A new approach to the incorporation of attributes into consumer theory

A framework is developed which can be used to analyze a large class of consumption situations which cannot be handled by Lancaster's model. To achieve this end, a certain “expansion” of attribute space is performed. Subsequently, we formally define the notions of mixability and effective number of goods$\text{n}$. This new model degenerates into Lancaster's model for the special case when $\text{n}\text{= 1}$.