Editorial

Citation

Tiu Wright, L. (2001), "Editorial", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 4 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/qmr.2001.21604baa.001

Editorial

This issue encompasses a diversity of research interests and topics within the qualitative domain. It starts with the joint paper from Australia and Northern Ireland concerning how to research the decision-making processes of entrepreneurs in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is followed by the contribution from Belgium which reports on the use of the case method in examining relationship marketing within the international food supply chain. The case based approach is taken up in a more traditional format in another joint paper from Western Australia and New Zealand which looks at the motivations in forming strategic alliances. The traditional case-based approach to generate qualitative insights is useful and it is a well practised one. Much less widely practised or publicised are the methodological practicalities of transforming qualitative responses into meaningful quantitative data sets and the fourth paper from Denmark provokes thinking about this.

The first paper by Ken Grant, Audrey Gilmore, David Carson, Richard Laney and Bill Pickett puts forward a number of reasons as to why methodological weaknesses in the nature of qualitative research with SMEs are causes for concern. The authors propose an "experiential" research methodology for investigating SMEs having taken account of the theoretical underpinnings from the literature and the viewpoints of academic, practitioners and consultants, though reportedly with a small sample. There is cross fertilisation of ideas and experiences between the team members that encourages consideration of the broader issues. In their conclusions subsequent focus groups and feedback sessions have been mentioned and these should help to point the way for further development and improvement of the team's methodology.

A research project by Adam Lindgreen into marketing dyads examines the problems involved in the study of relationship marketing. The author contends that relationship marketing poses an ambiguous concept "when there is 'plenty of rhetoric' rather than empirical evidence". He discusses the need for more research concerning how to implement, monitor and measure relationship marketing and proposes a framework to approach such a study. The author has made justification for his research paradigm. The study of relationship marketing is complicated. As his case study research with a Danish company has suggested there are pluralist approaches to marketing that are being practised. Relationships between suppliers and their customers do not remain static.

Mike Beverland and Philip Bretherton in the third paper make the case for an examination of inter-firm relationships or strategic alliances despite the past number of studies in this area. Their discussion of the literature gives support to the popularity of research in this field. As organisations grow and develop their strategic alliances within their changing competitive marketing landscapes new studies are needed to report on the nature of such alliances. The authors explain their integration of "resource dependence views of alliance formation with those of Austrian economics". While their sample of 20 firms was small the authors have been lucid in explaining the need to update and incorporate qualitative research in this important area of organisational undertakings to further understanding of inter-firm relationships.

The last paper by Marcus Schmidt concerns a methodological issue. His paper does not purport to deal with the ontological and epistemological issues underpinning qualitative methodologies. It is concerned with how responses from qualitative data can be underpinned by quantitative analysis to enhance validity. In this respect it proposes a way of overcoming incompatibility between the qualitative and quantitative approaches by the application of "a neural network algorithm' in analysing excerpts from in-depth interviews". There is discussion of the appropriateness of quantifying word responses from focus group discussions and the use of computer software in the data preparation stages, as with CATPAC, as well as the output to be produced using keywords for cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling. There are drawbacks involved in the laborious procedures in quantifying qualitative responses, as acknowledged in the paper. However, apart from the additional time involved the researcher needs to offset the financial costs involved in transforming qualitative responses into a "meaningful quantitative data set".

The computerised treatment of qualitative data is much less publicised, in contrast to the continuing interest in the growth of information technologies and the Internet, to which many qualitative and quantitative researchers alike have succumbed.

So the next publication, issue 3 will concentrate on the subject of qualitative research in Internet marketing.

Len Tiu WrightDe Montfort University, UKE-mail: lwright@dmu.ac.uk