Now, after decades of a dominant enchantment with theories, methods and research findings based in the economical or psychological traditions of research, the Marketing discipline is proclaiming an ever growing space of the use of theoretical and methodological assumptions originating from Anthropology as a form of understanding in a more acute way details of the symbolic universe harnessed to the practices of consumption of a certain group or culture. This paper helps bring together these two disciplines in question through the understanding of the foundations of a road beloved in Anthropology: structuralism. With the intention of raising awareness on the part of those who, by their actions, attempt to establish structures of what they research, this paper discusses some general characteristics of structuralisms, their main taxonomies, significance of the structure notion, general principles that guide a structural analysis, the researcher's role in the search for structures, as well as the relevance and potential applicabilities of structural investigations in Marketing.
structuralist epistemology; structural methodological principles; an applied structuralist approach to Marketing
