Qualitative research methods in consumer psychology paul m w hackett,routledge, 2016 scan

Qualitative Research Methods
in Consumer Psychology

This volume covers theoretical, applied and research approaches to the study of
ethnography in consumer research and organizational change. No other volume to
date is as broad and current in scope and detail.
—Timothy Malefyt, Fordham University, USA

While consumer research is founded on traditional quantitative approaches,
the insight produced through qualitative research methods within consumer
settings has not gone unnoticed. The culturally situated consumer, who is
in intimate dialogue with his or her physical, virtual, and social surroundings, has become integral to understanding the psychology behind consumer choices. This volume presents readers with theoretical and applied
approaches to using qualitative research methods in ethnographic studies
looking at consumer behavior. It brings together an international group of
leading scholars in the field of consumer research, with educational and
professional backgrounds in marketing, advertising, business, education,
therapy, and health. Researchers, teaching faculty, and students in the field
of consumer and social psychology will benefit from the applied examples
of qualitative and ethnographic consumer research this volume presents.
Paul M.W. Hackett is a Professor of Ethnography and Consumer Behavior
at Emerson College, United States and a visiting academic in the philosophy department at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. His books
include Facet Theory and the Mapping Sentence: Evolving Philosophy, Use
and Application, Fine Art and Perceptual Neuroscience: Field of Vision
and the Painted Grid, and Conservation and the Consumer: Understanding Environmental Concern. His research and writing has appeared in Psychometrika; International Review of Retail, Distribution, and Consumer
Research; Environment and Behavior; the British Journal of Management;
Multivariate Behavior Research; and other prestigious journals. He is a
Chartered Psychologist in the United Kingdom.


Researching Social Psychology

 1Addressing Loneliness
Coping, Prevention and Clinical
Interventions
Edited by Ami Sha’ked & Ami
Rokach

  2 Qualitative Research Methods
in Consumer Psychology
Ethnography and Culture
Edited by Paul M.W. Hackett


Qualitative Research Methods
in Consumer Psychology
Ethnography and Culture
Edited by
Paul M.W. Hackett


First published 2016
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To Jessica


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Contents

Preface
Introduction: What Is Consumer Ethnography: The ‘Big-E’
and ‘Little-e’ in Consumer Research?

