CHAPTER 8
Marketing research
JOHN WEBB
Introduction
In Marketing Apocalypse (Brown et al., 1996),
Michael Thomas characterized the postmodern
environment as one where fragmentation, de-
differentiation, hyperreality, pastiche and anti-
foundationalism are the new orders of the day
- though their theories would appear to be
more relevant to industrialized markets than to
the whole world.
In earlier days, when barter was the
main system by which goods were swapped for
money, or other goods, the close physical
proximity of the principles facilitated a valid,
meaningful and ‘noise’-free process of commu-
nication. Both parties were satisfied with the
result, otherwise it would not have been con-
cluded; goods were accepted by one side at an
agreed price, and the other side received an
acceptable level of profit which enabled them to
remain in business. Such a direct system
exchange disappeared many years ago. The
Industrial Revolution, which began in the late
seventeenth century, and its invention of the
factory system of mass manufacture generated a
seismic shock, the results of which were to
accelerate the rate of separation of those that
required goods/services and those who sought
to supply them. This distance, both ‘psychic’
and physical, continues to widen to the present
day, as Schlegelmilch and Sinkovics (1998)
say: ‘The nature of change has changed. It
is not evolving in comfortable incremental steps,
but it is turbulent, erratic and often rather
uncomfortable.’
Factors which have had, and continue to
have, a catalytic effect on the parties in the
exchange process include:
an acceleration in the globalization of the
provision of goods and services;
an increasingly rapid rate of technological
innovation and implementation;
the fragmentation of markets into smaller and
smaller niches;
a population of consumers which is becoming
better educated, more discriminate in its
purchasing habits, and to have higher
expectations of goods and services;
the end of the Cold War, with a resultant
increase in the number of independent trading
nations;
individual countries becoming ever more
multicultural, with a concomitant rise in the
number of specialized goods demanded by
each cultural bloc;
the increasing speed, on a global basis, with
which information may be transmitted and
goods delivered.
All of these facts, plus many others too numer-
ous to mention, have made it more difficult for