Abstract
This special issue on “Research Methodologies for Macromarketing” focuses on how we investigate macromarketing phenomena, the ways we “know” about macromarketing. This introduction considers the difficulty of macromarketing research and introduces the seven papers in the special issue. I would like to thank the authors and reviewers for this special issue. They have worked together in a constructive manner to produce seven strong articles related to the special issue topic.
How do we understand the world we live in? For millennia humans have grappled with the best way(s) to know our world (Chalmers 2013). Ontology and epistemology have changed considerably over that period. There is a reasonably widespread understanding that the method used to examine a phenomenon will impact on the results of the investigation. This special issue is concerned with questions of method in the context of macromarketing questions.
Some phenomena are easier to understand than others, and understanding some phenomena is less important than understanding others (we have all been told “it hasn’t been done before” by a research student when they should have said “it should be done because … ”). Macromarketing research deals with important questions (Hunt and Burnett 1982) and is not easy.
Macromarketing is at its very essence an optimistic inquiry into market and societal phenomena with the goal of improving markets/market systems for the benefit of society. As such it deals with the interactions between (multiple and perhaps aggregated) firms and (multiple and perhaps aggregated) consumers, governments, regulatory bodies, pressure groups and all manner of citizens, in one country and in international markets. It includes understanding and measuring variables such as values, ethics, fairness, culture, and quality of life. Related to the essence of macromarketing are questions such as: What is a market? (a question that has received remarkably little attention for a discipline with “market” in the name) How do markets form? (recently addressed by Layton 2014) How can markets be improved? For whom should a market be improved? (and on whom will that impact negatively?) How do we deal with non-monetized things without monetizing them, and at the same time devaluing them? What is fair, be it in fair trade, or any market? What is freedom, be it in free trade, or any interaction? Is fairness the goal? Is freedom? Is profit? What is Quality of Life? Is it the goal of the system?
Moriarty (2015), a rocket scientist, on the basis of an undergraduate introductory marketing course, suggests that marketing involves “Rather trite observations are dressed up in needlessly florid language, or, at best, are couched in statements pinched from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious’ most recent newsletter.” In fact rocket science is demonstrably considerably easier than (macro)marketing. Isaac Newton wrote the equations that govern sending a rocket to the Moon in 1687. Rocket scientists deal with constants, whereas macromarketers deal with noise, randomness – people, and people interacting with other people to produce real chaos (Casti 1996). We have repeatedly been to the moon, and are now venturing beyond, but predicting markets and market interactions remains beyond “even” rocket scientists.
Quality of Life (QoL) is rather like the Higg’s Boson. Scientists “knew” it was there, and recognized it when they saw it, but found it very difficult to measure and required decades of multi-billion dollar research programs to be able to identify and measure. We know what QoL is, though there are several competing conceptualizations, and we “know it” when we see it. Macromarketing has not received such resourcing as the search for the Higg’s Boson, despite our questions having more impact on the quality, or lack, of lived experience of people all around the world. We should judge our success relative to the difficulty of the problems we are investigating and the resources that have collectively been applied to the pursuit of answers to those questions.
(Macro)marketing has not been without its Newtons. Alderson, for example, investigated, integrated, and conceptualized many of macromarketing’s key questions (Wooliscroft 2006). Alderson’s work has not received the same empirical research that followed Newton and, essentially, the problems are more difficult – and more important.
Many questions should be researched repeatedly and with a variety of methodologies. The danger of a lack of replication – particularly an issue for social sciences – has recently been demonstrated by a Science paper replicating 100 leading psychology findings (Open Science Collaboration 2015). The investigators found significant (statistically and in the vernacular use) difficulties replicating the findings of those studies. Physical sciences do not suffer from such issues. If they torture a hydrogen atom into giving a paper-worthy result one week, it is highly unlikely (barring academic fraud) that a completely different hydrogen atom could not be tortured into giving the same result months or years later.
Many macromarketing questions are “wicked problems” (Churchman 1967; Rittel and Webber 1973): “ … that class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing. The adjective “wicked” is supposed to describe the mischievous and even evil quality of these problems, where proposed “solutions” often turn out to be worse than the symptoms…” (Churchman 1967, p. B-41) “The moral principle is this: whoever attempts to tame a part of a wicked problem, but not the whole, is morally wrong. Such a moral principle would appear to be ridiculous to many a management [and marketing] scientist, who has been bought up to believe that he should only tackle “feasible” problems. For him to tame the whole of a wicked problem is not feasible, and hence the moral principle tells him to do something his teachers told him was wrong” (Churchman 1967, p. B-41-42). “After reviewing a wide variety of research findings (Armstrong 1982), here are my conclusions about getting a paper published. First, do not examine important problems. Second, do not challenge existing beliefs. Third, do not obtain surprising results.… these are the guidelines for getting your articles into leading journals” (Armstrong 1998, p. 5).