ix
xi

PAUL M.W. HACKETT AND ROXANA MAIORESCU

  1 Integrating Ethnographic Consumer Research Using Facet
Theory and the Mapping Sentence

1

PAUL M.W. HACKETT

  2 Ethics in Qualitative Consumer Research

16

GRANT C. AGUIRRE AND MICHAEL R. HYMAN

  3 Recruitment and Sampling in Consumer Research

33

KATHRYN ROULSTON AND BRIANA MARTINEZ

  4 Ethnographic Caveats

53

PAUL M. W. HACKETT AND JESSICA B. SCHWARZENBACH

  5 Inference and Hypothesis in Ethnographic Studies

66

JAMES L. EVERETT AND KIM JOHNSTON

  6 Ethnography 1: Revisioning Teenage Pregnancy Using
Participant Observation: Life in the Happy Hut

79

GABRIELLE BRAND AND PAUL MORRISON

  7 Ethnography 2: Field Observations, Questionnaires,
and Focus Group Interviews at a Water Park

91

PAUL M.W. HACKETT AND ERIN KOVAL

  8 Autoethnography in Consumer Research
CHRIS HACKLEY

105


viii  Contents
  9 Focus Group Interviews

118

DEBORAH POTTS

10 Using Projectives to Uncover “Aha Moments”
in Qualitative Research

131

STEVE KALTER

11 In-Depth Interviews

147

CAROLE SCHMIDT

12 The Dynamics of Ethnographic In-Depth Interviewing

160

BONITA M. KOLB

13 Action Research: The Bindjareb Yorgas Health Program

173

CAROLINE NILSON, PAUL MORRISON, AND CATHY FETHERSTON

14 Ethnographic Research into the Consumer Environment:
The Environment of Luxury Goods as a Space to Fight For

192

ANTONELLA FABRI AND PAUL M.W. HACKETT

15 Researching Virtual and Real-World Possessions, Artifacts,
and Archives

205

RUSSELL BELK

16 Visual and Sensory Ethnography

219

SARAH PINK, KERSTIN LEDER-MACKLEY, AND PAUL M.W. HACKETT

17 Ethnography: Textual Methodology

230

ANTHONY LOWRIE

18 Netnography: Possibilities and Resourcefulness

252

CECILIA LEWIS KAUSEL AND PAUL M.W. HACKETT

19 Neuroscience Research Approaches: Developing
an Ethnography of Non-Conscious Consumer Behaviour

262

PETER STEIDL AND STEPHEN J. GENCO

20 Software in Consumer Ethnography

277

ELI LIEBER

21 Consumer Heterophenomenology

296

GORDON R. FOXALL

Contributors
Index

315
325


Preface

Necessity is the mother of invention and my initial motivation for this book
grew out of clear need. When teaching consumer ethnography, I was struck

by the number of texts that addressed discrete areas of consumer ethnography and that there was no comprehensive volume on the subject. I sufficed
in my teaching with the excellent specialized books whilst assisting students
to blend these with my lectures: a far from ideal situation, which I decided
to remedy. I  considered writing a textbook but soon decided a collection
of individual chapters written by acknowledged authorities and innovators
would be more engaging when chapters contained methodological wisdom
and innovation from writers at the forefront of a chapter’s specific area.
This has not always been a simple project, as the 28 authors in this book
come from across the globe, working within both higher education and
industry, as employees and as self-employed researchers and practitioners.
Unifying the collection and keeping editing to a minimum whilst allowing
each author’s unique voice to emerge has been a challenge. I selected the
focus and scope of the chapters to provide understanding of the broad area
of consumer ethnography and qualitative consumer research. I told authors
that I wished to produce a comprehensive survey of consumer ethnography
for graduate and undergraduate students: The content offered by authors
was their response to this request. Readers may identify subject areas that
I have not included in this book: indeed, I can do this myself. Furthermore,
readers may have opinions about the relative worth of each chapter’s content. However, this is a personal choice of content that I believe and hope
provides a comprehensive overview of research that falls under the umbrella
of consumer ethnography.
St. George, Bermuda, December 2014.


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Introduction: What Is Consumer
Ethnography: The ‘Big-E’ and
‘Little-e’ in Consumer Research?

Research is all about asking questions, from the ‘hard-nosed’ more structured research of the physical sciences through to the more reflexive
research carried out in many of the social sciences. The advent of the Internet, Google, and other search engines has made us all applied researchers on
a daily basis to a previously unheard of extent. The Internet has opened up
a vast array of ways in which we, as consumers, are able to make enquiries
into many aspects of consumer products and services. An obvious way that
we all may conduct consumer research is by reading feedback comments
from other customers who have purchased and used a product in which we
are interested. Over the preceding two decades, many research terms and
approaches have thus come to be used widely in everyday life. The notion of
‘search key words’ was previously restricted to those who had spent many
months in an academic library conducting background research for their
research degree. Research was a specialized activity with a dedicated technical vocabulary. Now, many people use the Boolean search, if not the phrase
itself, in their everyday activities. Consumer opinion surveys have become a
ubiquitous aspect of contemporary life and a vital component of many television programs. In-depth interviews are demanded of our politicians when
they are attempting to garner our votes and, conversely, political parties trying to tailor their manifestos and other communications to attract our votes
use focus groups to fine-tune their communications. However, one form of
behavioural research has received less media attention and, consequently,
may be less well known: ethnography.
The majority of people who have chosen to read this book have probably
done so because they are familiar with the use of ethnography and qualitative research to help develop understanding of consumers. However, you are
a small and, dare I say, elite group. When I am at a party and I am asked
what I teach, my reply of ‘ethnography’, whether I include the epithet of
consumer or not, is usually received with raised eyebrows and a nod or two.
Ethnography is one of those words that we tend to think we know what
it means until we are put on the spot and we have to provide an explicit
definition. I have found over several years of teaching consumer ethnography that this is frequently the case with students who often take the course


