Citation
Nancarrow, C. (2000), "Qualitative themes for the new millennium", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 3 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/qmr.2000.21603caf.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2000, MCB UP Limited
Qualitative themes for the new millennium
The Market Research Society returned to its former venue, the Brighton Metropole, in Sussex, UK, for its annual conference. Almost 1,000 members attended the conference, with 40 papers on offer and most of the speakers were practitioners (90 per cent). The themes of the conference included:
- •
New thinking for the new millennium.
- •
New market research paradigms for the twenty-first century.
- •
New ways to understand people.
- •
How do consumers choose brands?
- •
Developing effective marketing strategies and communications.
- •
The power of the brand.
- •
Making market research more actionable and effective.
- •
Market research, the Internet and new technology.
- •
E-commerce rules?
- •
Building the right connections.
- •
Professional development.
- •
Making research more inclusive.
- •
Industry crisis a call to arms.
Many of the papers would be of interest to those interested in qualitative research, and a number are particularly relevant.
Virginia Valentine (Semiotic Solutions) and Wendy Gordon (The Fourth Room) identify six past and present models of thinking about the consumer and propose a new perspective to the market research industry. They describe how the consumer (you and I) shifts between a mutable and stable subjectivity and achieves stability by "seeing" herself/himself in the imaginary mirror of communications. They argue that as we examine different images, we construct different identities for ourselves by placing ourselves into the meaning system that makes the image coherent. To research these "moments of identity" in a brand-consumer encounter, they advocate the use of a "store of complementary power tools", which include need state analysis, semiotic analysis and trend analysis, all of which help to redress the balance between person-centric and cultural context methods.
Nigel Spackman and Andy Barker (BJM Research & Consultancy) examine research paradigm trends in the marketing research industry (positivism to interpretivism) and discuss the emergence of a new research paradigm, "informed eclecticism", with its implications for the industry. They argue that marketing researchers will increasingly need to bring a wider range of perspectives to research problem formulation and data interpretation in order to provide greater insight and value. The industry has historically been guilty of being "project data grounded" and blind to the rich sources of thinking on consumers and customers that exist in the applied and academic literature from a wide variety of disciplines.
Peter Cooper and Simon Patterson (CRAM International) describe the trickster in us (humans) and in advertising and its archetypal and compelling powers, "creating the extraordinary out of the ordinary, and dazzling us with its charms". Their descriptions of the trickster may best be illustrated as shaman, sorcerer, magician, fool, clown, joker, jester, harlequin and enchanter. The authors identify ten types of trickster manifestation in leading UK TV commercials. They conclude by examining how advertising research can best handle such manifestations.
Jonathan Fletcher (DVL Smith Ltd) and Bill Morgan (Cognition) present a paper entitled "New directions in qualitative brand communications research". After reviewing the "old models of the mind" that have informed qualitative research brand practice, they discuss an emerging model with an evolutionary perspective that they believe offers qualitative researchers a theoretical base for their practice - "the possibility of convergence and cumulative advancement over time (rather than the fragmentation and entropy which have characterised the previous models of mind informing qualitative research)".
Monty Alexander (Semiotic Solutions) offers researchers wishing to broaden the scope of their qualitative findings some practical advice on the use of semiotics. This paper has some resonance with the "informed eclecticism" and "cultural context" themes of two papers above. The author questions two "giant" assumptions moderators "by and large" make and then proceeds to direct us to look elsewhere for answers - the cultural context. By using a simple three-part code classification system that the author describes, researchers "should be able to broadly analyse the code changes in any discourse; and this way get to grips with the cultural changes and paradigm shifts taking place in that discourse".
Alan Swindells (NFO/MERAC) describes how consumers make brand decisions and how new thinking on the processing of brand communications in conjunction with new qualitative interviewing strategies to unlock the minds of both the committed and uncommitted consumer can help clients understand their consumer needs. A number of other papers examined how the brain works and its implications for marketing and research. Robert Heath and Jon Howard-Spink (Icon Brand Navigation) describe current thinking on how we process, store and retrieve information. Paul Marsden (University of Sussex) and Alix Beelaerts (American Express Europe) suggest consumers make brand selections (based on plausible psychological mechanisms) using "emotional intelligence" and "cognitive short cuts", rather than mental gymnastics and the impossible psychology of high involvement models of choice.
Finally, Helen Trevaskis (?What if!) looks at the increasingly common practice of consumer marketers spending time with consumers to try to "experience" their lives.
Many of the other papers also touched on issues of great relevance to qualitative researchers.
If you are interested in obtaining a copy of the Market Research Society Conference Papers, then e-mail: conference@mrs.org.uk or call Debra Lestrada in Publications, Tel: 44 (0) 207 566 1843, for more information. I understand for the UK the cost including postage and packaging is £90.
Clive NancarrowBristol Business School, UWEclive.nancarrow@uwe.ac.uk