well as by countless non-state throughout society and included inspectors in a corporation. Therefore, companies might have had the power to survey consumes’ behaviour through systems of new surveillance. It is often argued that numerous consumer research, particularly qualitative research, were performed to satisfy the consumer’s needs, and the feature of “the panopticon” might be found in these methods such as Video Ethnography and focused Group Interview. In the capitalist society, it is difficult to manipulate unequal power. Power relationship might be said the cooperation that appear to explain the situation of the marketplace; firms create and sustains ones’ participatory panopticon . Furthermore, postmodern consumers have achieved abilities to conceptualize themselves and analysis the situation of the marketplace, and at the same time, firms have developed ways to survey targets effectively by using power relationship; this power relationship might be cooperation rather than authority. Therefore, the power relation between companies’ macro power and the customer’s micro power in consumer research for commoditization is interactive rather than in one direction.
