ABSTRACT
Consumers have tracked their behaviour, their moods and feelings or their accomplishments for a long time. The digital transformations have changed these practices drastically, due to new technologies and new convenient devices. In this chapter, the focus is on the variety of ways how research has made sense of such digital self-tracking practices. The existing research is mapped according to the different conceptualizations of self-tracking (the object of the research) and to the different paradigmatic perspectives applied so far. This contributes to the goal to improve consumer research on self-tracking by enabling a more coherent discussions in-between existing research projects. In a final step, several options for future research paths are discussed. This includes first an extension of work on “sensing data” beyond a visual sense (here with the example of listening). Second, for the critical analysis of self-tracking it is suggested to start politicizing the tracking practices (of researchers and researched subjects), especially by going beyond a purely Western research perspective.
