Pages: 4

This revised third edition of Qualitative Research in Marketing and Management continues to offer a distinctive approach that combines practical hints and insights with interpretive techniques of data analysis. The approach emphasises everyday, practical problems and issues encountered by consumers, managers and other professionals; creative, inductive research designs and the theoretically informed use of qualitative data sets. The book is designed to be accessible but also theoretically informed. The new edition has been selectively updated throughout to include reference to many new published studies, some new sections (for example, on assemblage theory, in Chapter 7, and brand storytelling, in Chapter 8) and pedagogic advances including new figures, boxes and schematics.

Pages: 148

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 28

This chapter explains the scope, perspective and structure of the book. It goes on to list just a small selection of the countless research projects for which interpretive methods could be appropriate in marketing, consumer studies, management and related areas. The chapter gently introduces some of the key concepts, assumptions and values of the interpretive research standpoint before finishing with some comments on the student research project, its educational rationale and the skills it imparts.

Pages: 31

This chapter focuses on the choice of research topic because this important decision must be considered in the light of its implications for the project method, scope and structure. The choice of topic, and most importantly the way it is framed, has major implications for the success of the project. This chapter aims to help student researchers to think through their research project ideas and to judge whether a particular research problem, question or issue can make a viable project.

Pages: 32

This chapter focuses on the structure, tone and style of the written document that must be produced for a research project. The aim in dealing with this issue early in the book is to give student researchers a rounded view of the whole text that they must eventually produce, so that they can see how the parts fit into the whole. Having this view will help with the student's confidence, research planning and time management. The chapter looks at key issues of research writing such as academic tone, style and critical thinking.

Pages: 30

This chapter offers practical advice on a selection of qualitative data-gathering techniques. It introduces some basic principles of qualitative data analysis such as content analysis, thematic analysis and coding. The chapter makes the point that certain theoretical assumptions are implied in particular qualitative methods, and begins to introduce some of the themes of research theory that will preoccupy much of the rest of the book.

Pages: 25

Theoretically informed qualitative research studies need to be ‘set up’ in the sense that key assumptions about the nature of the social research task need to be clarified at the outset because they influence the way that research questions, method, analysis and findings are all conceived. Some of the key concepts and methods of qualitative/interpretive research have been introduced in Chapters 1–4. This chapter gives deeper consideration to theoretical framing for interpretive studies, particularly with regard to the location of interpretive studies within a sociological paradigm. The chapter then goes on to discuss theoretically informed interpretive data analysis.

Pages: 114

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 25

This chapter begins the discussion of specific interpretive research perspectives by drawing on two linked traditions: phenomenology and existentialism. It illustrates possible applications with research studies that could be adapted for use by student researchers. It also develops some of the major ideas, themes and techniques normally associated with each perspective.

Pages: 30

Ethnography is another of the most important informing traditions of interpretive research. Anthropologists developed the ethnographic method in their study of indigenous populations, and it has been widely adapted to the investigation of social and cultural phenomena from an emic perspective. This chapter offers an introduction to ethnographic methods, including associated methods including digital ethnography, autoethnography and practice theory.

Pages: 23

Literary criticism has been a fruitful source of interpretive theory for qualitative research in marketing and related areas. This chapter outlines some of the key approaches deriving from literary criticism, including reader-response theory, narrative analysis, rhetoric and semiotics/semiology. The focus falls on the communicative dimensions of marketing, management and consumer research, and the qualitative analysis of text.

Pages: 20

Research in the interpretive research paradigm has sometimes been accused of lacking a critical edge, although this criticism becomes less telling over time as increasing numbers of critical interpretive studies become published. In this chapter, we review the idea of critical research in the light of traditions of critical management studies and critical marketing. The chapter discusses some approaches to criticality in research, and it examines how critical perspectives on power, gender and ethnicity can be incorporated into qualitative research projects.

Pages: 14

Critical discourse analysis is one of the most influential analytical approaches of critical and qualitative research. In this chapter, we offer a brief, practical introduction to doing discourse analysis in empirical research. The chapter outlines some of the theoretical principles of discourse analysis, especially the analytical emphasis on structure, function, action-orientation and variation in texts. The chapter concludes with some comments on the commonalities of interpretive approaches to qualitative research.