The turn to historical approaches in marketing research

Abstract

The use of historical data and approaches in marketing research is becoming increasingly common. However, the lack of methodological unity still limits their development and systematic adoption within the field. To address this issue, we begin by defining historical methods as the set of techniques that rely on past sources to collect, verify, and interpret traces or practices, with the aim of providing a contextualized and critical explanation of the phenomena under study. These past data may be primary, secondary, or reconstructed. Building on a theory-to-history perspective, we further structure and clarify the contributions of historical data and approaches to marketing literature. Two dimensions guide our framework – the temporal perspective (diachronic vs synchronic) and the level of analysis (micro vs macro) – which together generate four distinct conceptions: Narrating, Observing, Tracing, and Mapping. Collectively, these conceptions open new avenues for thinking about marketing research over time.