Marketing Performativity

Theories, practices and devices

Katy Mason, Hans Kjellberg, Johan Hagberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781315300214
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Marketing Performativity: Theories, practices and devices addresses concerns about the theory-practice gap so often discussed by marketing scholars, and indeed reframes this 'gap' by asking 'how is marketing theory performative?' How does marketing theory shape action? Who uses it in practice and to what effects? The individual contributions in this book look at how marketing theories are used in practice and what this means for our understanding of the practicing–theorising landscape of marketing.

The book begins by considering what performativity is and how this concept is used in the marketing literature. It then considers three themes concerning the performativity of marketing that emerge from the contributions, before presenting ten empirical studies that ask how, why, and to what effect marketing theories are used and 'performed' in marketing practice. The book also summarises the implications of three themes and sketches research areas for further developing our understanding of the performativity of marketing. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

Epistemologies in the wild: local knowledge and the notion of performativity

Johan Nilsson, Department of Thematic Studies – Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, Department of Thematic Studies – Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

Abstract This article explores the indigenous epistemology of market research. Industry textbooks are here taken as examples of commonly held understandings about market research knowledge. They are made the object of an epistemographic investigation of how the production and transfer of market research knowledge is understood within the field itself. Particular interest is directed towards what such local epistemic considerations might imply for our scholarly understanding of how economic theories and models shape markets. Our exploration depicts an indigenous epistemology characterised by a number of interrelated tensions (market research as: description vs. recommendation; art vs. science; information vs. source of inspiration; and distance vs. engagement). The article contends that these traits of the indigenous epistemology are important for understanding how market research participates in shaping markets.

Introduction

Market research is an industry providing marketers, advertisers and business professionals with knowledge about the world to help them make decisions. In this article, we explore what market researchers think about the process of making knowledge. Following the growing interest from scholars outside marketing to examine the workings of marketing and market research (see, for instance, Berghoff, Scranton, & Spiekermann, 2012; Grandclément & Gaglio, 2011; Lezaun, 2007; Zwick & Cayla, 2011), as well as the turn to practice within marketing (Araujo, Kjellberg, & Spencer, 2008; Geiger, Kjellberg, & Spencer, 2012; Hagberg & Kjellberg, 2010), we aim here to participate in the exploration of the purchase of the notion of performativity (Callon, 1998a) as it relates to market research. Closely connected with practised as well as academic marketing, market research is a kind of marketing activity further linked with academic research traditions. Inspired by science and technology studies (STS), where much of the performativity discussion emerged, this article focuses on epistemic considerations of market researchers themselves. We suggest a broadening of the mechanistic perspective of the performativity approach by examining industry textbooks (Hamersveld & de Bont, 2008; Mouncey & Wimmer, 2007) as examples of commonly held understandings about what market research knowledge is. Attention to local, non-academic perspectives on knowledge – epistemologies in the wild – complements thinking about marketing and market research in terms of performativity.

From the inception of STS, the field has concerned itself with academic research by focusing on knowledge production, primarily in the natural sciences (e.g. Kuhn, 1996).¹ In these works, the involved actors’ considerations of things such as facts, knowledge, – epistemic considerations, in short – were an integrated part. With the founding of a tradition of laboratory studies within STS (Latour & Woolgar, 1979) and the formulation of the ANT program (Latour, 2005), the study of research came to focus on formation of networks and translations, rather than local actors’ ideas. This approach, we argue, came to influence the contemporary discussion on performativity. The performativity programme in economic sociology, with which this special issue engages, has put great emphasis on how (broadly defined) economic theory not only describes markets but also can participate in shaping them by being embodied in devices and other sociotechnical arrangements (Callon, 1998b; MacKenzie, 2006; MacKenzie, Muniesa, & Siu, 2007). This endeavour has frequently involved the study of how theory becomes materialised or objectified, rather than putting focus on local epistemic considerations (see, for instance, the landmark study in Garcia-Parpet, 2007).

A noteworthy aspect of market research is the fact that the ability for market research knowledge to inform action and shape markets is an essential feature for those conducting and procuring it. Hence, market professionals’ conception of the nature of market research is not entirely different from market studies scholars interested in examining the performative role of market research (Bernhardt, 1994). As an aspect of marketing practice, market research has further received growing attention from researchers interested in the performativity of marketing (Araujo, 2007; Araujo, Finch, & Kjellberg, 2010; Bjerrisgaard & Kjeldgaard, 2013; Cochoy, 1998; Zwick & Cayla, 2011). Our contribution highlights the relevance of appreciating practitioners’ epistemic considerations in order to understand how market research participates in shaping markets. We hope, in short, to engage in what has been dubbed ‘epistemography’ (Dear, 2001) for exploring this facet of market research.

