Seven Pillars of Wisdom: The Idea of Qualitative Market Research

Abstract

This article looks at the ‘knowledge frameworks’ underlying the practice of qualitative research. Although they are rarely articulated, qualitative research relies upon different sets of underlying assumptions about what we are looking for, what counts as evidence and what counts as knowledge. These different ‘knowledge frameworks’ are each good at addressing different kinds of issues. This article attempts to make some of these knowledge frameworks more explicit. Doing this allows us to see that some research projects ‘fail’ because they are grounded in a knowledge framework not suited to the task in hand.