This special issue focuses on the methodological issues of investigating macromarketing phenomena. The discussion around methodology will not end with one special issue. It will take a long term concerted effort from many scientists to make progress, and replication will be a key feature of macromarketing science, in much the same way that rocket science has received long term effort and resourcing.
The Articles in this Issue
The seven articles in this special issue represent a range of ontological and epistemological positions, different ways of seeing and understanding the world and phenomena in it. Further, this issue includes positions along the development/refinement of knowledge continuum, from naive investigation of macromarketing phenomena to scale development, generally considered a necessary precursor for generalizable theory testing. There is much to aid and inform researchers in any stage of their career to bring to their focal areas of investigation.
Anthony Samuel and Ken Peattie’s “Grounded Theory as a Macromarketing Methodology: Critical Insights from Researching the Marketing Dynamics of Fairtrade Towns” demonstrates the value of grounded theory to macromarketing through the use of an illustrative case study. Grounded theory is an often mis-represented approach to understanding focal phenomena. While elements of grounded theory have appeared in macromarketing previously, there has been little in the way of systematic application of grounded theory investigation. Samuel and Peattie’s provide macromarketers, and the wider marketing community, guidance on this theory generating approach to understanding market phenomena.
Gary Sinclair’s “Involvement and Detachment: The Application of Figurational Sociology Methodologies in Consumer Research and Macromarketing” highlights the challenges of studying people, “emotionally charged and value-laden” subjects. The article suggests a way for figurationalists and macromarketers to deal with these challenging data sources. At its essence, this study confronts the “noise” that surrounds people as elements in the system and the “noise” that the researcher brings with them. Sinclair proposes a way forward balancing the macromarketing imperative of serving society and the figurationalist desire for a balance between involvement and detachment.
Vivien Blanchet and Colette Depeyre’s “Exploring the Shaping of Markets through Controversies: Methodological Propositions for Macromarketing Studies” brings another sociological perspective to macromarketing phenomena, the use of actor-network theory. The authors propose the use of actor-network theory to guide macromarketing scholars to novel findings through its framing of inquiry and the focus on controversies.
Djavlonbek Kadirov, Richard J. Varey and Sally Wolfenden’s “Investigating Chrematistics in Marketing Systems: A Research Framework” takes us a further step in knowledge development, suggesting a conceptual framework for understanding chrematistics. A conceptual framework is the lens through which we see a phenomenon. The authors bring chrematistics to macromarketing’s attention while proposing a seven-step process to understand the effect of chrematistic behavior on market phenomena.
Tina M. Facca-Miess and Nicholas J. C. Santos’ “Assessing Perceptions of the Integrative Justice Model Propositions: A Critical Step Toward Operationalizing a Macro Model” focuses on the scale development process, using the Integrative Justice Model as its focus. Measuring values, attitudes and psychological states is difficult, considerably more difficult than measuring height or weight. The process of developing reliable and valid scales in the social sciences is iterative and lengthy. This paper invites us to view the start of that journey. All the models in social science are challenged by the requirements of good measurement, lest they fall into the garbage in garbage out syndrome. Measurement has always been and will remain an important area for social science to apply itself.
“Assessing the Value of a Societal-Level Sustainability Index for Macromarketing Research” by Travis Jody Simkins and Mark Peterson addresses an important topic, how do we measure sustainability at the societal level. While Facca and Santos’ article considers scale development at a relatively early stage, Simkins and Peterson do important work assessing the importance of an established scale. This does not suggest that the “job is done.” Scale development and refinement will be ongoing in this area as the definition of sustainability is contested and refined as environmental, social and economic impacts are balanced and rebalanced. We need to continue research like this, making sure that we are measuring what we claim to be measuring.
The final article in the special issue brings a new, and yet remarkably old, technique to macromarketing questions, Bayesian Network Analysis. In “A Bayesian Network Analysis of Ethical Behavior” Ahmet Ekici and Sule Onsel Ekici apply models made possible by the arrival of significant computing power on every academic’s desk. The techniques illustrated in this study allow us to investigate complex phenomena and consider how changing variables would impact on the world. The epistemology proposed by the Rev. Thomas Bayes is now ubiquitous in our lives, without us being aware of it. Amazon, Google, Apple, and other Internet companies are all heavy users of Bayesian analysis. It is heartening to see Ekici and Ekici bringing Bayes to macromarketing.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.