xii  Introduction

because it sounds interesting or academic. Indeed, I start most of my classes
in ethnography by asking my fresh student cohort to tell me what they think
ethnography is. Ethnography, they often tell me, sounds as if it is concerned
with something to do with ethnic aspects of society or perhaps ethics in a
social setting, both of which they say sound interesting, academic, and different from many of their other classes. Rather than disabusing them of the
basis for their potential interest, I bolster their enthusiasm by letting them
in on the secret of what ethnography actually is and, more importantly for
them, what they will be studying during the coming months.
During my introduction to my ethnography classes, I have found myself
using the terms, ‘the big-E’ and ‘little-e’ in ethnography’. Having introduced
these concepts, I then use them throughout the lecture series as different
research processes are employed to investigate consumers. In this context
I use the concepts of ‘big-E’ and ‘little-e’ to describe the research procedures that constitute the entire course. Loosely conceived, big-E consumer
ethnography is what is traditionally understood as researcher-immersed,
long-term participant observation. This is the approach of traditional
anthropology where the researcher joins a group he or she wishes to study
and spends a protracted period of time as a community member. Examples
of this form of research from anthropology are innumerable and include
work by seminal anthropological researchers and writers, as well as more
contemporary examples. Questions may be asked in consumer research that
yield qualitative responses that may attempt, for example, to capture the
reasons a consumer behaves in a given manner. These forms of enquiry are
searching for rich consumer insight of the sort provided by big-E ethnography. However, when designing consumer ethnography, time is perhaps at
more of a premium than within academic anthropology and, consequently,
consumer ethnography is typically briefer. In this book I  therefore define
‘little-e ethnography’ to be qualitative research of all sorts that attempts
to gather nonnumerical, rich consumer insight. Approaches illustrative of
such approaches to designing and collecting consumer behavioural data
include: projective techniques; interview approaches, including focus group
and in-depth interviews; narrative techniques and other forms of analysis of

textual data; a variety of online approaches that range from simple searches
of websites through to online participant observation; and other observational approaches. The preceding paragraphs describe the general thematic
structure of this book. What follows is an outline of each chapter’s content.

Chapter Synopses
In the first chapter I note that researchers conducting consumer ethnographic
research have choices regarding how they structure and integrate qualitative
research. Researchers may encounter difficulties: uniting different qualitative approaches within a single study; clearly understand the results from
studies employing multiple and varied qualitative research approaches; etc


Introduction  xiii
This chapter  proposes the qualitative mapping sentence (Hackett, 1995,
2013, 2014) to resolve these and other difficulties.
In chapter  2, Michael Hyman and Grant Aguirre provide an account
of ethics in relation to qualitative consumer research. They consider several philosophical approaches to ethics; for example, Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and Eudemain Ethics, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and
a variety of other ethical codes that have been developed. The authors consider the strengths and weaknesses of all these approaches whilst keeping
in mind the application of ethics to consumer ethnography. In conclusion,
they propose IRAC (issue, rule, application, and conclusion) as a methodological template. In chapter 3, Kathy Roulston and Briana Martinez evaluate recruitment and sampling procedures that are specifically pertinent to
ethnography and qualitative research. They draw from the epistemological
positions of objectivism, constructivism, and subjectivism and give examples for recruitment and sampling across multiple disciplines. In chapter 4,
Jessica Schwarzenbach and I  address a much-neglected component of the
ethnographic research process when we ruminate upon what can go wrong
in ethnographic research. Examples are provided of things that have gone
wrong in our own and others’ qualitative research projects; and we present a review of some of these errors and how researchers can be aware of
and perhaps avoid these. In chapter  5, James Everett and Kim Johnston
consider the starting point of ethnographic research and the challenges and
opportunities of employing hypotheses in this type of research and whether
hypotheses may offer a way of solving some of the difficulties regarding
knowledge claims.

