Ontology and Epistemology of Consumer Research

Submitted By: Sharad Agarwal FPM Student, IIM Ranchi F004/12

Ontology and Epistemology of Consumer Research

Introduction Business Dictionary defines Consumer Research as Part of market research in which the preferences, motivations, and buying behavior of the targeted customer are identified through direct observation, mail surveys, telephone or face to face interviews, and from published sources (such as demographic data)
Calder & Tybout (1987) mentions that consumer research, whatever form it might take, seeks to

produce knowledge about consumer behaviour. Consumer research is about consumers and about behavior, but this is hardly limiting or even informative. After all, anything can be construed as the consumption of something and consumption must entail some kind of behaviour. This is the basic ontological discussion regarding the consumer research. Can anything and everything be constructed as consumption of something and if yes it must entail some kind of behaviour.so what exactly is consumer behaviour if everything can be called as Consumer Behaviour. Brief History The term Consumer Research became to be used by the scholars around 1972, when the social scientists especially those with interest in the phenomenon to understand their consumers were envisaging consumer research as a separate field in itself. According to Sheth (1972) Within a very short period of time, we seem to have firmly laid the foundation for building a distinct discipline of buyer behavior which will neither be a sub system of marketing nor that of any of the other older social sciences. Sheth went on to predict: "Within a decade, it is very Likely that other disciplines will be actively interested In buyer behavior and consequently borrow from it a set of concepts and research tools [and] sooner or later, the hard sciences are likely to be exposed to, and interested in, buyer behavior. When that happens, it is Equally inevitable that they will extensively borrow both the substantive findings and research methodology [of Consumer research] (Sheth1972) Consumer research, whatever form it might take, seeks to produce knowledge about consumer behavior (Calder & Tybout, 1987) Another prominent scholar in the area of consumer research envisaged consumer as My own vision is one of consumer behavior as a discipline unto itself, with a variety of constituent groups, but with no overriding loyalty to any existing discipline or interest group. That is, consumer behavior should not be a sub- discipline of marketing, advertising, psychology, sociology, or anthropology, nor the handmaiden of business, government, or consumers. It should instead be a viable field of study, just as these other disciplines are, with some potential relevance to each of these constituent groups (Belk (1986) Holbrook (1987), mentions following key features of consumer research: consumer research studies consumer behavior consumer behavior entails consumption consumption involves the acquisition, usage, and disposition of products

Products are goods, services, ideas, events, or any other entities that can be acquired, used, or disposed of in ways that potentially provide value Value is a type of experience that occurs for some living organism when a goal is achieved, a need is fulfilled, or a want is satisfied such an achievement, fulfillment, or satisfaction attains consummation; conversely, a failure to achieve goals, fulfill needs, or satisfy wants thwarts consummation The process of consummation (including its possible breakdowns) is therefore the fundamental subject for consumer research

From the above arguments, it follows that consumer research studies consummation (in all its various facets, including its potential breakdowns). The term consumer research refers to the study of consummation in all its many aspects. Consummation thereby designates the core of the concept of consumer research. From this perspective, consumer research stands on its own as a separate discipline and borrows from other established disciplines no more or less than they in turn borrow from each other. The critics, however, had not agreed with the concept of consumer research and one of them even noted "much too large a proportion of the contemporary consumer research literature is not worth the paper it is printed on or the time it takes to read it "(Jacoby1976,p.2) Cross Disciplinary nature of Consumer Research The concepts of Consumer Research drew its theories from allied sciences such as Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Philosophy Humanities and Neuro-Sciences. Neuro-Science According to Agarwal & Xavier (in press), management scientists have started applying the principles of neuroscience in the management applications especially consumer research and theory building. The innovative approaches of Consumer Neuroscience gives us the neural level understanding of the processes in the brain of the human being which has applications in understanding the cognitive decision making process of the consumers which are not captured through other methods of management research. The most commonly used tools of neuro management are fMRI, EEG, ERP and P300 Macroeconomics The field of macroeconomics makes its major contribution to our understanding of acquisition, as represented by a nation's aggregate spending behaviour. Consumption spending is what remains after subtracting government purchases, gross private domestic investment, and net exports from the Gross National Product; it equals disposable personal income less savings. It says little about the process of choice among individual product categories. However, the latter issue provides the major topic for the treatment of consumption in microeconomics. Microeconomics This approach accounts for product purchases only by virtue of taking the tastes that determine the shapes of indifference curves as given and relegating the investigation of such tastes to other disciplines. This problem of brand choice has received illumination from the work of psychologist

Psychology Of particular value in handling the phenomenon of choice among brands have been the multi attribute attitude models and multidimensional joint spaces used by consumer researchers to account for the formation of brand preferences via (compositional) linear compensatory models, (decompositional) conjoint analysis and ideal point formulations, or some (integrative) combination of the two. Sociology The sociological perspective in consumer research has considered the social context in which consumption activities are embedded and has proven especially fruitful in addressing problems raised by product usage. For example, concepts of conspicuous consumption and role performance have helped to elucidate the use of products as dramaturgical props that define and display the consumer's self-image Anthropology Anthropological approaches have made valuable contributions to our understanding of product disposition. For example, several researchers have studied gift giving, a process wherein one person's disposition simultaneously becomes another's acquisition. At a more mundane level of product disposal, garbological research examines people's discardings to reach conclusions about their product acquisition and usage behaviour. Philosophy As yet, the general philosophical tradition has contributed relatively little to the study of consumer behaviour. One possible avenue of rapprochement might borrow from praxeology to construct a consumer theory of reasoned action. However, such a rational approach would hardly cope with the aforementioned problems of deviance. To address the latter, we might profitably borrow from ethics to construct a conceptualization of consumption morality and thereby to address the phenomena of consumer misbehaviour. Humanities Recently, the humanities have begun to sneak into consumer research in a variety of ways that may help deepen our understanding of value in acquisition, usage, and disposition.

Types of Knowledge and Consumer Research Everyday knowledge consists of the shared thoughts people have about their own consumer behavior. It is how they interpret and give social meaning to their behavior using their own terms and their own frames of reference. Scientific knowledge consists of theories that are capable of and have been subjected to rigorous empirical testing. These theories should not be regarded as proven or true; rather, they have scientific status because of and subject to attempts to refute them Interpretive knowledge uses a system of ideas developed by a particular group to analyze consumer behavior. It provides an understanding of behavior in terms of this system of ideas and from its frame of reference

Conclusion This article gives a brief about the journey of Consumer Research, the views prominent scholars of the field had while they proposed that consumer research should be an independent field of study. The article also discuss the dependency of the field on other aligned areas such as psychology, philosophy etc. and more recently added Consumer Neuroscience. The article then gives a glimpse into the kind of knowledge which is created by the consumer neuroscience. On the basis of arguments made in this chapter, It can be comfortably concluded that consumer research is an independent field of study with an existence of its own, while borrowing concepts from the allied sciences. This is how any field of study is developed and grows further. Consumer research study the behaviour of consumers which has a standing of its own and hence addrsses the epistemological question of What is Consumer research.

References Agarwal, Sharad & Xavier, M.J. (in press) Innovative Approaches to Study Consumer Science Using Neuro Research Tools in (Alexender, Brem & Eric Viardot) eds. Balancing Internal and External Stakeholders Interest for the Management of Innovation, Springer Belk, Russell W. (1986), "What Should ACR Want to be When It Grows Up?" in Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 13, ed. Richard J. Lutz, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 423424
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