Qualitative Marketing Research

A Cultural Approach

Johanna Moisander, Anu Valtonen

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781446233054
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing Research
• Index: Business

Aimed at both graduate and undergraduate students majoring in business administration and in other fields of social sciences, Qualitative Marketing Research unpacks the emerging cultural approach in the field of marketing and consumer research and provides an interesting and informed study for anyone interested in cultural approaches to economic and social theory.

The book also provides insights for MBA students and other business professionals who work in the field of marketing, advertising, media planning and qualitative market research, offering methodological resources for keeping professional skills up to date and help with designing and conducting relevant and skillful market research which is sensitive to the cultural dynamics of the marketplace behaviour.

Part 1

Cultural Approach to Markets and Methods

‘Hi! I’d like to buy a new mobile phone,’ says a customer at the service counter of a home electronics store.
‘Do you have any particular brand in mind or any particular features that you consider essential?’ asks the sales person.
‘Well, hmmm … not really. I just want to get a new phone, a new model, it has to look cool, some well-known brand of course, not too expensive – and not too complicated!’ the customer replies. The sales person starts to talk about the phones, explaining their features and benefits, frequently resorting to techno-jargon. The customer listens, asks a few additional questions, and finally buys a phone and walks out the door.
Later, at home, when the phone is ready to be used, the customer makes a call: ‘Hi Dad, I just bought a new mobile phone.’
‘Again? You just bought one a few months ago, didn’t you?’
‘Well, they had these cool new models on sale! You should get one too.’
‘Yes, that’s what you keep telling me. But I’ll never get a mobile phone – you know that!’

How should we interpret this story? How can we gain insight into the everyday behavior of marketplace actors? If we interpret the little story on the basis of the knowledge we have learned from the classic textbooks on marketing management, it represents a successful market exchange. The customer’s needs are satisfied, a profit is made and the shareholders are kept happy. Supply meets Demand. The story also displays different customers – different market segments and customer groups. There is the ideal customer who regularly updates the mobile device, and the non-customer, perhaps a late follower who is reluctant to accept new products, such as new technological devices.

However, if we re-read the same little story from a cultural perspective we notice that the above market-exchange interpretation ignores a range of points and issues that are relevant both from marketing and societal perspectives. The cultural approach to marketing and consumer research draws attention, for instance, to the ways in which people use particular products and services for creating and sustaining social relations. It also draws attention to the ways in which even the most ordinary marketplace activities – such as buying and using mobile phones – may involve cultural contestation and even political struggle. The act of not-buying particular products may represent a form of resistance against particular forms of life and identity. A cultural approach to marketing and consumer research, hence, views marketplace interaction not only in terms of economic transactions but also as a cultural form, closely related to other cultural forms, institutions, representations and practices that make up our lifestyles and daily routines. The focus is therefore not on how people respond to marketing incentives or behave in a passively inherited culture. The cultural approach is rather concerned with the processes and practices through which different market actors produce and make use of products and services as cultural artifacts. The idea is to produce cultural knowledge of the marketplace, to study how cultural, social and materials realities are constructed through marketplace processes both for consumers and marketers. In other words, we take the view that analyzing the marketplace provides insight into the workings of contemporary culture. The objective of this book is to provide conceptual and methodological tools for such analysis.

Here in Part 1 we specify the theoretical background and the interpretive framework that informs the discussion of qualitative marketing research in this book. Chapter 1 introduces cultural marketing and consumer research and the methodological perspective that guides the discussion of qualitative methods in this book. A more detailed discussion on the historical, conceptual and philosophical foundations of this framework is postponed to the very end of the book, to Part 5. Chapter 2 then focuses specifically on evaluation, questions of validity, reliability and generalization.

1

The ‘Cultural Turn’ in Marketing and Consumer Research

Introduction

Taking the cultural perspective to marketing and consumer research

Practical relevance of cultural knowledge on the marketplace

Further reading

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CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter introduces the perspective to qualitative marketing and consumer research that is adopted in the book. The objective is to:

• introduce cultural marketing and consumer research and the methodological perspective from which qualitative research methods are discussed and elaborated on in this book;
• illustrate the conceptual, interpretive framework that informs this methodological perspective by discussing the ways in which core marketing constructs – consumers, marketers and products – may be comprehended in studies that adopt this perspective; and to
• illustrate the practical relevance of obtaining cultural knowledge on marketplace phenomena from this perspective.

