Consumer Interviews

The Rationale for Interview Research in Consumer Studies

The dominant paradigm of research in studies of consumer behavior has been influenced by quantitative, behavioral, and positivistic methodological approaches, frequently derived from research styles in business studies and psychology. Consumer researchers have traditionally tended to prefer quantitative over qualitative approaches. They have operated with the assumption that representative population surveys using closed questions, rather than face-to-face interviews, was the best way to access reliable forms of behavioral data that could inform models of consumer behavior and choice. Much of this genre of research is associated with marketing, business, and consumer research studies, most strongly developed in North America, with the main aim to apply scientific research techniques to understand, predict, and attempt to manipulate consumer behavior.

However, in recent decades, there has been an important developing paradigm shift based on a growing awareness of the importance of qualitative, interpretive, and meaning-based approaches in studies of consumer behavior. Though methodological innovators within consumer research have often come from, or been inspired by, related fields of consumer research within sociology or anthropology, this methodological shift has occurred not just within these fields but also in the traditional core fields of marketing and business studies. Rather than being mere complements to traditional approaches or exploratory projects, many researchers across the entire consumer studies field now acknowledge that qualitative approaches are essential in allowing researchers access to various types of information, perspectives, and data that would be impossible to gather using traditional quantitative survey approaches.

Consumer interviews should be considered as part of the broad tradition of qualitative social research. Qualitative research is a diverse field that has been historically constructed through a range of unique and often dispersed methodological traditions, such as symbolic interactionism, ethnography, visual research, and even conversation analysis. Yet, at its heart, what is common to this type of research is the researcher's commitment to interpreting and understanding a person's reasoning for his or her actions and beliefs. Qualitative researchers often take sociologist Max Weber's methodological platform of verstehen as a fundamental point of inspiration for their research methods. The verstehen idea refers to the goal of understanding the basis of human actions using the reasoning perspectives of people themselves. It is held that this approach yields deep insights into the meaningful basis of social action and its consequences.

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