There then follow two chapters, each of which address a separate use of
‘big-E’ ethnography. In chapter 6, Gabby Brand and Paul Morrison present
a research study that involved participant observations and interviews to
study the Happy Hut, a community house in Australia that assists pregnant
adolescents in their transition to motherhood. In chapter 7, Erin Koval and
I offer details of a consumer research study that looked at a water park
constructed from old quarrying works, and the authors detail the manner
in which observation and focus groups were used together to facilitate consumer understanding. In chapter 8, Chris Hackley looks at autoethnography,
a variation of the ethnographic approach that revolves around the researcher’s reflexivity and, consequently, makes the researcher the subject of his
or her own study. Chris Hackley also introduces the academic politics and
managerial perspectives vis-à-vis the use of autoethnography in consumer
research, discusses the contributions of autoethnographic research to marketing, and makes recommendations on how to write an autoethnography.
Chapter 9 deals with the widely used consumer research approach of the
focus group interview and tackles the importance of combining this methodology with ethnography. Deborah Potts, an expert in mixed-research
techniques, provides insight and case studies from her own experiences. In
chapter  10, Steven Kalter reviews projective techniques, specific exercises


xiv  Introduction
used during focus groups, whose purpose is to bring to light the participants’ deep feelings and emotions. He describes the mechanisms behind projective techniques and provides details on four types of exercises: text-based,
verbal-based, visual-based, and image-based. In-depth interviews are another
well-known research technique used extensively within multitudinous forms
of research, including qualitative consumer inquiries. Chapter 11 (Carole
Schmidt) and chapter 12 (Bonita M. Kolb) provide illustrations of in-depth
interviews (IDIs). Specifically, Schmidt provides insight into the structure,
design, and analysis of IDIs whilst Kolb gives a theoretical overview, which
includes the researcher/subject relationship and the IDI as a research process. In chapter 13, readers will find a case study on the Bindjareb Yorgas
Health program, offered as an illustration of qualitative research whose aim
is not only to collect data but also to build bridges between participants
and researchers despite cultural differences. Caroline Nilson, Paul Morrison, and Cathy Fetherston provide an example of research that involved

indigenous and nonindigenous Australians. In chapter 14, Antonella Fabri
and I describe an approach and insight for understanding the complexity of
environmental influences upon consumer behaviour. We provide the specific
example of luxury consumer goods and evaluate the location related retail
and purchase dynamics.
To this point all of the research presented has been primary research
(research that gathers and analyzes data for an ongoing project). Chapter 15
departs from this when Russell Belk reviews the use of artifacts and archival research within the consumer setting. The author discusses the blurred
boundaries between the virtual and the real world in terms of consumer
behavior and gives insight into conducting ethnographic studies using YouTube, online games, virtual worlds, social media, and online communities. In
chapter 16, we return to primary data as Sarah Pink, Kerstin Leder-Mackley,
and I review how visual and sensory material may be used to create an ethnography and offer concrete examples from the first two authors’ research.
The chapter stresses the use of video tours in visual ethnography.
Narrative analysis and textual approaches are Anthony Lowrie’s subject
matter in chapter 17. He discusses theoretical and practical approaches to
qualitative research and focuses on the ontological and epistemological perspectives upon text analysis. Ever more of our contemporary commercial
world exists online along with or replacing other more conventional commercial domains. Moreover, community life has taken a drastic move over
the last 10 years to the same medium. Therefore, in chapter 18, Cecilia
Lewis Kausel and I  present a timely consideration of how ethnographies
may be conducted online through netnography.
The final three chapters move our focus slightly from qualitative consumer research, viewed in isolation, to mixed methods, multimethods, and
alternate approaches to the conception of such research. In chapter 19,
Peter Steidl and Stephen J. Genco offer their thoughts on neuroscientific
consumer research, propose a neuroscience approach to ethnography, and