Introduction

Recently, in the field of marketing and consumer research there has been a growing interest in studying marketplace phenomena from new cultural and post-modern perspectives. This increasing interest – informed by the so called ‘cultural turn’ in social sciences – may be seen as a response to an alleged crisis of relevance in academic marketing research. Alternative ‘interpretive’ and ‘heretical’ approaches to theorizing and empirical research have been proposed and discussed in an attempt to improve both the social and the practical pertinence of academic research. Many critics of mainstream marketing thought have argued that new perspectives and methods are needed to gain a better understanding of the cultural complexity of the increasingly multicultural and globalized market environments.

As a result, new academic journals have been established (for example, Journal of Consumer Culture and Consumption Markets & Culture), and the number of scholarly articles published in the established mainstream journals focusing on cultural aspects of consumption and market phenomena has been growing steadily. Informed by poststructuralism and contemporary cultural studies, the cultural approach to marketing and consumer research has tended to study ‘the imbricated layers of cultural meaning that structure consumer actions in a given social context’ (Thompson and Troester, 2002: 550). Many of the published studies manifesting such an approach have focused on topics such as the cultural construction of consumer values and lifestyles (e.g., Holt, 1997; Thompson and Troester, 2002), construction of consumer identity and self (e.g., Thompson and Haytko, 1997; Thompson and Hirschman, 1995), as well as on the ways in which historically established cultural discourses and cultural myths are appropriated, negotiated and resisted in the marketplace (e.g., Holt and Thompson, 2004; Thompson, 2004; Peñaloza, 2000, 2001). Some scholars have also focused on the ways in which different market actors, such as marketers and consumers, and market phenomena, such as exchange relationships, have been represented or constructed in marketing literature (Bristor and Fischer, 1993; Fischer and Bristor, 1994; Hirschman, 1993).

The cultural approach to marketing and consumer behavior has evolved over the past twenty years among the ‘radical’ marketing scholars who have contested the constitutive values of mainstream marketing thought by doing critical, experiential, feminist, interpretive, postpositivist, poststructural and postmodern marketing and consumer research. These alternative approaches have typically been based on the use of interpretive qualitative research methods and have thus often been lumped together and labeled as ‘interpretive’ marketing or consumer research (Beckman and Elliot, 2000; Hirschman, 1989; Sherry, 1991).

The gradual institutionalization of the interpretive and thus also the cultural marketing and consumer research began, perhaps, from a research project that has come to be known as the Consumer Behavior Odyssey (see Belk, 1991; Kassarjian, 1987). In the summer of 1986 about two dozen academic consumer researchers traveled across the United States, from coast to coast, in a recreation vehicle (RV) conducting qualitative research on American consumption. Working from the RV, the scholars employed ‘naturalistic’ methods to document various buyer and consumer behaviors, by means of videotaped in-situ consumer interviews, largely unobtrusive still photos and impressionistic journals, for example. The aim was to obtain an archive of records to be used later for various sorts of pedagogical and research purposes. Russell Belk (1991) characterizes Consumer Behavior Odyssey as an epic journey that opposed traditions in the field and sought fresh ways of acquiring knowledge about the domain and nature of consumer behavior. The project generated numerous published papers and stimulated discussion and debate on philosophy of science and methodology, and thus contributed significantly to the development of qualitative – interpretive – research in the field of marketing and consumer research.

Later, the Heretical Consumer Research (HCR) conference organized in association with the yearly Association for Consumer Research (ACR) conferences, as well as the ACR-sponsored conference on Gender Marketing and Consumer Behavior, both in Europe and in the United States, have been important discussion forums and institutions for scholars interested in the more qualitative and also critical ‘interpretive’ work in the field. Consumption, Markets & Culture, a journal established by Fuat Firat, Nikhilesh Dholakia and Alladi Venkatesh, has functioned as an important discussion forum among the scholars participating in these conferences. The journal aims to promote cultural research that is cross-disciplinary or multi-perspectival. As Firat (1997) has pointed out, to study complex cultural phenomena it is necessary to draw upon and cross the discourses of a number of different disciplines.

Concurrently, the practitioner-oriented literature on the topic has proliferated (e.g., Solomon, 2003). In the field of advertising and brand management, for example, there has been a growing interest in meanings, symbolism and postmodern forms of affinity (for example, virtual and brand communities; tribal marketing, see Kozinets, 2002b; Cova and Cova, 2002). It seems that advertising and marketing professionals are ever more readily recognizing the need to leverage cultural knowledge and creativity to induce consumers to form deeper relationships with products, for example by building powerful ‘iconic brands’ (Holt, 2003).

Particularly in brand management, there seems to be a shift under way, in strategic thinking, from the traditional ‘features and benefits mentality’ to strategies based on understanding ‘what a product or service offers and how it affects customers’ lives’, as Michael Solomon (2003) puts it. Echoing the concerns of many contemporary scholars and practitioners, he emphasizes that it is important to consider what the brand stands for, not only how the brand performs. Particularly for products of the ‘lifestyle categories’, such as food, clothing, alcohol and automobiles, this would seem to be crucial for survival.

