Achieving social compatibility of sustainable development is an actual challenge to research and policy. Concepts are required capable of popularising this “Leitbild” and connecting it to social reality. Research into social lifestyles and, more recently, into daily consumption practices has provided concepts principally able to meet this demand. In this publication both approaches are described and critically reflected in the context of sustainability policy. Moreover, the main results of an expert workshop that dealt with the benefits and perspectives of such concepts are presented. The report concludes that research into consumer lifestyles and daily consumption practices provides fruitful insight when it comes to designing research and policy strategies ex-plicitly considering the socio-cultural dimension of consumerism and individual consumer be-haviour.