BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS

(QUALITATIVE)

Term 2 MBA (2022-23)

Sessions 2 & 3: Choosing RQs, Research Traditions

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RESEARCH QUESTIONS: OVERVIEW

RQs are important because they inform the reviewers (thesis committee) and readers what the importance
of one’s research is.
Two basic sources of inspiration for original, important research questions:
• Prior research: It includes both theoretical writing and empirical studies.
• Empirical phenomena: Either specific contexts (such as actors and actions in a particular region,
community or market) or types of behavior (such as gift-giving, gardening, or gossiping).
Other sources of inspiration for RQs include prior experience, novels, movies, poems, songs or art. The
sources of inspiration are inextricably interwoven.
The key to a good RQ is that one is able to identify an empirical phenomenon that is significant, and this
empirical phenomenon should not have fully accounted for and explained by existing theory. For
managerially relevant research, an added requirement is that in answering the question, one must be able
to generate actionable implications for people who manage organizations.
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DEVELOPING RQS: GUIDELINES

Look for some characteristic or dynamic that is particularly salient in a context: (e.g.,
other brand communities are thriving but the brand community you are interested in is
losing. Here possible RQs include: what are the factors that lead to the demise of a
[particular] brand community? Or, what are the processes involved in community
decline?)

Develop RQs by a critical reading of the prior literature: The challenge is to identify
what constitutes ‘prior literature’ – there is vast diversity in the focus of studies, and the
terminologies used by them (e.g., brand community is interchangeably used with brand
tribes, subcultures of consumption, and consumption micro-cultures).
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DEVELOPING RQS: GUIDELINES

Tips to develop good RQs:
• look for concepts or constructs that are ‘taken for granted’ but that have not been examined systematically
(see the example cited by Belk et al on how ‘consumer desire’ was explored systematically and explicitly
by the researchers)
• look for assumptions that are routinely made, but not applicable in every setting (e.g., the work on
marketplace myths as identity resources and an unwelcome imposition on consumers’ identity).
• look for processes that have been ignored or incompletely understood [see the example of RQs developed
by Marcus Giesler relating to the processes by which markets of particular types (creative cultural markets)
evolved and how calculations of price and value unfolded over time – p. 19 of Belk et al.]
A cardinal principle: After developing an initial set of RQs, the researcher should iterate back and forth
between prior literature and the empiri­cal phenomenon s/he has immersed her/himself in, and refine the RQs
(the ‘meet in the middle’ process).
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RESEARCH TRADITIONS: PHENOMENOLOGY

Tradition: Refers to a set of philosophical assumptions and associated research practices that cohere with
these philosophical assumptions.
The focus of (existential) phenomenology is on the life-world of individuals, as the meanings of people’s
experiences are always situated in their current experiential context and coherently related to their ongoing
life projects.
When working within this tradition we are not seeking some universal understanding of a phenomenon like
consumers’ first automobiles, but instead are seeking a deep understanding of what your first automobile
means to you, with the ‘you’ here being a specific focal consumer.
RQs from existential phenomenology: Ask the nature of people’s lived experience. The answers will be a
description of thematic patterns: e.g., automobile as freedom; automobile as extended self; automobile as
sexual symbol.
The overall context of the life-world, including interactions, iden­tity, and activities is highlighted in the
findings. The research is often individual-specific, but an aggregate of individual experiences are used to
provide a structured way of understanding differences.
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RESEARCH TRADITIONS: HERMENEUTICS

Key tenets: all understanding is based on language; we, as researchers, belong to a cultural
world entailing an accumulation of beliefs, theo­ries, codes, metaphors, myths, practices,
institutions, and ideologies; this cul­tural world shapes our understandings and those of the
people or authors of texts that we seek to understand; this zeitgeist (spirit of the era; world
outlook) is an asset rather than a liability that should be bracketed [be aware of; to mitigate the
negative effects of something] when analyzing data.

RQs from hermeneutic tradition: How do cultural notions shape specific kinds of experiences
and actions? Analyses of cultural elements that are influential in shaping thought or behavior
are key in this tradition.
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RESEARCH TRADITIONS: POSTMODERNISM

Key tenets: ‘meta-narratives’ (widely shared cultural accounts that offer explanations for how societies work,
such as the notion of the free market and the law of supply and demand) are unwar­ranted universalisms.
These universalisms masquerade as scientific or value-neutral systems of thought and are oversimplifications
that need to be unsettled, but not replaced with competing meta-narratives; all knowledge, including our
sense of our selves, is a socially constructed product of language and is con­testable.

RQ from postmodern tradition: How do we challenge the taken-for-granted under­standings of phenomena?

Marketing and consumer research have been influenced quite profoundly by the postmodern assumptions
such as fragmentation of identity, decline of universalizing narratives, and de-centering of the self. Since
postmodern is against any kind of system-building, Belk et al prefer to call it semi-formulaic interpretive lens
and not a specific tradition.
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RESEARCH TRADITIONS: CRITICAL THEORY

Like postmodern tradition, the critical tradition also unsettles taken-for-granted assumptions. One
unique feature of this tradition is that it is committed to examining taken-for-granted assump­tions and
practices that sustain the oppression of marginalised groups within society. It also identifies
possibilities of change.

Key tenets: reality is socially constructed, but once constructed it comes to ‘act upon’ actors, shaping
their assumptions and practices in ways that sustain established patterns of privilege and oppression;
analysis should help to iden­tify assumptions and practices that reinforce power and sustain oppression
of specific categories of actors; individuals have the potential to become aware of conditions of
oppression and to work to change those conditions.

RQs from critical tradition: What fac­tors contribute to the oppression or marginalisation of some
group of actors? How these conditions could be alleviated?
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RESEARCH TRADITIONS: SEMIOTICS

It focuses on the structures of meaning-producing events, both verbal and non-verbal, and
investigate the sign systems or codes that facilitate the production and interpretation of signs
or symbols. Semiotics/semiology has a strong non- humanist and even antihumanist
orientation in which individual interpretations are of little importance in comparison with the
formal but less visible structural arrangements that make them possible.

Key tenets: there is an intimate connection between human sense making and language; that
signs are arbitrarily associated with the things they signify within any language sys­tem; and
that different language systems divide conceptual categories in dis­tinct ways.

RQs from semiotic tradition: How specific words, phrases, gestures, myths, images, products
or practices within a symbol system acquire meaning?
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RESEARCH TRADITIONS: NEOPOSITIVISM

Key tenets: While mechanistic, causal, predictive accounts of social phenomena are untenable,
relational and probabilistic expla­nations of patterned regularities in social phenomena are
possible and desirable; the pursuit of such explanations requires that constructs that help to
explain, or that are in need of explanation, be clearly specified; the goal of research will often be
to identify both the likely relationships among a set of constructs, and the contingent conditions
under which those relationships might occur. In short, patterned regularities in social phenomena
are the focus.

RQs from neopositivist tradition: The factors that help to explain a particular phenomenon, or the
consequences that may arise when a particular phenomenon occurs.
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RESEARCH TRADITIONS: POINTS TO NOTE

• Two or three research traditions can inform one’s research

• Research traditions are not set in stone; they evolve
• Most of the traditions have focused on text and representation (spoken or
written word), and not what people do. Research traditions increasingly value
observation of behavior while acknowledging the materiality of objects.