Consumer Reality: How Brands are Constructed

Abstract

It is an implicit tenet of qualitative market research that it is possible to find out what the consumer ‘really thinks’. Our research language reflects this - we talk about ‘depth’, ‘probing’ and ‘getting under the surface’ of otherwise superficial consumer responses. This underlying assumption has a questionable intellectual pedigree, however. As qualitative researchers, we should, in contrast, be more concerned with understanding the processes and structures that determine how consumers think. If we understand these processes and structures we will be more able to identify how brands are constructed by consumers and how the meanings of brands are created.