Editorial

Citation

Tiu Wright, L. (2007), "Editorial", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 10 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/qmr.2007.21610aaa.001

Editorial

As QMRIJ enters its tenth volume I hope readers will join with me in reflecting what the Journal has achieved and to contemplate the future about how it will continue to represent qualitative market research. All the issues for the Journal have, in its various forms from its papers to its special sections, included contemporary trends, deep analysis of consumers, practitioner issues and the all pervading thinking about conceptual marketing, marketing research and globalisation.

The papers in this issue bring together a diversity of studies within the scope of qualitative research. Exploring successes and failures of the advertising agency-firm relationship is the topic of the first paper by Abdelfattah Triki, Najla Redjeb & Istabrak Kammoun from the Research Unit in Business Relationships, Institut Supérieur de Gestion (ISG), Tunis University, Tunisia. The authors provide an in-depth consideration of the issues, limitations and nature of a relationship that is continually evolving and responding to the demands of the marketplace. There is relevance here for academics and practitioners, consumers and businesses in that the issues raised about the partnerships of advertisers and agencies have an influence on what we eventually see and hear advertised.

Trust in a partnership or any relationship is a valuable commodity. The next paper by Kyosit Penannen explores this as a value based e-trust process in the context of framework development. New perspectives in e-trust research are explored as consumers bring their personal values and judgements to the e-trust building process. The methodological design includes a two staged data collection procedure with a short questionnaire to measure potential informants' values followed by interviews with thirty respondents in the areas of electronic commerce, electronic newspapers, electronic grocery shopping, and electronic healthcare services. The findings take account of the ways in which individuals try to reduce perceived risks and to build their trust in e-commerce.

In the third paper, Clive Boddy offers a useful view of projective techniques for qualitative market research in the Asia Pacific region. In the third paper, he examines the application of projective techniques with specific reference to Taiwan and its various uses in other Asia-Pacific markets. Cultural differences about the conduct of research in the East are discussed as well as a comparison between east and west. Boddy's paper is a literature review with a limited qualitative study about the experiences of indigenous and expatriate market researchers in South Korea, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Indonesia. The paper contributes as a guide to understanding different cultures in the East compared to the cultures in the UK and other western markets.

Elin Brandi Sørensen and Søren Askegaard from the University of Southern Denmark give an account of the method of laddering as a qualitative market research technique. They present a critique of the laddering interviewing technique for academics as well as practitioners. A cautionary note is introduced about the limitations for applying the technique to interviewing consumers. Conceptually, the laddering interview is seen as a cognitive task so the authors provide a critical discussion of problems that can occur. An alternative concept of the laddering interview, as a discursive process event, is proposed. The potential of tapping into consumers' minds with this technique is clarified with an example of the discursive approach applied to a sample sequence from a laddering interview. The paper's contribution is its capacities to offer methodological self-criticism in the cognitivist tradition of advocating means-end chain theory and to propose an alternative conceptualised approach in using the laddering technique.

This is followed by Niels Nolsøe Grünbaum's paper about how to identify ambiguity in case research. Grünbaum looks at the literature where the case study is a useful research approach for the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, history, psychology, law, medicine, and education, political science, economics, urban planning, public administration, public policy, social work and management. It is also interdisciplinary and in the absence of strict guidelines or predetermined premises for case study usage he offers a typology. This typology relates to fundamental questions concerning features of epistemology and transferability. Therefore, this paper makes a contribution by providing a more detailed understanding of the case study as a qualitative research approach.

QMRIJ has published only a few Special Reports in its history and it is now a decade old. A QMRIJ Special Report is chosen for its focus on a specialised topic that has room for both personal experiences and introspection leading the author to reflect upon one or more of the following that can be broadly categorised. These are:

^.mental abstracts underpinning thinking how to go about a piece of qualitative work;

^.the physical scope of how to conduct a study or inquiry with emphasis on concerns in treating research in a market and/or reporting of human interactions in qualitative research; and

^.consideration of how an author's work has been influenced by a particular genre of objective and subjective writings from well known or popular writers influenced by qualitative paradigms in autobiographical, biographical, case study, ethnographical, phenomenological and interpretivist research.

Therefore, the requirements for special reports are that they have been reviewed as to their relevance with specific regard to one or more of the categories stated above and they are shorter in length than normal papers.

In this light, the central contribution of Chris Hackley's Special Report is that he highlights the importance of auto-ethnographical thinking in the interpretive tradition of consumer research. Hackley from Royal Holloway University, UK puts the case that narrative accounts from a subjective auto-ethnographical viewpoint are connected with a traditional form of creative non-fiction that is “fast paced” with “resonant insights in universal human experience”. Examples of these accounts and of their authors are brought to the fore. His own auto-ethnographical thinking is an intellectual effort to make sense of his new surroundings and the people he is contemplating meeting or whom he physically meets. It is written with good humour and gives insights into the character of the writer. In this respect it is a fairly bold attempt to combine personal introspection and self-revelations with linkages to writers within a subjective auto-ethnographical tradition.

The book review from Hélène Cherrier, University of Sydney, Australia is about The Future of Society by William Outhwaite. She questions what society is or constitutes and in her questioning she discusses from the book the various people and themes which have influenced society widely. It is realism and subjectivities intertwined that are contributing, in one form or another, to the stable of qualitative thinking about human conditioning and experience in society.

Andrew Barker of Spinach, a UK market research company, writes for the Practitioner Perspectives Section. He finds agreement with Geoff Bayley's paper presented to the 21st Annual Qualitative Research Consultants Association (AQRC) Conference at Atlanta, USA. Bayley's arguments about the discussion guide as an obstacle to qualitative research stems from viewing the encounter between a consumer and a moderator as more emotive than the presupposition that a consumer would give a rational answer to a moderator in his/her question setting role. The author provides a stimulating response to Bayley's paper by providing an enlightened look at this aspect of the work market researchers do.

The Internet section by Rehan ul-Haq, University of Birmingham, UK gives examples of web sites and discusses how these sites provide an atmosphere in cyberspace where people can link into the activities of consumers and businesses.

There are two Calls for papers, one for the 4th Workshop on Interpretive Research and the other for the Qualitative Research track at the Academy of Marketing Conference which is held annually. Readers are invited to attend the Workshop and the Conference. There are delegate fees payable.

Finally, my thanks go to the authors, reviewers and contributors who have made this issue a successful one.

Len Tiu Wright