Douglas Holt (2003), for example, has recently argued in Harvard Business Review that Nike, Harley–Davidson and many other powerful brands maintain a firm hold in the marketplace mainly because they have become cultural icons. They do not succeed primarily because they offer distinctive benefits, trustworthy service or innovative technology but rather because they forge a deep connection with culture. They invoke powerful cultural narratives and myths, citing culturally shared meanings, norms and values, and thus give people a sense of structure and security in their life. Therefore, these brands continue to add value to their customers, year after year.

All in all then, a new research orientation with a novel way of thinking about marketing and consumption as inherently cultural phenomena seems to be emerging and taking form both in academic research and in marketing practice. The most important cognitive goal that characterizes this orientation is, perhaps, the goal of gaining a better understanding of the cultural contingency and complexity of marketplace phenomena, established on shared cultural meanings and social relations. In this book, we discuss methods and methodologies for attaining such an understanding and for obtaining cultural knowledge of the marketplace in general. We do this from a particular methodological perspective that we have labeled elsewhere as analytics of cultural practice (ACP) (Moisander and Valtonen, 2005). This perspective focuses specifically on culture and cultural practices.

ACP can be distinguished from the various forms of typically psychologically oriented interpretive marketing research that focus on the individual. In these perspectives, the importance of culture and cultural contexts of consumption is usually explicitly acknowledged but the focus of interest and empirical research is nevertheless on the individual consumers and their personal meanings, motives, perceptions and intentions. We acknowledge that this type of psychological research on personal meanings and values, for example, may well be relevant and useful for various marketing purposes. But intra-personal psychological constructs in all forms remain outside the scope of the cultural perspective that we discuss in this book. In Part 5 we discuss the conceptual and methodological foundations of this perspective in more detail.

Box 1.1 The cultural turn in marketing management

We live in a cultural economy of signs, as Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, authors of Nike Culture, point out. Our everyday environment is thoroughly embedded with commercial signs: they are present in the clothing products we use, the social spaces we occupy, the media we watch and in the language we use. In this sort of economy, brands may become important cultural icons – think of brands such as Nike or Harley–Davidson – (and acquire an impressive market power), but they are, nevertheless, built according to principles entirely different from those of conventional marketing. Now, companies’ success depends heavily on understanding, managing and appropriating cultural signs and symbols, and especially, the particular value-adding logic and process of a sign economy.

As widely discussed in the marketing literature, the product value has less to do with the material properties of the product than with its symbolic properties. In the Nike value chain, for instance, the production and appropriation of cultural meanings has become the key source of value, not just an addendum. Advertising constitutes, obviously, a key system for producing sign values. In comparing, for instance, Nike’s annualized growth curves of total revenue with advertising and promotion expenditures there can be seen a remarkable correspondence, as Goldman and Papson point out (2004: 13).

Importantly, however, it is not merely the amount of advertising, but the content, that counts: what sorts of cultural meanings are to be linked to the product through advertising? How may it become an icon? Douglas Holt (2003) has argued that successful commercial symbols touch on key cultural contradictions and ambiguities; they help people to deal with and resolve tensions people feel in their lives. This means that powerful symbols are loaded with ambiguities: people love them and love to hate them. Accordingly, Nike advertising does not merely sell commodities, but it gives voice to important cultural contradictions that define our era. Nike advertisements touch on, for instance, the issues of race and gender, and poverty and inequality. Moreover, the underlying philosophy of Nike challenges viewers to confront and to overcome barriers in their everyday life. In doing so, it leans on the powerful myth of rebellion and, above all, on the myth of individual achievement.

Yet, acknowledging that these myths of rebellion and individual achievement are widely appropriated by other marketers as well, we must ask: Why does Nike’s advertising stand out? The answer lies, according to Goldman and Papson, in the domain of aesthetic style and expression. Nike is not just doing it, but carefully considering how to do it. In its advertising, Nike presents, first of all, a creative recombination of athlete culture and popular culture, and secondly, it expresses itself with a photographic style and tone that makes the difference. Actually, managing the aesthetic power of images becomes a crucial marketing task in a sign economy.

Moreover, besides the advertising, the way Nike’s products are distributed plays a key role in the value-adding process. NIKETOWNs are spaces not merely for selling products, but for telling stories, for displaying company values and thereby adding value to the brand. Actually, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part 1 Cultural Approach to Markets and Methods
• Part 2 Cultural Data and Methods
• Part 3 Analysis in Cultural Research
• Part 4 Writing in Cultural Research
• Part 5 Defending Your Research Report
• References
• Index