Market research as a field of knowledge production contains its own accounts of producing knowledge that can shape markets. In a sense then, the field of market research contains its own ‘lay’ discussion that closely relates to themes that would be akin to discussions about performativity had they been made in the scholarly context of market studies. We wish to explore to what extent the study of a local knowledge culture among professional market researchers can improve our understanding and use of the scholarly toolbox (the concepts we use to explain phenomena from without) of the performativity program.² In plain terms, we want to understand how market researchers think about their work. This does not mean that we defend a radical distinction between them (the market researchers) and us (the researchers of market research), but rather that we acknowledge that differences between various actors’ positions and theorising complicate a reading of performativity as establishing a neat synthesis between theory and practice.

With the academic discussion about performativity as a backdrop, we aim to explore the epistemology within market research. We are here particularly interested in articulations from the market research community about the ability to produce and transfer knowledge that has a capacity to shape agents and markets. This offers us a way to better understand both the epistemologies of market researchers and the blind spots of the performativity program. We ask:

• How is the work to produce and transfer market knowledge described and reflected upon within the field of market research? What relationships are imagined when articulating an epistemology of market research?
• What do the epistemic considerations within market research imply for our understanding of how economic theories and models shape markets? What do they imply for our conceptualisation and application of the analytical concept of performativity?

We address these questions by way of a close reading of two publications: the anthologies Market Research Handbook (5th Edition) (Hamersveld & de Bont, 2008) and Market Research Best Practice: 30 Visions for the Future (Mouncey & Wimmer, 2007). Both of these volumes offer narratives of what market research is, how it is done, and what it should work towards. While the Market Research Handbook addresses a wider audience including researchers working for clients, as well as buyers of research, the Market Research Best Practice volume is more focused on market researchers as insiders to discussions about how to deliver insight to clients, gaining ground with clients’ decision making, etc. Both volumes are produced by the international market research organisation, the European Society for Opinion and Market Research (ESOMAR). We argue that works like these exemplify commonly held ideas within market research and that they allow for a discussion of an epistemic cultural field. Moreover, they provide a new vantage point to revisit and discuss how effects of representation and knowledge making have been articulated in market studies.³

The paper begins with a brief overview of the emergence of market research as a formalised activity in modern market society and how it relates to marketing as a practice as well as an academic subject of study. The subsequent section turns to the notion of epistemography and performativity, and discusses situations in which epistemological considerations typically found in academia are also found out there – in the wild. Then comes a description of our materials and methods. After that follows a presentation of the material from the two ESOMAR publications, our analysis of this material and finally our discussion. Our exploration depicts an indigenous epistemology important for understanding how market research participates in shaping markets. We suggest that the appreciation of tensions and relationships related to the epistemology of market research may complement a traditionally oriented performativity analysis.

Market research background

Market research exists in an awkward context: it is part of the marketing tradition, while borrowing methods and ideals from the social sciences (Slater, 2011). Marketing in the contemporary sense encompasses both the academic ambition to study markets and the action-oriented tradition of practised marketing (Hagberg & Kjellberg, 2010). This is a relatively recent phenomenon, and to this day marketing and its subfield market research (Cochoy, 1998, 2005) maintain an ambivalent position between its roots in academia and industry (Berghoff et al., 2012). The development of marketing as a discipline has principally been described in terms of academic professionalisation: a ‘transformation of marketing from an activity based on practical know-how to a management tool relying on science’. (Berghoff et al., 2012, p. 5). Such a characterisation connects market research to the development of marketing in pointing to the importance of reliably knowing markets. To some extent, however, it obscures the academic origins of marketing. From the inception of the discipline, pioneers of academic marketing concerned themselves with trying to study and describe market exchanges as they happened in real life (Cochoy, 1998; Maclaran, Saren, Stern, & Tadajewski, 2009). Up until the interwar years, practised marketing and advertising remained largely intuition-oriented with charismatic non-academic actors, who often made decisions on an intuitive basis (Cochoy, 1998; Maclaran et al., 2009). The adoption of techniques from the social and behavioural sciences later came to influence the institutionalised marketing discipline and further align theory with practice (Berghoff et al., 2012; Cochoy, 1998).