Introduction  xv
expose the challenges of data interpretation when research is conducted
via advanced neuroscience methods. Software has become commonplace
in nearly all forms of research. Consequently, in chapter 20, Eli Lieber uses

the case study of consumers’ selection of hotels in Las Vegas to illustrate
how software increases efficiency in the analysis of consumer behaviour.
Finally, in chapter  21, Gordon Foxall expands our purview by introducing the concept of heterophenomenology, a research method used to gain
insight into the contents of consciousness, as this relates to the study of
consumer behaviour.
Paul M.W. Hackett and Roxana Maiorescu


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1 Integrating Ethnographic
Consumer Research
Using Facet Theory and
the Mapping Sentence
Paul M.W. Hackett
INTRODUCTION
In chapter 3 of this volume, Jessica Schwarzenbach and I provide illustrations of some potential pitfalls and difficulties associated with the successful
completion of qualitative research. In many of the other chapters in this
book, claims are made that structuring and integrating qualitative research
studies may be equivocal. Specifically, researchers may experience quandaries when attempting to: bring together different qualitative approaches
within a single study, compare studies that employ different research
approaches, and unify interpretations of findings from studies using multiple and varied qualitative research approaches. In this chapter, I will offer
an approach to the amalgamation of the design and integration of results
that arise from qualitative consumer research; namely, the mapping sentence (Hackett, 1995, 2013, 2014). The mapping sentence exploits the commonalities that exist between individuals’ perceptions and understandings
of events. To explain the structure of the essay that follows, I initially make
the following propositions: a template that enables us to clearly understand
human behaviour potentially offers a framework for research into human
behaviour; a template must incorporate commonalities in human behaviour
to transcend purely individualistic accounts of behaviour; and a template

may best be understood as metaphorical.
FACETS, METAPHORS, AND PERCEPTION
In reading this book, you may be excused of thinking that each topic presented is discrete in nature; indeed, each topic is offered in a separate chapter, further reinforcing this belief. If the chapters are not to be understood as
isolated, then how should these be arranged? I have ordered chapters along
an approximate chronology of a research project. However, there are other
arrangements that may be imposed upon the chapters. For instance, the topical contents of this book may be divided within five categories: planning,
investigating direct action, investigating preverbal articulation, text-based


2  Paul M.W. Hackett
analyses, understanding behavioural antecedents and outcomes. This organization of content presents topics under a category heading that is not
mutually exclusive of other within category topics (there is some potential
overlap). As category headings are not mutually exclusive, within category
topics cannot be chosen to exclusively represent their category: indeed,
some other part-to-whole (item-to-category) relationship exists. Furthermore, the selection of categories may be somewhat mercurial with other
researchers choosing a different structure. However, metaphors, I assert, are
by their very nature categories that are relatively consistent between individuals from a similar culture. Moreover, we seem to like metaphors and
use them to explain things that are at the edge of our understanding via
more readily comprehendible metaphorical examples. Metaphors are also
useful in providing colour and vibrancy to more familiar situations. The use
of metaphors can be seen in many areas of psychological activity; but in this
chapter, I will be considering metaphors within the context of understanding how we conceive of qualitative research into consumer behaviour. This
may not immediately appear to be an area that is in need of metaphorical
explanations, but in the next few paragraphs I will claim, and illustrate, why
I believe this is not the case.
Paul Churchland uses the metaphor of a camera to explain his thinking about the biological brain as “Plato’s camera” (Churchland, 2013) in
which he also introduces the Map-Indexing Theory of Perception. In this
essay, I conceive understandings of research into consumer behaviour1 as
being a process of semantic perception that is built upon our apprehension
and understanding of the world we encounter which we then instantiate as

