Seven Pillars of Wisdom: The Idea of Qualitative Market Research

This article looks at the ‘knowledge frameworks’ underlying the practice of qualitative research. Although they are rarely articulated, qualitative research relies upon different sets of underlying assumptions about what we are looking for, what counts as evidence and what counts as knowledge.

Seven pillars of wisdom: the idea of qualitative market research

Jon Chandler

Mojo Brand Development

Introduction

Market research tends to be a practical and pragmatic discipline. It is usually most interested in results, it is a ‘we want to know’ kind of business. Sometimes there is less interest in how those results are actually achieved, ‘how we found out’. Typically, there is less interest still in the theoretical underpinning for ‘how we know what we know’.

This is particularly true of qualitative research for which there is no comprehensive and coherent theory of knowledge or epistemology. Here researchers tend to...

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