Qualitative Marketing Research

David Carson, Audrey Gilmore, Chad Perry, Kjell Gronhaug

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781446234983
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing Research
• Index: Business

As the importance of marketing to business grows, and as new concepts and applications of marketing emerge and evolve, so too does the need for up-to-date market intelligence. This book recognizes that the contribution which qualitative research can make to market understanding and insight is immense, and that statistical information flows are never enough but need to be compounded by market intelligence gained through qualitative methods.

Qualitative Marketing Research clearly explains the use and importance of qualitative methods, clarifying the theories behind the methodology and providing concrete examples and exercises which illustrate its application to Management Studies and Marketing.

This book is intended for all students of marketing who are required to complete their studies with a dissertation or research project.

Part I

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND MARKETING

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1	Philosophy of Research

What is the purpose of considering a philosophy of research? Simply, to understand the philosophy that underpins the choices and decisions to be made in staking a research position. A research position will have implications of what, how and why research is carried out. Consideration of the philosophy of research helps to contribute a deeper and wider perspective of research so that our own specific research projects can have a clearer purpose within the wider context.

For most of its history the big question in social science has been: is social science scientific? This chapter addresses the question at a number of levels: philosophical, epistemological and methodological. Social science research in marketing, based on rigour, validity, cause and effect, precision in measurement and the pursuit of theory testing and building has led to the wide acceptance of the use of a variety of scientific approaches. Social science research in marketing has been concerned with accuracy of research outcomes, with the emphasis on gathering reliable data. Further, the scientific approaches of social science research have enabled and encouraged theory testing and development, which has contributed to enhancing the scope and perspectives of the marketing discipline.

The term scientific is drawn from the presupposition that natural science is the benchmark against which all cognitive endeavours should be measured; thus scientific language and words, such as purposeful and systematic, are often used to describe the nature of research. Similarly, by choosing a methodology, a researcher implies the use of certain ‘rules and procedures’ with different connotations and purposes, such as the logic used for arriving at insights and as a means of communication, so that other people can inspect and evaluate the research.

In this chapter we discuss the wide parameters of scientific research in order to take a position within these parameters. That is to say, this text does not belong to the full range and scope of the social science research paradigms, but is firmly positioned within a defined context of qualitative research. The justification for this positional context is the overriding driver that social science research in marketing must have a clear purpose and, most importantly, must be relevant to the particular purpose of carrying out research in marketing.

The Philosophy of Marketing: Science or Art (Activity)?

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There have been many debates about the nature of marketing. These have focused on whether marketing can be deemed to have genuine scientific foundations and approaches to research, or whether marketing is more akin to an art where aspects of marketing are created out of the imagination and vision of the marketer. In pursuit of the notion of marketing science or scientific marketing, much scholarly thought and energy has been devoted to searching for an all-encompassing theory of marketing or a cohesive collection of theories that will determine the objective rigour of the discipline.

The scope and range of the social science research paradigms is illustrated by the long running debate on whether marketing is a science or an art/activity. This issue has been raised over many years by both academics and practitioners of marketing (Brown 1996; Hunt 1976, 1990, 1994; McKenna 1986; Sheth et al. 1988). There have been many interpretations of the definition and purpose of marketing research. Two examples serve to highlight this point. The first represents the academic perspective:

AN ACADEMIC DEFINITION OF MARKETING

Marketing is a ‘university discipline which aspires to be a professional discipline’ … Its responsibilities are:

• To society, for providing objective knowledge and technically competent, socially responsible, liberally educated graduates;
• To students, for providing an education which will enable them to get on the socio-economic career ladder and prepare them for roles as competent, responsible marketers and citizens;
• To marketing practice, for providing a continuing supply of competent, responsible entrants to the marketing profession and for providing new knowledge about both the micro and macro dimensions of marketing;
• To the academy, for upholding not only its mission of retailing, warehousing and producing knowledge, but also its contract with society of objective knowledge for academic freedom and its core values of reason, evidence, openness and civility. (Hunt 1994: 21–22)

This academic view of marketing is clearly positioned in the scientific perspective of marketing research paradigms. The perspective of Hunt is that of a scientific researcher and marketing academic emphasizing knowledge, not a business person. An alternative is offered by McKenna (1986), who may best be described as a consultant marketer whose view is from the perspective of business rather than academe:

A PRACTITIONER DEFINITION OF MARKETING

• Foclls on ‘understanding the market, moving with it, and forming relationships’;
• ‘Companies (must) view marketing as an educational process. The complexity and diversity of today’s products confuses and intimidates many customers. When customers are confused, companies must find ways to educate them. When customers are intimidated, companies must find ways to reassure them’;
• Marketing managers must ‘be creative, smart, aggressive and open to change’;
• Marketing is positioning between the product, market and company. (McKenna 1986: 8–9)

Comparison of these two perspectives highlights the professional position of both contributors. One is an academic and the other a practitioner. A superficial examination of the perspectives will suggest that Hunt (the academic) views marketing as a scientific discipline, while McKenna (the practitioner), views marketing as an activity more aligned to the dimensions of art. These two perspectives highlight variances when asking some fundamental questions. For example, is marketing a discipline? ‘Yes’, believe most academics; ‘perhaps’ say some practitioners with a high awareness of the wider aspects of marketing. Similarly, is marketing a science or is it merely science related? Again most academics will believe it to be a science or science related, whereas practitioners may not know or, more likely, will ask why such a question is deemed to be important. Consider, is marketing an activity? Only some academics will agree that it can be an activity (driven by knowledge: see Hunt’s second point above), whereas almost all practitioners believe that it is.