enquiry. In trying to understand perceptions as being something more than
just idiographic experiences, we are faced with the problem of how to meaningfully correspond any form of interpersonal indexing of, “. . . the concepts
of one person’s conceptual framework onto the concepts of another’s, in such
a fashion as to preserve sense, meaning or semantic identity across pairings
effected by such a mapping”. (Churchland, 2007, p. 126). We face similar
difficulties within a qualitative research project when attempting to meaningfully correspond one person’s reported universe of experience with that
of another’s. However, by mapping metaphors we may speak of the cultural
regularities in understandings between people and provide a possibly analogous correspondence between different individuals’ semantic representations.
To continue with perception, it is appropriate to think of our understanding of veridical perceptions as comprising a sensation and its semantic interpretation based upon what we have previously learnt about other,
perhaps similar, sensations. I could at this point also speak about illusions,
hallucinations, fictitious events, and other nonveridical perceptions and
understandings as these too may be formed of some form of sensation and
interpretation. However, in this short essay I take the position clearly set out
by Searle (2015) in explaining perception as encompassing both veridical
and hallucinatory percepts. Our senses ‘grab’ sensations from the situations


Integrating Ethnographic Consumer Research Using Facet Theory  3
in which we are present. In considering visual perception, Churchland
(2013) speaks about the eye taking a photograph of the objects that are
in its current field of view, a process that it accomplishes in milliseconds.
The data we gather lasts a brief amount of time and is constantly replaced
by other, more contemporary sensations. The speed of sensual replacement
is usually so rapid that we typically experience sensations as a continuous
stream rather than as discrete events.2 What we have learnt about the world,
within which we experience sensations, is that it is a world that varies little
and is composed of events and items that most often do not change significantly over time.
Churchland (2013) sees the learning brain as possessing enduring symmetries through, which over an extended period, we construct an understanding of our veridical experiences as being fundamental, tangible, or intangible
ideas that are intelligible through reference to relatively permanent learned
relationships. Thus in our daily encounters with the world the brain accesses

and uses sensations gathered through the senses in tandem with our learnt
and assembled store of neural representations. The brain-based storage
system, Churchland proposes, takes the form of high-dimensional maps
(understood as a metaphor of representation that allows correspondence, as
mentioned earlier) of exceptional resolution and containing features of the
specific domain. These maps have an enormous number of intricate interconnections that embody the similarities and differences between events as a
represented conceptual framework, which enclose a person’s probable array
of procedural activities and events.
Our internal maps, which, to varying degrees, approximately correspond
to the world around us, allow us to form expectations and develop understandings. One of the features of a map that makes it useful is that locations
can be indicated by, for example, the longitude and latitude coordinates of a
cartographic map or some other systematic catalogue. In our everyday lives,
we can similarly locate ourselves within our physical world through our
sensations in reference to our mental maps. Furthermore, a similar undertaking can be seen to account for the process of understanding ‘things’ and
specific and generalized events. How we understand an object is based upon
the sensations we gather from the object through reference to our semantic
maps or conceptual frameworks.
To further explore the notion that sensations are mapped to externalities through a process of correspondence, Churcland (2013) notes how the
activity of our senses is related directly to our more generalized abstract
feature domain maps: This mapping process locates us in possible objective situations. Sense organs, he says, have time-based signature patterns
across n levels of simultaneously activated specific neurons that are related
to that specific sense modality: a pattern of activity that embodies a situation relevant map. This neuronal activity signature specifies abstract features that are encountered to a specific coordinate location within space
of n dimensionality. Churchland claims that, if we did not have internal


4  Paul M.W. Hackett
maps that are available to our senses to index from, we would not be able
to understand our world. These maps, he says, continually index our, “. . .
many feature-space maps to provide us with an unfolding understanding of
our unfolding objective world-situation”. (Churchland, 2013, p. ix).

