8/6/2019 What CR is

1/6

What Consumer Research IsBOBBY J. OALDERALICE M. TYBOUT*

R esearchers frequently have explicitly or implicitlyposed the question: What is consumer research?(Belk 1986; Jacoby 1975; Holbrook 1987). While a for-mal definition of consumer research may be of littlevalue, since consumer research will ultimately be de-fined by what researchers achieve, there is a need fordirection. We begin with the premise that consumerresearch, whatever form it might take, seeks to produceknowledge about consumer behavior. Although simple,this premise points up the fact that consumer researchis a means to an end. Of course consumer research isabout consumers and about behavior, but this is hardlylimiting or even inform ative. After all, anything can beconstrued as the consumption of something and con-sump tion m ust entail some kind of behavior. E mphasisshould be on the knowledge produced: What possiblekinds of knowledge could be created by consumer re-search?

KNOWLEDGE AND CONSUM ERRESEARCHWe suggest that at least three broad types of knowl-edge can be produced by consum er research. These maybe labeled and briefly described as follows:

Everyday knowledge consists ofthe shared thou ghts peo-ple have about their own consumer behavior. It is howthey interpret and give social meaning to their behaviorusing their own term s and their own frames of reference.Scientific knowledge consists of theories that are capableof and have been subjected to rigorous em pirical testing.These theories should not be regarded as proven or true;rather, they have scientific status because of and subjectto attempts to refute them .Interpretive knowledge uses a system of ideas developedby a particular group to analyze consumer behavior. Itprovides an understanding of behavior in terms of thissystem of ideas and from its frame of reference.

Bobby J. Calder is A. Montgomery Ward Professor of Marketingand Psychology and Alice M. Tybout is Professor ofMarke ting, bothat J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Managem ent. Northwestern Uni-versity, Evanston, IL 60201.136

Each of these distinct types of knowledge has its ownapproach to consumer research. Each represents a dif-ferent path leading to different sorts of knowledge. Be-fore elaborating on the research methodology impliedby these knowledge types, it may be helpful to illustrateeach type with a simple example.Suppose a researcher came across some people whoeat large quantities of dirt. These people even sell dirtto one another. A researcher might well aspire to ev-eryday knowledge about this consumption, and mightthus ask. What do people think they are doing by buyingand eating dirt? Qualitative research might reveal thatthese people believe that the dirt makes them healthier.They are observed to say to each other, "You are whatyou eat, and you must therefore eat basic, naturalthings." Eating dirt is thus explained in the people'sown terms and their own frames of reference.A researcher might alternatively aspire to scientificknowledge. A physiologist might entertain a theory thatthe minerals in the dirt, relative to the people's overalldiet, provide needed nutrition. This theory would besubjected to empirical testing and either ref^uted or ac-cepted pending f^urther testing. Or, a psychologist mighttheorize that eating dirt reflects a general principle of,say, cognitive consistency. If not eating dirt would beinconsistent with other beliefs that the people hold, thenthey will maintain the belief that dirt is healthy in theabsence of any apparent evidence. Such a theory couldalso be subjected to empirical testing. Note that theconstructs of both theories, mineral balance and cog-nitive consistency, are theoretical and not necessarilyaccessible to the consumers themselves. Nor are theconstructs "real." They are theoretical concepts thatare accepted subject to subsequent refutation.

A researcher might alternatively aspire to interpretiveknowledge. A historian might look at the habit of eatingdirt as a reflection of practices growing out of foodshortages occurring at an earlier time. Or a psychoan-alyst might interpre t eating dirt as an aggressive imp ulse.People say "you are what you eat." But from the his-torian or psychoanalyst's outside view the people "eatwhat they are." Th e key is that a pa rticula r set of ideasthe historian's record of previous practices or the psy-choanalyst's Freudian account of motivationis usedto provide insight into the eating of dirt. This insightwould not ordinarily be available to the participants JOURNA L OF CONSUMER RESEARCH V ol. 14 June 1987

8/6/2019 What CR is

2/6

W H A T C O N S U M E R R E S E A R C H I S . . . 137

themselves; nor would it necessarily lend itself to sci-entific empirical testing.EVERYDAY KNOWLEDGE IMPLIES

