Advancing from subjective to confirmatory personal introspection in consumer research

✍ Scribed by Arch G. Woodside

• Book ID: 102942480
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 514 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0742-6046
• DOI: 10.1002/mar.20034

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Research findings support the view that a multiple‐methods approach is necessary to surface the substantial amount of relevant thinking processes that occur both consciously and unconsciously within different phases of consumer decision making. This article advocates viewing all studies that ask informants questions as representative of researcher–informant introspections. Because answers to questions differ substantially depending on how the questions are framed, applying multiple, explicit, question frames to acquire conscious and unconscious thoughts in researcher–informant introspections is helpful. This article reviews multiple methods, including metaphor elicitation of unconscious thinking, useful for achieving and confirming thick descriptions of conscious and unconscious thinking associated with informants' deep‐seated beliefs and observable actions. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.