Have you ever wondered what Grounded Theory (GT) is all about? If so, here is a short overview of this qualitative research method. In a nutshell, GT is a framework for analysing qualitative data. The method offers a set of flexible guidelines that help researchers to focus their data collection and analysis with the aim…
Tag: marketing
The Marketing Archipelago – a reflection on how we understand the concept of marketing
If somebody would ask you to explain marketing what would you say? Those of you who are marketing students, scholars, or professionals probably have an understanding of what marketing is, grounded in your own experiences and use of marketing. But marketing has some meaning for many others too, including consumers. Here is the problem: marketing…
On conceptualizing ‘alignment with customers’
I share with you, the reader, a part of my journey as I am working on one conceptual paper for my PhD related to customers and ecosystems. This article is also on the meaning of words, especially high-mileage words that we frequently take for granted. Being immersed in the practice of service design, and now…
Do you care if your research is managerially relevant?
You often hear people criticize scientific articles saying that they rarely address genuinely managerially relevant and topical issues let alone offer recommendations for how to deal with these. While offering value to practitioners indeed for many scientific journals is of secondary priority, it is nothing but a shame that journals cannot more often than now…
Marketing can help with social inequality
During one of the classes for a course that I participated a few months ago, there was a discussion about marketing field not exerting enough influence on government policies. This has made me to start thinking about how marketing can exert more influence especially on governmental development policies. Competition is needed to boost efficiency, innovation,…
Marketing communication needs a new logic!
My doctoral dissertation originated in my desire to understand the effects of the cognitive turn in the field of marketing communication from the late 1950s. Cognitivism saw people as active, thinking, meaning-building subjects instead of as passive, receiving objects. The view of learning changed radically, and people came to be viewed increasingly as builders of…
The many faces of customer orientation
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the role of customers in business. It has become dramatically clear to many that without customers there is no business. Now when everything is upside down it is timely and relevant to reflect on this old but fundamental issue. Not that managers would not know it, in principle. It has…
Is the human service employee really human?
All of us have heard this several times: robots and artificial intelligence (AI) will replace many of us, and this also goes for service employees who used to have face-to-face interaction with customers. Much research has already been carried out on what the new interfaces should be like to make us humans feel comfortable in…
How will the COVID-19 impact consumer behavior in the long term?
Research institutions are proactively conducting research to inform us of fast-changing trends due to the pandemic. Research results confirm that people have already changed their shopping behavior in fundamental ways: stocking up on products they wouldn’t otherwise stock up on, purchasing products they wouldn’t otherwise have purchased, shopping online when they would usually shop in…
What is a tastefully decorated home?
Fiskars scissors, Moomin mugs and an Aalto vase? Maybe also striped towels from Marimekko and a stool with legs of bent plywood (be it Artek, or a replica). How about white kitchen cabinets, grey floor tiles in the bathroom, and one of those woven seagrass baskets, the ones with handles? A eucalyptus branch as decoration?…