QUALITATIVE METHODOLOGYIf the researcher's goal is everyday knowledge, thens/he must focus on the shared thinking of consumers.Part of any consumer's thinking will be idiosyncratic,but part also will represent a comm on way of thinking .Consumers must after all share a strong reciprocity ofperspectives for consumption to be meaningful to them.If driving a Eu ropean car means high status for a group,the individual must believe not only that the car indi-cates status but that others will have this perception

t o o . Above all else, to the memb ers ofth e group w ithinwhich the shared perspective exists, their thinking isregarded as natural. It is not subject to question. Onesimply knows that a car that is European is high-status.The knowledge the researcher desires is the knowl-edge consumers in the group naturally hav e. It is man -ifested in their social livestheir verbal communicationand their behavior in daily life. To acquire this knowl-edge, the researcher must be able to participate in thegroup to the extent of being able to share their per-spective. Close observation, and ideally pa rticipant ob-servation, is thus the best method of acquiring everydayknowledge of consumers. The researcher must be ableto record and document the experience of being a con-sumer (Calder 1977).

We believe that the most suitable term for suchmethodology is "qualitative." This is not to deny thatsuch research m ay be "quan tified;" rather, the term re-flects the sort of qua litative knowing being sough t. Thismay be explicated via a familiar problem in philosophy,the inverted spectrum. S uppose that the color spectrumwas shifted so that everything that now appears red ap-peared green and vice versa. Although quantitativelythis changes nothing, there is still the question ofwhe ther red grass is the same as green grass. Q ualitativemethodology deals with such questions of experience.Although qualitative research can be conducted indifferent ways, all qualitative methodology, as here de-fined, is distinguished by the reflexive use of"data ra therthan the form ofthe data per se.' As illustrated in theFigure, in qualitative research, people's thoughts a bouttheir consumption, manifested verbally or otherwise,are both the data and the result of research.

'The fact that qualitative understanding is sought does not denyissues of reliability and validity. The focus group interview, for in-stance, is often used for qualitative consumer research and manyreliability and validity issues arise with such usage. Nor is the termqualitative research intended to imply a single procedure for datacollection. Indeed, in addition to focus group interviews, much surveyresearch work falls within qua litative research as here defined (Calder1977: Calder 1986).

FIGURETHE ROLE OF DATA FOR DIFFERENT TYPES OF KNOWLEDGEABOUT CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

[A RG UME NT^

OualitativeMethodologya. EverydayKnowledge

SophisticatedFalsificationistMethodologyb. ScientificKnowledge

CriticalRelativisticMethodologyc. InterpretiveKnowledge

The type of everyday knowledge that qualitativemethodology yields can obviously be useful. If o n e wereselling European cars, for example, knowing that thecars connoted status would have many marketing im-plications.It also has been suggested that scientific theoriesshould be "grounded" in everyday knowledge (e.g.,Glaser and Strauss 1967). As will be discussed in thenext section, there is certainly no reason that scientifictheories cannot be stimulated by everyday knowledge.There is, however, real concern that everyday knowl-edge not masquerade as scientific knowledge. Onlyneedless confusion results when everyday ideas aredressed up as higher-order constructs and presented asscientific without rigorous empirical testing (see Calder1977). Qualitative research leads to everyday knowl-edge, and this is in itself a valuable goal.SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE IMPLIESSOPHISTICATED FALSIFICATIONIST

METHODOLOGYA comm on view of science is that em pirical data areused to accumulate evidence for a theory until it isproven . This view of science is, of course, unacceptable.No am ount of empirical observation allows us to inducea theory. Observation itself presupposes theory, and in-ductive proof is logically impossible (see Calder, Phil-lips, and Tybout 1981). Following the major trend inthe philosophy of science, we must view scientificknowledge as not proven and scientific progress as notguaranteed.The key features of scientific knowledge are that therehave been empirical attempts to refute a theory andthat the theory has performed better than any availablecompetitors. Refutation necessarily comes from em-pirical data. And the use of data requires consensusabout its interpretation. Because the consensus aboutdata can be wrong, it follows that scientific progress isnot inevitable; if researchers make mistakes about data,we will have only the illusion of progress. Nonetheless,because the process of testing is never-ending, it willideally be self-correcting.

8/6/2019 What CR is

3/6

8/6/2019 What CR is

4/6

W H A T C O N S U M E R R E S E A R C H I S . . . 139ization fits the data. Because data may be used selec-tively and multiple interpretations of them may coexist,there is no intention of comparing interpretations inorder to choose among them.

