Human dimension in marketing research: a sense-making approach.

Natarajan, Vivek S. ; Godkin, Lynn ; Parayitam, Satyanarayana 等

INTRODUCTION

Marketing Research is an important element of the marketing process. Conventional marketing research models have not paid adequate attention to the human element in the research process. The premise of this paper is that human element affects the research process significantly. That element is a tacitly understood aspect of the marketing research process. To better understand the human element as it appears among those providing marketing research is essential for successful decisions. It enables us to better understand, for example, why do we decide to segment marketing in particular ways, how do we decide what research to initiate, and why do we tend to accept some findings and not notice others? To shed light on the human element as it relates to marketing research, it is helpful to return to the concept of sense-making. This paper uses the lens from the sense-making theory to flesh out the human elements affecting marketing research.

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SENSE-MAKING: A CATALYST FOR MARKETING RESEARCH

The common models of marketing research do not suggest how we arrive at the definitions and interpretations we do. Nor, do they shed light on why we make the decisions we do. They do not explain, for example, the behavioral factors drawing researchers to particular target markets, sample determination, and particular interpretation of data? In this section we return to the concept of organizational sense-making (Feldman, 1989) to explain what triggers such decisions as they are made in the day-to-day marketing research deliberations. The concept of sense-making helps us to answer these and related question

Sense-making, in our view, is a source of insight into how marketing research is undertaken. Sense-making might be conceived of as an interpretive process (Feldman, 1989). Through sense-making, individuals give structure to the unknown (Waterman, 1990) and make sense of circumstances as they occur (Huber & Daft, 1987) using retrospective accounts to explain occurrences (Louis, 1980). To understand sense-making, think of the proverbial blind men who collectively examined an elephant with each reporting his impression of the animal as touched. The result was a "... set of ideas with explanatory possibilities, rather than a body of knowledge, per se." (Weick, 1995, p. xi) They collectively derived a view of the elephant by making sense of what was presented them. This process, in our view, is an integral part of the marketing research process as it unfolds among those participating. Our collective view of what is happening "out there" determines the research design, interpretation of the data collected, and the conclusions drawn from the data.

According to Weick (1995), sense making involves placing items in frameworks, comprehending, constructing meanings, and patterning to address these interruptions. Furthermore, sense-making framework will also address the interactions and frustrations associated with these interruptions. The sense-making process involves understanding, interpreting, and attributing the antecedents of sense-making.

In the following section we reflect on what triggers organizational sense-making and lift out properties of sense-making to apply it to the marketing research process. This portion of our discussion is important because the decision made by marketing research teams is not made in a vacuum. Marketing decisions arise from the interactions among team members and subjective judgmental issues from those discussions. Sense-making takes place in the imagination of those involved and the interpretation of events takes form among them as a result.

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Triggers of Sense-making

There is much speculation about what might trigger sense-making. (Weick, 1995) Organizations question and reconstruct existing perspectives, frameworks, or premises on a daily basis through a continuous process of knowledge creation. "(Nonaka, Toyama, & Byoiere, 2003, p. 492). Among the triggers are: (1) interruptions, (2) "shocks", (3) environmental cues, (4) conditions of equivocally, (5) interest groups and (6) social movements. Each of these affect the direction that marketing research takes as designed and implemented.

First, interruptions trigger sense-making when theories of action (Argyris & Schon, 1978, 1996) and shared mental models (Senge, 1990) do not fit emergent circumstances. In other words, interruption occurs when things are not going according to plan and people just can't determine the meaning of what is taking place about them. Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) can accompany the situation. Certainly "vocabularies of coping" (Weick, 1995 p. 121) are inadequate for the advancing situation. Interruptions spark sense-making when an unexpected event occurs and can be prompted when an expected event does not occur. (Mandler, 1984)

Organizational learning can be stimulated by "shocks"(Cyert & March, 1963) or disturbance which makes adaptation necessary. (Pawlowsky, 2003) Shocks coming from inside or outside the organization cause individuals to rethink what they are doing. Innovation results from these shocks. (Schroeder, Van de Ven, Scudder & Polley, 1989) In short, "... the ongoing cognitive activity is interrupted. At this point, coping, problem solving, and 'learning' activities take place. It is apparently at this point that the focus of consciousness is on the interruption." (Mandler, 1984, p. 188) The "... severity of an incident does not guarantee that it can be used to bring about organizational learning." (Kadtler, 2003, p. 224) In time even disasters become the victim of topicality.