These summary examples illustrate that, if marketing is positioned as a continuum with science/discipline at one end and applied/activity/art at the other end, most academics believe that marketing is a discipline which has scientific foundations whereas practitioners view marketing simply as an applied activity which may have creative (and artistic) foundations. The academic (scientific/objective) approach is predicated on explaining and predicting phenomena, while the practitioner (artistic/subjective) approach emphasizes describing and understanding phenomena. In such a continuum, academics and practitioners would seldom converge in their perspectives. Thus it is easy to detect a gulf between the two views outlined above. This need not be so, particularly in relation to research in marketing. Research in marketing may take a number of positions. Firstly, it is possible to be positioned firmly within the scientific marketing domain. Indeed, much of the academic research carried out and published in academic journals can be said to hold such a position. Secondly, it is possible, indeed appropriate in certain circumstances, to be positioned in the practitioner/artistic domain where research will seek to solve practical problems and provide potential solutions to practical problems rather than seek to break new ground or establish new theories.

It can also be entirely appropriate to adopt a dual position, whereby a variety of research philosophies and positions can be adopted depending upon the circumstances prevailing and the nature of the topic or research problem. This book advocates that such a multiple approach and position is suitable for research in marketing management decision making and business problems/issues. Indeed, Borch and Arthur (1995: 423) claim that both approaches should be used, arguing that mixed methodologies would ‘contribute to the richness’ of the research. Their bipolar approach to research is common: for example, Easterby-Smith et a1. (1991) in their book, Management Research, share it. In brief, a researcher’s methodology may ‘aim to blend the rigour of the scientific validity of objectivist research with the contextual elements and insights of subjectivist research’ (Borch and Arthur 1995: 425).

A cornerstone of the present book’s positional context is to suggest that instead of taking an extreme position of either a scientific or artistic approach, the blend of two approaches could be taken within the one large domain of interpretivism/relativism for marketing management contexts. We discuss this domain in our notes to this chapter.

The elements and characteristics of the dominant philosophies of research and how they impact upon research decisions, values and appropriateness for purpose are addressed in the following section.

Some Research Philosophies

Ontology and epistemology

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We briefly discuss the meaning and perception of ontology and epistemology here. Essentially, ontology is reality, epistemology is the relationship between that reality and the researcher; and methodology is the technique(s) used by the researcher to discover that reality (Perry et al. 1999).

An ontology assuming that individuals have direct, un mediated access to the real world subscribes to the theory that it is possible to obtain hard, secure, objective knowledge about this single external reality (the basis of positivism, described in the following section). Conversely, an ontology which holds that individuals do not have direct access to the real world but that their knowledge of this perceived world (or worlds) is meaningful in its own terms and can be understood through careful use of appropriate interpretivist and relativist procedures is described in the following section.

Positivism or interpretivism

The positivist ontology holds that the world is external and objective, therefore its epistemology is based on the belief that observers are independent and that science is value-free. The positivist or natural science school relates to the facts or causes of social phenomena and attempts to explain causal relationships by means of objective facts. Positivist research concentrates on description and explanation, where thought is governed by explicitly stated theories and hypotheses. A research topic is identified through the discovery of an external object of research rather than by creating the actual object of study. Researchers remain detached by maintaining a distance between themselves and the object of research; they try to be emotionally neutral and make a clear distinction between reason and feeling, science and personal experience. Positivists seek to maintain a clear distinction between facts and value judgements, search for objectivity and strive to use a consistently rational, verbal and logical approach to their object of research. Statistics and mathematical techniques for quantitative processing of data are central to the research methods adopted by researchers from the positivist school of research. Hence positivists use a set of specific formalized techniques for trying to discover and measure independent facts about a single reality which is assumed to exist, driven by natural laws and mechanisms.

Table 1.1 illustrates the broad definition of the positivist and interpretivist ontologies and epistemologies, and the characteristics of relevant methodologies for both philosophies.

Interpretivism (derived from the Greek hermeneuein, to interpret) is inspired by a series of other qualitative concepts and approaches. Tesch (1990) lists a total of 46 such possibilities, Patton (1990) lists 10 theoretical traditions, and Helenius (1990) makes a synthesis of seven traditions into the concept of hermeneutics. However the broad term interpretivism takes account of the most important characteristics of the research paradigm on the opposite side of the continuum from positivism. To summarize, the interpretivist approach allows the focus of research to be on understanding what is happening in a given context. It includes consideration of multiple realities, different actors’ perspectives, researcher involvement, taking account of the contexts of the phenomena under study, and the contextual understanding and interpretation of data.

Positivism has been considered by many scientific researchers in the past to be the correct scientific paradigm. However, interpretivism avoids the rigidities of positivism in relation to certain types of problems in the social field. Instead of trying to explain causal relationships by means of objective ‘facts’ and statistical analysis, interpretivism uses a more personal process in order ot understand reality. Thus the term interpret is important in this approach to research. The term relativism is often used also; this recognizes that in the social field (marketing) phenomena are relative to each other in some way as opposed ot seeking to isolate variables as in positivist studies adhering to scientific rules. Our preference is for the term interpretivism because it accentuates the involvement and personal interpretive processes involved in understanding and making sense of phenomena in specific contexts in marketing.

Table 1.1 Broad definitions/explanations of positivism, interpretivism, ontology, epistemology and methodology

Traditionally, positivism was based on empirical testing as the sole means of theory justification. After much antagonistic debate on the relevance of scientific theories for marketing phenomena (see for example Journal of Marketing, 47, Fall 1983 and European Journal of Marketing, 28 (3) 1994), there is now more general agreement tha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND MARKETING
• Part II QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES
• Part III APPLICATIONS AND OUTCOMES OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
• Index