Hogg and Maclaran (2008: 131) state that “Reviewing the changing balance of papers in Advances in Consumer Research and in JCR (Journal of Consumer Research) shows how approaches which use qualitative data for examining consumer behaviour have become increasingly mainstream.” This article concentrates on three ways in which the interpretive paradigm challenges the dominance of the positivist paradigm within market research. These are, ... Read More
The Positivist Paradigm and Market Research
Market research still has a firm reliance on positivist methods and this union between the two stems from marketing’s early association with economic criteria such as profitability, cost minimisation and marginal returns (Szmigin and Foxall 2000: 188). According to Hunt (1991: 32), particularly within the 1980s, writers and researchers created a lively debate about the philosophical and methodological foundations for consumer research and ... Read More