There is an amount of disquiet with the market research industry at the moment (Brand and Jarvis, 2000) in that there appears to be increasing concern about what is called ‘a lack of consumer insight’. As suggested earlier in this chapter, this may be because hypotheses about the mar- ket or the consumer are not regularly generated outside of qualitative research. Lack of consumer insight also seems to be related to the num- ber of caveats that a formal market researcher brings to the discussion, which clients tend to think is unhelpful. In part, this comes from adher- ing too strongly to a particular research paradigm, and there is now more discussion about the notion of ‘bricolage’ (combining many unre- lated things) and so-called ‘informed eclecticism’ (Spackman and Barker, 2000), which is very much about selecting the paradigm that is best for purpose, and then not being limited by it. This is quite a change from the ethos of the early market research industry, and may reflect the fact that the current modernistic paradigm is beginning to lose ground. It also addresses the dilemma of whether to stick with the safe quantitative research and fail to grasp the subtleties of the market, or go to qualitative and risk getting the answer ‘wrong’.
Perhaps central to this whole debate is the question that there is somehow an ultimate truth – a question that is regularly visited by philosophers; it is likely that objective truth is an illusion, as will be illustrated next.
The earliest known model to describe the movement of the heavens was the Ptolemaic model, which assumed that the Earth was the centre of the universe. This hopelessly incorrect model served humankind for over a thousand years, giving quite good predictions of planetary movements, though it has been replaced subsequently on a number of occasions. This is not to say that the various theories did not have value in their time, it is certain that they did, but they were not ‘true’ and it did not mattereither. Examples of scientific, ‘objectively based’ models being outmoded are legion. Furthermore, recent developments in chaos theory (Hall, 1993) suggest that the very predictability hoped for from the scientific method is not possible in certain circumstances. This is not because the truth of a relationship is questioned but because the relationship is very sensitive to the initial conditions. In practice, there are occasions when it is not possible to define these starting conditions sufficiently closely for the outcome to lie within an acceptable range of
preciseness – change the starting conditions a tiny bit, and the outcome varies greatly. Forecasting of the weather is an example of this. When this is coupled with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (which crudely means you cannot have your cake and eat it) it means that for many processes that depend on the atomic or microscopic, a common rule can produce dramatically different results. This is why identical twins are never truly identical or why the leaves of a plant are always different, even through an identical biological rule has been applied in their creation. The diversity of nature and evolution depend on objective truths notalways being true.
In many ways people are increasing thinking about models of the world that are less mechanical and less predictable, and the applica- tion of such models to people, although a strongly wished for goal, seems increasingly irrelevant. Within this context, the divide between objective reality (reallytrue) and subjectiveness (something you think is true – but probably not me) also becomes increasingly irrelevant. But it is this divide that lies at the heart of the divide between quantitative and qualitative research and the associated schism in the industry.
CONCLUSION
Quantitative research has always been a descriptive methodology rather than a scientific one, though it has sought to use scientific prin- ciples. It became the main paradigm of the fledging research industry for a variety of historical accidents, and, by good chance, was fit for the purpose required of it. The growing sophistication of marketing, in particular the move away from promoting the literal and tangible aspect of the brand as its proposition, meant that the quantitative paradigm no longer was able to satisfy its needs. People no longer wanted to know only what the differences were, but also why. The social upheaval of the 1960s produced an iconoclastic environment in which the soil was ready for a new methodology to grow. It was the changing needs of the market that provided the nutrients.
The strengths of quantitative research remain clear – it is good for counting how many do this or that, and it can do it in a valid and reli- able way. The merits of qualitative research are of producing a logical story grounded in the fieldwork that is easy to understand and
remember, and one that explains and stimulates too. Clearly, these two methodologies are complementary.
However, the battle is still not quite resolved. Not only are there still people in the industry who have concerns about the sampling and interpretation methods used for qualitative research, though these are dramatically down in numbers, but also there is still the client to con- tend with. Clients work in businesses that presume that the world can be represented numerically. This not only applies to the finance func- tion (although this has been an important driving force), but also to almost every other function too. Business cases are made and sup- ported with numbers – the more explicit the information is, the better – and qualitative research has to battles against these very strongly held beliefs.
The great success of qualitative research has been with brands and advertising, where quantitative methods have generally (though not exclusively) proved to be unhelpful. The problem is when there is some contention about the findings and a lot of money is at stake, companies are still very uncomfortable about relying on qualitative research alone and revert to type. This is nothing to do with logic, but with a series of profoundly held beliefs that unfortunately are misplaced and wrong.
Market research involves a particular structured way of collecting and interpreting information. The actual ‘structure’ of data collection is called the ‘ research design’. The efficacy of the research will ultimately be dependent on the appropriateness of the design, and this means that it is probably the single most important aspect of research (if there is one). No matter how good the elicitation, analysis, interpretation or presentation are, if the basic design is faulty, the real objectives of the