Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal

Purpose – Consumer discourse is a narrative of generically (in)formed, goal-directed activity. If research interprets such practice, it is often deemed to draw upon phenomenology. Returning to the philosophers (Gadamer, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur) who shaped phenomenology, the purpose of this paper is to argue that consumer studies should further cultivate their important insight – that action (particularly perceiving) is structured temporally as always already realising our pre-given meaning. Entities are prima facie experienced as “ready-to-hand” “equipment” enabling “potentiality-for-being”. Hermeneutic phenomenology is thus a philosophical resource offering appropriate spatio-temporal images for people responding to media marketing's branded life-styles.

Design/methodology/approach – Drawing upon authoritative academic resources, the paper proceeds from philosophical definition to resulting analytical methods in marketing research, using a brief Malaysian case study as an example. Philosophically, phenomenology's core perception is of persons as located in a life-world of socially shared concepts whose employment/ emplotment is said to “fore-structure” (Heidegger) their understanding, shaping their “projections” (Gadamer) or expectation of events. Phenomenology posits one engages in a “hermeneutic circle of understanding” – aiming at resolving contradiction between such “fore-sight” and our subsequent perceptions of events. Consumers thematise “pre-understood” experience in articulating their storied accounts.

Findings – Drawing on phenomenology's account of perceiving, the paper suggests qualitative marketing research unpacks consumers' generic expectation of branding narrative as equipment enabling potentiality-for-being, regarding narrative as addressing assumed audience expectation.

Originality/value – The paper provides a conceptual route through phenomenology's application to marketing communication research practice.