RESEARCH
The previous chapter showed how the quantitative paradigm came to
be the defining one for market research – in that it fitted with the busi- ness psychology of justifying everything with numbers – but suggested that its supposed objectivity is little more than an illusion. However, there is no doubt that the thriving qualitative industry is also well accepted. If the two methods are equally evident, surely this means that their status must be similar, and that business is not just working under principles of modernism. To an extent this is true, and certainly there have been shifts over time, but the fact remains, and needs to be explained, that no major business decisions are made on qualitative research alone.
The next sections examine the rise of qualitative research and explain the conflicts that lie at the heart of using it – basically that it delivers the ‘goods’ where quantitative research cannot, but that unfortunately it is not numbers based and is still viewed with caution.
Quantitative research was perfect for the job – in the 1950s
In Chapter 2, the point was made about how people tended to gravi- tate into functions that worked with the type of knowledge (explicit or tacit) they felt most comfortable with. On the whole, people who relate best to explicit knowledge tend to be the people who run business communities. Such people include accountants, buyers, engineers, operational management (including managing directors) and so on. Of course, explicit knowledge is by definition historic knowledge, as oth- erwise how could it be written down? Quantitative surveys produce hard factual (and historic) information, which appeals to these types of people, and with which they also feel comfortable.
In the early days of market research, the sorts of problems that needed to be addressed tended to be quite literal in nature. They took the form of behavioural studies, opinion polling and large amounts of product testing. Actually, the importance attributed to product testing at that time is difficult to conceive today, but this was driven by the need of the advertising industry to be able to make strong product claims.
Television advertising started in the United Kingdom in the early 1950s, and was the first of its kind in Europe. This gave an impetus to the research industry in the United Kingdom, particularly with respect
to product testing. In fact, many of the early research companies were to have their origins in the environment of an advertising agency. The reason for this was that the product propositions that were then adver- tised tended to be very literal (‘Raelbrook Poplin, the shirt you don’t iron’, ‘You’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent’, ‘It looks good, it tastes good and by golly it does you good’ – Mackeson).
The net effect of all this was that the data that was required was very much in the form of straightforward literal facts, and was therefore ideally matched to what the market research industry had to offer at that time.
Quantitative research was not good for the job in the 1960s
In the 1960s, the nature of advertising began to move away from mak- ing literal claims to creating images and offering lifestyles. This was probably to do with the growth in the economy in the 1960s, and the increasing difficulty of differentiating products on performance in well established categories. As this happened, the market research industry began to have difficulties with meeting the needs of its customers.
The sorts of business discussions that needed to be informed were infinitely subtler than had formerly been the case. Quantitative research and the people who populated it began to look distinctly rigid and unhelpful. Of course, this was not actually articulated at the time, because it was not understood, but it is from this point that there has been a growing unease with the output of the industry. In effect the current social (quantitative) paradigm was showing signs, for the first time, of not being fit for the job.
This period (the 1960s), as is well known, coincided with big social changes, and in particular was a period associated with the develop- ment of new ideas and approaches. The UK’s growth had been held back for almost 30 years with the recession of the 1930s, the war of the 1940s and the post-war development period of the 1950s and was, by the 1960s, bursting for change. The 1960s was a time when established values were questioned, and in this environment the possibility of a completely new approach to market research (and to anything else for that matter) was possible. This was fortunate because it was necessary!
Qualitative research comes to the rescue
Commercial qualitative research seems to have been around in the United States before the Second World War with Lazarfeld’s and Dichter’s names strongly associated with it, and was mainly one-to- one interviewing based on a psychoanalytic tradition. It is believed that is was brought to the United Kingdom in 1958 by Bill Schlackman who was Vice-President of Dichter’s Institute of Motivational Research (Imms, 1999). However, there is a reference to the use of a ‘psycholo- gist’ to help in the development of a questionnaire in a book by Dugdale (1969) about her life in the research industry, which started in 1936.
In hindsight, it can be seen that qualitative market research arrived in the United Kingdom just as the need for it was becoming apparent, and just as the established quantitative paradigm was beginning to be seen to be failing. It also had a very strong evangelist in the form of Bill Schlackman, who was able to sell the merits of this new method of doing market research and build a following. However, this method of research flew in the face of the established paradigm and many peo- ple simply could not accept it as being a valid methodology. ‘David’
had arrived and no one understood him, and the Kuhnian competition of paradigms had started.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the work of Dichter and his Institute of Motivational Research fell into disrepute, probably as a result of his personality. In fact, there seems to have been a backlash to what he was doing, which (from a United Kingdom perspective) held up the development of qualitative research in the United States. For years now, qualitative work in the United States has been very literal and hardly more than semi-structured interviews – or ‘focus groups’ as they became known.
In the United Kingdom, however, qualitative research grew from strength to strength, having a fertile social environment in which to grow, and a market that increasingly recognized that there was a need for it. In addition, a new breed of qualitative researchers (Goodyear, Cooper, Gordon and so on) who had been trained in psychology rather than psychoanalysis entered and influenced the industry (Imms, 1999).
However, the journey was not achieved easily, and it was with reluc- tance that quantitative researchers, many of whom were running the large and successful research businesses, bowed to the inevitable and accepted qualitative research as a legitimate form of market research.
An indication of this difficulty is given by the fact that qualitative researchers felt they were not being represented properly by the main professional organization, the MRS, and felt the absence of representa- tion so strongly that they set up a separate organization, the Association of Qualitative Research Practitioners, now the AQR. So, even when qualitative research was at a peak of success it was not fully accepted by the main body of the industry.