Informed Eclecticism: A Research Paradigm for the 21st Century

Abstract

The authors build on their paper presented at the MRS Conference 2000, reporting on a large-scale study among MRS members and their vision of the future for the marketing research industry. The authors start by examining the major research paradigms within the market research industry. The reality of the reported shift away from positivism to the interpretivist paradigm is discussed and emergence of a new paradigm - informed eclecticism - is postulated within the changing context of the marketing research industry. This new paradigm requires a greater knowledge and appreciation of how different disciplines, theories, models and metaphors can bring different perspectives and so greater insight to marketing issues. Informed eclecticism is one way of adding value to the research process. While past papers have discussed the nature of new para digms few discuss how a paradigm education revolution can be implemented. This paper spells out some key human resource management issues. The paper represents the authors’ thinking based on an extensive literature review, personal experience, exploratory depth interviews with clients and practitioners and a sample survey of MRS members (n=339).