Here I am asserting that mapping allows a meaningful understanding of
something we perceive rather than the rudimentary sensing of such events,
whereof the process of perception is based upon the sensations which we
experience couched within our conceptual frameworks. In this chapter,
I will claim this bipartite framework is necessary to develop a metaphorical
template that allows the development and analysis of qualitative research
into consumer behaviour. In addition, if we navigate our world through
our senses and concepts then it seems reasonable to posit that senses and
concepts structure human behaviour, and a similar framework will prove
appropriate in designing research to investigate human behaviour.
I also noted earlier that, whilst our sensations are registered rapidly and
are precise and situation specific, our conceptual frameworks are made of
abstract universals that transcend specific locations and times. I commented
upon metaphors being one form of abstract universal. In this essay, I will
be using the facet theory approach from which I will borrow its mapping
sentence as a framework, and within this structure I will identify conceptual templates of specific empirically based abstract universals for identifying subsections for the qualitative research process. The mapping sentence,
I  will claim, when understood within an analogous extension of Churchland’s map-indexing, is a metaphorical categorical structure; a metaphor of
the research process that may be used to facilitate the design and analysis of
ethnographic consumer research.
UNIFYING QUALITATIVE CONSUMER RESEARCH
Facet theory is an approach to research in the social sciences and humanities
that attempts to understand the combined concurrent influences of multiple
factors upon a specified domain (see, Canter, 1985). Facet theory achieves
this by breaking down a research project or research area into parts that are
meaningful to respondents and then attempting to reassemble these parts
in a way that provides greater understanding of the parts and of the meaningful whole. Using the process of theoretical disassembly and theoretical/
empirical reassembly increases the likelihood that research will precede with
clearly and meaningfully defined content and research design. This mereological3 approach to the understanding of a research domain and the research
procedures being used to investigate it is realized through clear and explicit
establishment of a context specific definition know as a mapping sentence.

Facet theory, using the mapping sentence, has addressed research design and
has produced increased understanding of a wide range of research domains
(Hackett, 2014). I will later employ the mapping sentence in relation to


Integrating Ethnographic Consumer Research Using Facet Theory  5
the domain of qualitative consumer research. I will be using the mapping
sentence as Elizur suggests because: “The mapping sentence presents the
complete research design in the form of a sentence which is easy to comprehend”. (1970, p. 55). Thus facet theory is concerned with the study of the
mereological nature of human experience.
The identification of a domain of interest is the initial task when undertaking facet theory based research. This definitional ‘whole’ is then subdivided into categorical parts which taken together define the content of the
specified domain.4 The facets or categories that are employed by an individual to structure the way they understand their life experiences are cardinal in attempting to appreciate human life. Facet theory incorporates this
notion of the “essentiality of categories” to disassemble an interest domain
into parts that are significant to the individuals or groups of interest. Having
meaningfully dissected a domain in this way, these components are reassembled into a totality in a manner designed to provide greater understanding of
the whole domain through explicitly stated context specific definitional categories. Within qualitative consumer research, the employment of such definitional categories is of importance in enabling research with well-defined
content. This definition will likely yield research results that are valid, reliable, and which accurately address the research area interest.
Mapping sentences are constructed through including in their composition mutually exclusive components of the research area. To illustrate this, if
I make the (potentially erroneous) assumption that the contents of this book
form a working definition of ‘qualitative research’, then the mereological
consideration of its chapters may offer an increased understanding of the
process of qualitative consumer research. To illustrate this, here is a list of
the book’s chapters:
Generating hypotheses
Ethics in relation to qualitative consumer research
Recruitment and sampling procedures
Participant observations and interviews
Observation and focus groups
Autoethnography
Focus group interview

Projective techniques
In-depth interviews
Environmental influences upon consumer behaviour
Artifacts and archival research
Visual and sensory material
Textual approaches
Netnography
Neuroscience
Software
Heterophenomenology
What can go wrong?