The interpretive approach takes many forms. For ex-ample, it has been suggested that semiotics may be usedto interpret consumer behavior. This approach is no-where more evident than in Holbrook and Grayson's(1986) interpretation ofthe consumption behavior de-picted by actors in the movie Out of Africa. These be-haviors are viewed as symbolic of the characters' phil-osophical perspectives and vulnerabilities. For example,Karen Blixen's attachment to her worldly possessionsis viewed as indicative of a more pervasive desire forcontrol and ownership. Likewise, the fragility of thosesame possessions is seen as conveying the limits on w hatone is able to control in life. This article makes pro-vocative and entertaining reading because the authorsselectively interpret data to make their poin ts. There isno pretense of searching for refuting evidence or com-peting explanations for the same data.The point is not that the search for such interpretiveknowledge conflicts with empirical science, but that itsimply implies its own methodology. That methodologyis critical relativism. In employing this methodology, agroup of researchers sharing a particular conceptual-ization agrees that an argument based on the concep-tualization does indeed give additional meaning andinsight into a particular consumer behavior. It is rec-ognized that this insight is subjective and relative to aparticular time, setting, and group of researchers. Theprocess by which researchers agree and persuade eachother of an interpretation is of primary rather than sec-ondary importance. Empirical data do not play a self-correcting role. Debate concerns reasoned opinions asto whether the conceptualization yields new under-standing, and, again, this is relative to the researchersinvolved. The immediate goal is support and confir-mation ofthe conceptualization. Other conceptualiza-tions are viewed as providing their own insight and notas competitors.Several points related to interpretive knowledge andcritical relativistic methodology must be made. First,there is no reason that the conceptualizations of inter-pretative knowledge cannot be submitted to sophisti-cated falsificationist metho dology ; they may , in fact, bea good source of scientifically testable hypotheses. Butunless such testing in fact occurs, such conceptualiza-tions should not be equated with scientific knowledge.Critical relativism is not the methodology of scientificknowledge. Again, however, this does not mean thatinterpretive knowledge is of little value in its own right.Next, it may be that much work now purporting tobe scientific is in fact interpretive. This has, for instance,long been a criticism of psychoanalytic work (Schafer1976). Freudian ideas are embraced by analysts withouta serious attempt at empirical refutation and are thenused to interpret behavior. Such work is bogus from

the standpoint of scientific knowledge and, to the extentthat it masquerades as scientific, may result in poorerinterpretive knowledge than avowedly relativist re-search. The consensus of researchers may result morefrom dogmatic acceptance than critical debate andagreement.Finally, the distinction between everyday know ledgeand interpretive knowledge requires close attention.Consumers have everyday knowledge but they need not,indeed typically w ould n ot, have access to an interpre-tivist's view of their world. Conversely, when a re-searcher imposes an interpretive structure on data, theresulting knowledge cannot be viewed as everyday.Thu s, several anthropologists have expressed a con cernthat much of field research may not yield everydayknowledge so much as relativistic interpretation by aparticular group of anthropologists (Shweder 1986).While both types of knowledge are valuable, their dif-ferences should be recognized and maintained.Thus, we concur with Holbrook's (1987) view thatthe broadening of consumer research to encompass ef-forts aimed at interpretive knowledge has the potentialto enhance the ways in which we understand consum erbehavior. At the same time, it should be recognizedthat the relativist methodology of interpretive knowl-edge poses a considerable challenge. In an extrem e formit could lead to anarchy. If construed as the "anythinggoes" and "why not call it science" of a Feyerabend,there is little to stop researchers from indulging in any-thing that suits their fancy in the name of scientificknowledge. Expressiveness could become the order ofthe day. Studies could be valued for their "weirdness"rather than for the knowledge they yield. Differencesin research methodology could be taken for a matter of"style" and not for differences in the nature of knowl-edge they produce. As a consequence, the field couldlose any c oherence.Anarchy and paroxysms of self-expression need notbe consequences of relativistic methodology. It is up toresearchers seeking interpretive knowledge to disciplinetheir work within a community of scholars. AlthoughAnderson (1986) provides a conceptual framework forcritical relativism, specific criteria for critical relativismas a methodology are yet to be presented. These aresorely needed.

CONCLUSIONIt is our view that consumer research is best under-stood by examining the various types of knowledge itcan provide about consumer behavior. We have iden-tified three types of knowledge: everyday, scientific, andinterpretive. Each can provide insight into consumers'behavior, but each is distinct, as reflected in the treat-ment of data associated with each type's implied meth-odology. When everyday knowledge is sought, the dataare the end, the goal. When scientific knowledge is

sought, the data are the means of exposing a theory to

8/6/2019 What CR is

5/6

140 THE JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARC

refutation, of choosing between competing theories.When interpretive knowledge is sought, the data areselectively used to build a persuasive argument for theview being espoused.We contend that each type of knowledge has valueand may be helpful in solving practical problems. Butonly scientific knowledge rests on a methodology thatoffers the possibility of scientific progress. It is importantto recognize that unless subjected to the rules of em-pirical science, everyday and interpretive knowledgemust stand apart from science, each on its own m erits.[Received February 1987.]

REFERENCESAnderson, Paul F. (1983), "Marketing, Scientific Progress and

Scientific Meihod." Journal of Marketing, 47 (Fal l ) , 18-3 1 . (1986), "On M ethod in Consumer Research: A CriticalRelat ivist P erspect ive ," Journal of Consumer Research,13 (September), 155 -173 .Belk, Russell W. (1986), "What Should ACR Want to beWhen I t Grows U p?" in Advances in Consumer Research,Vol. 13 ed. Richard J. Lutz, Provo: Association for Con-sumer Research, 423-424.Calder, Bobby J. (1977), "Focus Groups and the Nature ofQualitative Marketing Research," Journal of MarketingResearch, 14, 353-364 .^ (198 6), "Explorator>', Clinical and Interaction Cen-tered F o c u s G r o u p s , " Journal of Data C ollection, 26,2 4 - 2 7 ., Lynn W. Phillips, and Alice M. Tybout (1981), "De-signing Research for Applica tion," Journal of ConsumerResearch, 8 (September), 1 97-2 07.Glaser, B.G. and H.L. Strauss (1967), The Discovery ofGrounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research,Chicago: Aldine.

Holbrook, Morris B. (1987 ), "What Is Consum er R esearch?Journal of Consumer Research. 14 ( June ) , 128-132 .and Mark W. Grayson (1986), "The Semiology oCinematic Consumption: Symbolic Consumer Behavioin Out of Africa," 13 (December) , 3 74- 381 .Jacoby, Jacob (1975), "Consumer Research: Telling It LikI s , " in Advances in Consumer Research. Vol. 3, ed. Beverlee B. And erson, Atlanta: Georgia State University , I

I I .Lakatos, Imre (1970), "Falsification and the M ethodology oScience R esearch Programs," in Criticism and the Growtof Knowledge, eds. Imre Lakatos and Alan MusgravLondon: Cambridge University Press.Leong, Siew Meng (1985), "Metatheory and Metamethodoogy in Marketing: A Lakatosian Recon struction," Jounal of Marketing, 49 (Fal l ) , 23-40.Olso n, Jerry C. and J. Paul Peter (198 4), "External Validity ,in Scientific Method in Marketing: P hilosophy, Sociologand History of Science Perspectives, eds. Paul Anderso

and Mike Ryan, Chicago: American Marketing Assocation.Peter, J. Paul and Jerry C. Olson (1983), "Is Science Marketing?" Journal of Marketing, 47 (Fal l ) , 11-125.Popper , Karl (1959), The Logic of Scientific Discovery, N ewYork: Harper T orchbooks.Schafer, Roy (1976), A New Language for PsychoanalysiNew Haven: Yale University Press.Sherry, John F. (1986), "The Cultural Perspective in Consumer Resea rch , " Advances in Consumer Research, Vo1 3 , ed. Richard J. Lutz, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 573-575.Shweder, Richard A. (1986), "Storytelling Among the Anthropologists," The New Y ork Times Book R eview, September 2 1.Sternthal, Brian, Alice M. Tybout, and Bobby J. Calde(1987), "Confirmator>' versus Comparative Approachet o Judg ing Theory Tes t s , " Journal of Consumer Res e a r c h , 1 4 ( J u n e ) , 1 1 4 - 1 2 5 .

8/6/2019 What CR is

6/6