Personal Diary Method

There is a growing interest towards using diaries as a tool of data collection for gathering information pertaining to consumer research. However, the bigger challenge is the qualitative analysis of the data collected through this technique. Hence, the objective of the chapter is to illustrate how diary method of data collection can be a better option than other data collection tools in cases where the informants are likely to experience difficulties in recalling past consumption experience. To delineate the steps and different types of codes used in inductive content analysis to analyze the qualitative data collected through the personal diary method, the chapter will also present an exploratory study with airline consumers using self-completion diaries about their online ticket purchasing experience followed by qualitative analyses of this information collected through diary using inductive content analysis. Each step of the content analysis will be illustrated in the full chapter.

Toward a Pedagogy for Consumer Anthropology: Method, Theory, Marketing

This paper focuses on teaching the application of anthropology in business to marketing students. It begins with the premise that consumer marketers have long used ethnography as a component of their qualitative market research toolkit to inform their knowledge about and empathy for consumers. A question for market research educators who include ethnography in their curricula is if and how to teach the richness of anthropologically based approaches, especially given a decoupling of ethnographic method from anthropological theory in much consumer research practice. This discussion might also resonate with anthropology educators who are interested in the ways anthropology is applied in commercial settings. As a demonstration of a teaching mode rather than a research report, this paper describes how a consumer anthropology market research project is used experientially in the classroom to help marketing students learn and appreciate the application of both anthropological method and theory for brand-building. Included is a summary of an ethnographic project on Duncan Hines cake mix and an in-class student exercise during which three conceptual ‘jumping off’ points from anthropological theory were used to generate marketing initiatives.

The role of teleoaffective profiles in practice adaptation

Consumer research is interested in the way consumers navigate consumption in the face of disruption, often using practice theory to focus on how practitioners creatively realign practice elements in order to carry on. Although recognising their significance, this research undertheorizes the significance, role and characteristics of 'meanings' in practice adaptation, presenting them as constraining and yet easy to adapt. We explore and theorize meanings in practice adaptation by mobilising the theoretical leverage of Schatzki’s (2002) concept of ‘teleoaffective structures’. Through our empirical material, we illuminate how multifaceted teleoaffective components constituent of teleoaffective structures are integrated differently into routinised practice performances in relatively stable ways; incorporated via ‘teleoaffective profiles’ that are unique to practitioners but properties of practices. Furthermore, we propose that teleoaffective profiles have different characteristics that condition practice adaptation, as teleological orientations and affective engagements afford different pathways towards integration with available materials and competences. We use our empirical material, based on interviews with loyal gym-based resistance training practitioners during COVID-19 gym closures, to illuminate our argument that practitioners can have ‘rigid’, ‘elastic’ or ‘fluid’ teleoaffective profiles. The characteristics of these profiles, which are unique but remain the properties of the practice, mean that adaptation processes and experiences unfold differently. This perspective advances from accounts of adaptation that are centred on binary outcomes of success or failure. Furthermore, our theorization advances from practice-oriented consumption adaptation research that foregrounds practitioner creativity and fails to adequately incorporate understandings of how practice elements condition adaptation processes. Yet, we retain practitioner experiences in our analysis. Teleoaffective components, profiles and properties provides further theoretical leverage to the practice turn in consumption research and advances the burgeoning focus on the significance of teleoaffective structures in the topographies of practices

Using Photographs in Mixed Methods Research: An Illustration Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses from Consumer Research

Photograph analysis poses a novel methodological challenge for mixed methods researchers. In this paper, we argue that photographs are a valid data source that are not outside of the quantitative–qualitative binary and, hence, can be analyzed and used for integration, applying mixed methods principles. We summarize photograph analysis methods from different scientific fields and contribute to the field of mixed methods by proposing a mixed methods framework for analyzing visual data that allows the flexible application and integration of different quantitative and qualitative photograph analysis methods by focusing on data transformation. We use an illustrative example from consumer research.