Environmental cues can trigger sense-making. "These are properties of an ongoing flow that increase the probability that people, regardless of where they sit in organizations or who they are, will take note of what is happening and pursue it." (Weick, 1995, p. 86) For example, as information load "... increases, people take increasingly strong steps to manage it. They begin with omission, and then move to greater tolerance of error, queuing, filtering, abstracting, using multiple channels, escape, and end with chunking." (Weick, 1995, p. 87) Similarly, complexity of circumstances affects what people notice and ignore. As complexity increases, the reliance on habitual routine cues increase as well which can be counter productive. (Weick, 1980)

Under conditions of equivocally, where data are unclear and multiple interpretations are available, sense-making may appear (Daft & Macintosh, 1981; Weick, 1979). Sense-making is stimulated when events are so incongruous that they violate common perceptual frameworks (Starbuck & Milliken, 1988). "Equivocality is reduced through shared observations and discussion until a common grammar and course of action can be agreed upon." (Daft & Weick, 2001, p. 252) Equivocality is reduced through sense-making.

Interest groups represent private activity while social movements are public. Their influences on sense-making and organizational learning are the same. Here organizational knowledge seeking "... takes place because the organization is confronted with problems it has not chosen to deal with and, in order to cope, must develop competences it would not have developed without being forced to." (Kadtler, 2003, p. 221) Technical or legal "autism" (p. 226) can prevent organizations from recognizing important aspects of reality. Certainly, when firms come under intense media scrutiny, marketing research groups are called into action.

Sense-making and Marketing research

Weick (1995; 2001) has suggested seven characteristics of sense-making including: (1) social context; (2) personal and organizational identity; (3) retrospection; (4) salient cues; (5) ongoing projects; (6) plausibility; and (7) enactment. We explain about these seven characteristics as they apply to the marketing research process.

Sense-making issues from a social context. (Weick, 2001) "Even monologues and one-way communications presume an audience." (Weick, 1995, p. 40) Sense-making is social when people coordinate their actions as try to gather meaning from different views of ambiguous events (Eisenberg, 1984). "To change meaning is to change the social context." (Weick, 2001, p. 461). Social context evolves out of the conversations among the members of the marketing research team. As researchers talk among themselves, the emergent social context influences the direction, quantum, and the significance of the research effort.

Weick (1995) suggests that personal identity and organizational identity are formed from the process of interaction associated with sense-making. "When identity is threatened or diffused, as when one loses a job without warning, one's grasp of what is happening begins to loosen." (Weick, 2001, p. 461) "By projecting itself onto its environment, an organization develops a self-referential appreciation of its own identity, which in turn permits the organization to act in relation to its environment." (Ring & Van de Ven, 1989, p. 180). Personal identity and sense-making are, therefore, closely aligned. The research group forms a group identity. That identity will influence the research process.

It is an assumption of sense-making that individuals can only interpret circumstances through retrospection. Weick (1995; 2001) reminds us that people only realize what they have done after they have done it. We are, then, historians and no lived experience will have a single interpretation. (Schutz, 1967) "The important point is that retrospective sense-making is an activity in which many possible meanings may need to be synthesized.... The problem is that there are too many meanings, not too few. The problem faced by the sensemaker is one of equivocally, not one of uncertainty." (Weick, 1995, p. 26-28) "Retrospection wrongly implies that errors should have been anticipated and that good perceptions, good analyses, and good discussion will yield good results" (Starbuck & Milliken, 1988, p. 40) When this "... feeling is achieved, further retrospective processing stops." (Weick, 1995, p. 29). The framing, evaluation, and interpretation of the research project are rooted in and dependent upon the past experience and learning of the research team.