6  Paul M.W. Hackett
With the book’s content clearly displayed, we are able to appreciate the
extent of the text’s scope and the many and varied components that fall
under the remit of qualitative consumer research. However, questions arise
such as: How can we claim that these discrete elements come together to
form a coherent academic or professional discipline? What are the most
basic units that form what may be called a consumer ethnographic ontology? What are the part-to-whole and part-to-part relationships of both the
earlier listed elements and other ‘parts’ that may be identified in a potential ontology? Any answers to these questions are theoretical at this stage.
However, an initial mereological (part to part, part to whole) definition
can be offered through clustering together what appear to be the associated elements of consumer ethnography in the previously noted list. For
example:
Research Planning
generating hypotheses
ethics in relation to qualitative consumer research
recruitment and sampling procedures
what can go wrong?
software

Observational Research
participant observations
nonparticipant observation
autoethnography
netnography

Investigation of Consumers’ Subconscious Representations
projective techniques
visual and sensory material
artifacts and archival research

Investigation Through Text-Based Research
textual approaches

Investigation Through Interview Research
in-depth interviews
focus group interview


Integrating Ethnographic Consumer Research Using Facet Theory  7
Interpreting Ethnographic Research
neuroscience
heterophenomenology

The categories I formed earlier form an initial attempt to bring a structural definition and meaningful coherence to the content domain of qualitative consumer research. Descriptive names for each category are also
provided. Moreover, whilst the allocation of some of the items to more
superordinate or ontological categories appears to offer little controversy
(for example, participant observation to observation research) other subdivisions are more problematic (for instance, ethics in relation to qualitative
consumer research to the category of research planning), as ethical considerations obviously run throughout the research process and do not end at

the planning stage of a research project. Notwithstanding these criticisms,
the ontological structure I propose is a starting point for the consideration
of the domain of qualitative consumer research. The aforementioned category system does have one extremely important feature in that the elements
under the ontological categories are mutually exclusive divisions that define
the content area and thus make it suitable as a basis for constructing a mapping sentence.
The mapping sentence is a set of interrelated hypotheses of content structure, a model of a coherent whole, and a tool that the researcher can use
to deduce meaning from his or her results. The mapping sentence is also a
visual graphic for displaying the meaning of research results in a manner
that is perhaps more easily understood than some other methods. Finally,
when multiple components of a research project employ the mapping sentence in their design and analyses, then similarities present in research study
findings can be easily appreciated and a corpus of knowledge regarding a
research domain may be assembled. As Dov Elizur (1970, p. 55) has said,
“The mapping sentence presents the complete research design in the form of
a sentence which is easy to comprehend. . .”. A mapping sentence is read in
the same way an ordinary language-based sentence is read.

MAPPING SENTENCES FOR QUALITATIVE
CONSUMER RESEARCH
Since the mid-twentieth century, mapping sentences have been used to
design and analyse research from several disciplines within the social sciences and humanities. Until recently, these studies have almost exclusively
involved the collection of quantitative data. By adopting this approach and
by using this form of data, facet theory and the mapping sentence has produced structural explanations of content domains based upon the nonmetric
correlations between survey items that represent a profile of facet elements


8  Paul M.W. Hackett
from a mapping sentence. In the qualitative or philosophical use of the mapping sentence that I have developed (see Hackett, 2013, 2014), quantitative
empirical data do not form part of either research procedure or analysis.
So far I have presented a theoretical consideration of mapping sentences,
and I will now illustrate how this may be understood and used in reference to the Mapping Sentence for Research Planning in figure 1.1. In this

example, the letter (x) designates the individual person who is making the
assessment of research content contained in the sentence. Reading further
through the sentence, the first content facet is the facet of hypotheses, which
is labelled in emboldened text. Under this facet label are specified the elements of this facet (given in italics within brackets). When reading a mapping sentence, one element is selected from each of the facets up to but not
including the range facet. The sentence is read several times each with a
different combinations of facet elements. The range facet specifies the range
across which assessments are made or the psychological sense in which the
domain is understood. In this example, the range is of the psychological
sense of the appropriateness of a given manner of planning and designing
a qualitative research project. The range facet is extremely important as it

Figure 1.1  Mapping Sentence for Research Planning