The rise of market research coincides with the development of scientific methods and marketing challenges. The contemporary marketing concept, including the marketing mix (Rasmussen, 1955), became established after the Second World War, making marketing a pervasive managerial task and changing the notion of market actors and how to know about them. With a market requiring more attention, market research rose to the challenge (this subset of marketing had increasingly become a distinct field during the first decades of the twentieth century, and institutionalised in the 1920s) (Berghoff et al., 2012; Maclaran et al., 2009; Schwarzkopf, 2010). It is during the post-war 1940s that Ernest Dichter’s ‘motivational research’, looked for underlying motives behind consumer action and attitudes. (Berghoff et al., 2012; Slater, 2011). Social scientific influences during the 1950s included the study of large customer registries to develop a large market intelligence system for targeting consumers, and Gallup’s surveying methods. (Berghoff et al., 2012; Osborne & Rose, 1999; Paterson, 2006). Two directions of research – one psychologising and orienting towards motives and meanings, the other emphasising data and categorisation – have since then characterised the making of market and marketing knowledge.

While the development of marketing and market research is often attributed influence from academic research (psychology and the social sciences in particular), much of its present form comes from the adaptation and development of new technologies, and by developments among marketing practitioners and salespeople (Berghoff et al., 2012). In fact, the success of the marketing concept in the 1950s came from the inclusion of marketing practice into academic knowledge building. The successful integration of practised and academic marketing into a unified marketing concept, and the growing sophistication of marketing and market research, have given way to a conception of marketing and market research where describing and acting in the market is integrated into a relatively cohesive structure: one of a scientifically knowable market with marketing actors. This interaction between describing and affecting markets actualises the focal areas of interest in the performativity programme.

Epistemography, the representational view, and the performativity programme

The notion of performativity has quickly become a linchpin in discussions about the role of economic theories and models in shaping markets. The central precept in the performativity programme as articulated by Michel Callon (1998a) is that economics – broadly defined and thus including such sub-disciplines as accounting and marketing – participates in shaping and formatting the economy rather than merely depicting how it functions. The performativity programme was articulated on the basis of insights derived from STS (Callon, 1998b; MacKenzie et al., 2007). Our argument is that research into the performativity of marketing and the shaping of markets would benefit from additional inspiration from STS. In particular, we suggest that studies of ‘indigenous epistemologies’ within STS offer tools for examining market research as a domain of expertise and for investigating the conditions for knowledge production therein. To this end, we will first revisit previous efforts within STS to examine knowledge production, before discussing one particular facet of such production that has been relatively absent in discussions of performativity, namely the epistemological reflections performed within the domain of knowledge production under study.

The performativity programme problematises a view where economic theories are seen as (merely) representing reality. For instance, Donald MacKenzie describes how financial economics serves as an ‘engine’ for the financial markets: ‘an active force transforming its environment, [and] not a camera passively describing it’. (MacKenzie, 2006, p. 12). In effect, a focus on the performative effects of theories and models implies a retreat from the well-rehearsed pro et contra debate within the economic sciences over the realism of such theories and models. More broadly, it has meant taking a greater interest in the heterogeneous practices that shape markets, emphasising the materials, devices and hybridity of market organisation (Geiger et al., 2012). In the interdisciplinary field of market studies, the performativity programme has leveraged an interest in how marketing principles and practices shape markets and its actors (Araujo et al., 2008; Hagberg & Kjellberg, 2010). Here, for instance, the notion of representational practices has been suggested to highlight how practices depicting the market and its actors participate in shaping the very entities they depict Diaz Ruiz, 2014; Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2007). This, in consequence, brings attention to the wide array of practices related to marketing and market research involved in creating market imageries and the possible performative effects of these pract...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – Exploring the performativity of marketing: theories, practices and devices
• 1 Epistemologies in the wild: local knowledge and the notion of performativity
• 2 ‘Is there a gap in the market, and is there a market in the gap?’ How advertising planning performs markets
• 3 Performing market segmentation: a performative perspective
• 4 Brand transformation: a performative approach to brand regeneration
• 5 The dividualised consumer: sketching the new mask of the consumer
• 6 Myriam’s ‘adverteasing’: on the performative power of marketing promises
• 7 Exploring the brand’s world-as-assemblage: the brand as a market shaping device
• 8 The performativity of sustainability: making a conduit a marketing device
• 9 ‘Elephants can’t gallop’: performativity, knowledge and power in the market for lay-investing
• 10 Construction of silence on issues of sustainability through branding in the fashion market
• Index