Individual's divine salient cues emanating from the environment and make sense of those linking them together to approximate what is taking place. Sense-making is about people weaving tiny "extracted cues" (Weick, 1995, p. 450) into "... full-blown stories, typically in ways that selectively shore up an initial hunch. Tacitly held, non-stories become stories through the telling until collective imagery appears and has staying power. The prototype here is a self-fulfilling prophecy or an application of the documentary method." (Weick, 2001, p. 462) The knowledge they have acquired and the state of that knowledge is reflected in the stories they tell. Conceptually, the collective group understanding provides a frame (Goffman, 1974) or structural context (Weick, 1995) for understanding. The gathering of such cues is related to concepts such as search (Cyert & March, 1963), noticing (Starbuck & Milliken, 1988), and scanning (Daft & Weick, 1984). Through sense-making a context for understanding and action is supplied without which ".objects and events have equivocal or multiple meanings." (Leiter, 1980, p. 107). The research group will look at cues and try to divine a meaning. The result will be a pattern fitting rather than pattern recognition which as the goal. In other words, we will allow data to drive the theory as opposed to theory driving data. Sense-making suggests that we cannot know the pattern and we make sense of the pattern using cues and past knowledge.

Sense-making takes place in real-time, amid unfolding events, and during ongoing projects. It is, perhaps, unpleasant to recognize, but reflection confirms that individuals cannot avoid acting as life unfolds. Sense-making takes place in such an environment. Sense-making assumes that planning alone is not useful though it provides the illusion that we can control the future. (Weick, 1995; 2001) This point is significant for our position here. The organizational priorities will determine the research agenda.

The reasoning of sense-making is that it need not be necessarily accurate (Weick, 1995) or "... correct, but it fits the facts, albeit imperfectly at times." (Isenberg, 1986, p. 242) Interpretations, however, must have plausibility. Plausibility is effected by the stories created by participants to make sense of situations so that they are collectively seen as believable, credible and possible. A "... plausible sense is constrained by agreements with others, consistency with one's own stake in events, the recent past, visible cues, projects that are demonstrably under way, scenarios that are familiar, and actions that have tangible effects." (Weick, 2001, p. 462) As a marketing research team chooses between competing theories and explanations, they will be inclined to choose the most plausible one in accordance with their beliefs.

There is an element of satisficing (March & Simon, 1958) behavior, loosely defined, here where individuals take the first explanations for circumstances which seem plausible. They seem to fit the situation and problem being faced. There is also an element of self-fulfilling prophecy (Jones, 1977) active as well "... in the sense that quick responses shape events before they have become crystallized into a single meaning.... Accuracy, in other words, is project specific and pragmatic. Judgments of accuracy lie in the path of the action." (Weick, 1995, p. 58-59) In this sense, we are concerned with whether the stories we create to make sense of situations are collectively seen as believable, credible and possible. Are they coherent? Do they hang together?

Finally, enactment is the label applied by Weick (1995) to the tendency of people in organizations to produce a portion of the environment they face much in the way that legislators do. Indeed, the "... things designers expect will happen may predict the designs they achieve better than will their statements about what they plan to have happen. " (Weick, 2001, p. 68) This is a form of self fulfilling prophesy. Market researchers tend to approach their research from pre-conceived notions. In part, this will guide them to seek and obtain the results that they want.

CONCLUSION

There are many points at which marketing researchers can intervene in the sense-making process. Given the recognition that marketing research helps us to better understand the firm's external environment and markets; we have suggested that the concept of sense-making helps temper the concept of marketing research and account for the human factor. This is necessary because human nature and behavior ultimately influence the direction that marketing research takes. The sense making perspective provides a useful lens to delineate the different types of subjective interpretations affecting the marketing research process.

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Vivek S. Natarajan, Lamar University

Lynn Godkin, Lamar University

Satyanarayana Parayitam, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth