Guest editorial

Citation

Ruediger Kaufmann, H. (2012), "Guest editorial", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 15 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/qmr.2012.21615daa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Volume 15, Issue 4

All the papers presented in this guest edition underwent a rigorous double peer review process and were continuously amended by the reviewers’ comments and peer discussions, for example, during conferences.

The paper of Kapoulas and Mitic serves as a contextual umbrella for the other papers to follow. The paper contributes to the ongoing epistemological debate on positivism versus interpretivism and phenomenology divide in marketing research and confirms the apparent current paradigm shift towards the interpretivist approach in marketing studies. The authors associate the evolution of the marketing discipline with an increasing interchange of research approaches and ideologies. They provide lessons learnt when facing rhetorical and practical challenges when applying and justifying interpretive marketing research. As stepping stones for continuously building a tradition of qualitative market research in marketing, the authors suggest to overtly reflect on its currently existing shortcomings. Furthermore, intending to support future qualitative marketing researchers they call for increased levels of preparation, theoretical insights, patience, resistance, the employment of triangulation, perpetual consultations, determination and will-power.

The other papers in this guest edition reflect the various merits of qualitative research as provided by Kapoulas and Mitic’s literature review. There is an awareness and understanding of often complex and especially neglected, innovative, or unprecedented social phenomena. There is creation of an exploratory nature, illuminating and disentangling the individual integral parts of the phenomenon in question. They lead finally to interpreting and categorizing the data into coherent pictures and inductively derived frameworks, which can be used as road maps for problem solving for organizations. Due to the complexity of many current corporate and societal challenges, the solutions are often derived from interdisciplinary sources as reflected by another two papers in this guest edition. All the papers provide innovative insights into various idiosyncratic contexts which, so far has lacked wider academic attention. Three papers touch the central nerve of the marketing discipline being detailed customer knowledge and empathy as a basis for successful marketing strategies. These papers relate to the neglected needs of sight and hearing for impaired customers of transport companies, the under researched consumer motives of Greek ski centers and to innovative relationships between brands and consumers taking cultural influences into account. Another paper based on a corporate case study, calls for a “genetic” evolution of strategic thinking leading to an urgently required strategic re-development as a precondition to gain a competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive global arena. Last but not least, the final paper on elite interviewing contributes to redress the paucity of literature on both, management research methodology on elite interviewing and of general literature in this fairly young research stream.

Based on two qualitative research projects, Fuerst and Vogelauer looking at Austrian transport companies, investigated the special needs of customers with sight and hearing impairment. The authors bridged an existing literature and empirical research gap on the general needs and size of this segment. Hence, they contribute to increased public and corporate awareness of and empathy creation for the specific mobility problems of this customer segment to the benefits of society as a whole. The authors call for a concerted action of all involved for the implementation of cost efficient solutions that could be easily implemented.

A further consumer focused paper is provided by Priporas, Vassiliadis and Stylos who, via in-depth interviews, elicited the preferences of visitors of Greek ski centers as well as the interests of other stakeholders. This topic gains momentum if we take into account the importance of tourism for the economy of Greece in this current economic crisis. In conclusion, the authors proposed an increasing focus on internal marketing and market research due to its positive influence on customer satisfaction, improving the marketing mix and challenging the state business model, which governs the majority of ski centers in Greece.

Kaufmann, Loureiro, Basile and Vrontis conclude the tripod of papers calling for increasingly intimate relationships with customers reflected in blurring boundaries between consumers and companies. From an interdisciplinary perspective, mainly informed by identity theory, the authors develop four conceptual frameworks about consumer-brand-social group relationships. The conceptualizations consecutively developed, depicted the role of the brand for community building and socialization. There are new consumer roles in the branding process and a new segmentation model due to the different stages of brand-consumer relationships that take cultural influences into account. The conceptualizations have been compared to findings of a previous qualitative case study conducted in Cyprus. Finally, an interrelated propositions’ model is provided as a suggestion with which to inform future work, such as ethnographic research.

In a time of crisis, which calls for fresh ideas, Vrontis, Thrassou, Chebbi and Yahiaoui propose a radical change of strategic innovation policy and practices from a conventional to a more value and strategic reflexivity orientation. The model claims to provide for mechanisms that automatically adapt more to environmental changes being a prerequisite for gaining competitive advantage. Based on the analysis of the results of a corporate case study and 45 in-depth interviews and participant observation, a concept to serve as a proposition for future research is suggested by the authors.

Applying an inductive, interpretivistic methodology with a case study of the English Professional Football Industry, Moore and Stokes used as the research method, semi-structured tailored interviews and participant observation as research techniques, to contribute to the debate on elite interviewing. The authors identified not only a current literature gap in the field, but also a paucity of contributions in the management research methodology literature. Consequently, sources were mainly drawn from politically and sociologically orientated literature. Whereas the findings of the authors confirmed the inter-differences between the sectors, new evidence for intra-differences within the sector were also found. Regarding the latter, the application of the metaphorical device of eco-systems is recommended by the authors as being useful to further explore intra-differences in a sector, which often exerts strong influence on other societal stakeholders. Furthermore, new elite typologies are presented by this research which stresses the role of context to elite interviewing.

Summarizing, the papers outlined reflect a valuable contribution of qualitative research to explore innovative solutions for pressing corporate or societal challenges in our time.

Hans Ruediger KaufmannGuest Editor