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Over the past two decades consumer
researchers have begun to more fully explore
the role of cultural values, beliefs and
traditions in buying and consumption
behaviour. Drawing on sociological and
anthropological perspectives, this has marked
a shift in focus away from individual
consumers’ attitudes and perceptions towards
the study of consumer behaviour as it occurs
in situ, conceptualising consumers as socially
connected beings rather than as information
processors. Concomitantly, there has been an
increase in the use of interpretive research
methods, such as ethnography, by both
academic and commercial marketing
researchers to better understand the role of
consumption in consumers’ everyday lives
(see for example, Sherry’s 1998 study of Nike
Town, Chicago and Fuller and Adams’ 1999
research into youth and gay markets in major
European cities). These interpretive
perspectives lend credibility to innovative
ways of gathering qualitative data, such as
videography (Kozinets, 2002) and subjective
personal introspection (Brown, 1998). They
have also heralded new ways of representing
the consumer experience as, for example,
through the use of narrative devices, music,
pictures, photographs, poetry, cyberspace
imagery and multi-media technology (see
Stern, 1998).
The last two decades, however, have also
witnessed a ‘‘crisis of representation’’
throughout the social sciences, a crisis that
has prompted considerable discussion on how
qualitative research is undertaken and on the
ways that researchers report their research
findings. More specifically, a number of key
questions have arisen, including:
. What should our relationship be with our
research subjects?
. How do we know that what we observe is
‘‘true’’?
. How might we best communicate our
research findings to our audience?
. Who should comprise our audience?
The postmodern critique has exposed the
value-laden nature of terms such as reliability,
validity, generalisability and trustworthiness,
suspecting all ‘‘truth’’ claims as masking, and
serving, particular interests. Whose voice(s)
do we claim to represent – the subjects of our
research or merely our own? As interpretive
researchers, interpretation can too easily
become misrepresentation. How much is too much, and when does researcher involvement
become intrusive and at odds with the
interests of our research subjects and, indeed,
the reality of their experience? The
representation of qualitative research thus
presents us with many dilemmas and a
bewildering range of voices and choices.
This special issue is designed to stimulate
discussion on the assumptions and decisions
that qualitative researchers make in
representing their research subjects, their data
and themselves. It is also intended to
encourage dialogue between academic and
commercial qualitative marketing researchers.
The first two papers are from an academic
perspective and both, in different ways,
debate the assumptions we make as
researchers and the ways that these
assumptions impact on how we represent
consumers.
Goulding’s paper explores the concept of
postmodernism and its impact on how
consumers are positioned and represented in
consumer research. As well as offering
insights into postmodernist perspectives, it
also builds a compelling case for us to adopt a
more flexible and open approach to research,
one that is derived from the data and the
‘‘reality’’ of that which is being researched. As
such it is an approach that challenges us to
broaden the debate so that we embrace multidisciplinary
approaches. In so doing
postmodernism becomes less of a prescriptive
straight-jacket of ontological rights and
wrongs, and more of a liberatory influence
that centres on consumer experience. This,
Goulding argues, will enable us to create
‘‘meaningful pictures’’ and glean insights into
consumption in the twenty-first century.
The focus of Hogg and Garrow’s
contribution is gender and how we
conceptualise it in our research. The authors
argue that too much emphasis on gender as a
bi-polar variable can skew our research and
how we interpret and represent consumers.
Instead, the article presents a differentiated
view of gender in relation to the consumption
of advertising. Drawing on Bem’s Sex Role
Inventory, the research explores gender in
relation to self-schemas. The authors argue
against the perception of gender polarisation
as a unitary variable in advertising,
highlighting the fact that gender is neither
necessarily homogeneous nor isomorphic with
sex, and suggesting that other issues may be
more significant in relation to gender and the
consumption of advertising text, including the
degree of involvement and interest
respondents have in the product category
itself. As researchers we need more nuanced
contextualisations of how we interpret and
represent consumer responses.
This journal is widely read by marketing
practitioners and we are pleased to include
two papers that address issues of
representation in consumer research in the
commercial worlds of advertising and market
research respectively. Both papers illustrate
vividly that issues of representation in
consumer research are as likely to find
expression (implicit and explicit) and
attempts at resolution in the world of
commerce as they are in the academic world.
Hackley points out that advertising agencies
draw on both neo-positivist and interpretive
consumer research to inform their decisions
and his paper focuses on the increasing use of
the latter. In order to grasp the cultural
meanings that creative advertising should
mobilise, advertising agencies need to take an
imaginative leap from research data to
consumer understanding. He argues that
agencies engage in a hermeneutic form of
understanding of consumer cultures that help
them create advertising that resonates with
consumers.
Thorpe argues that commercial qualitative
researchers, who normally undertake
interpretive consumer research for the
advertising agencies, do not explicitly focus
on issues of consumer representation in ways
that engage their academic counterparts.
Nevertheless, issues of representation abound
in the commercial qualitative research
context, including the ways that research
agencies position themselves in the market
place and communicate this to clients.
Currently the industry’s answer to consumer
representation is to focus heavily on contextdependent
research techniques such as
ethnography and accompanied shopping
trips. These ‘‘ultra-qual’’ techniques, he
argues, can end up valorising the process but
losing the subject. In response, he makes a
case for a shift in thinking and practice away
from trying to achieve ‘‘authentic’’
representation towards virtualism.
Finally, Brown questions the whole idea of
a crisis of representation and asks, in his
inimitable style, what crisis? Arguing that in
fact there is no crisis of representation in
marketing research, he explores the representation of crisis and the purpose that
this type of discourse serves. He highlights the
fact that marketing has never been so richly
represented. The real problem, he suggests, is
not that we need more experimental or varied
forms to represent marketing research, but
rather that we need to raise the quality of
non-traditional representations. To this end
he sets out a representational agenda that
both exhorts and encourages us to improve
and develop our creative and artistic
endeavours. Quality, not quantity is his key
message and this has also been our intention
in putting together this selection of articles.
We hope that you will find this special issue
on representation as stimulating to read as we
have found it to edit.
Pauline Maclaran
Miriam Catterall
Lorna Stevens
Guest Editors
Previously published in: Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Volume 6, Number 3, 2003
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