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The purpose of this paper is to explore introspection in marketing research, its controversial
origins, its positioning as an art form, the possibilities and the pitfalls of research based on this method,
and how to successfully enter into its creative spirit.
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Art, ideology, and introspection
Anthony Patterson
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Anthony Patterson, (2010),"Art, ideology, and introspection", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 4 Iss 1
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Art, ideology, and introspection
Anthony Patterson
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore introspection in marketing research, its controversial
origins, its positioning as an art form, the possibilities and the pitfalls of research based on this method,
and how to successfully enter into its creative spirit.
Design/methodology/approach – Although its overall approach is broadly conceptual, in a similar
fashion to the dramatic device of a-play-within-a-play, the paper makes a habit of using introspection to
re?ect on introspection.
Findings – While it is clear that well-written introspections can deliver rich stream-of-consciousness
accounts of marketing-relevant goodness from beginning to end, they provide more than just frivolous
entertainment. The innermost imperative of introspection equates well with consumption, creativity and
aestheticisation, the corner-stones of arts marketing.
Research limitations/implications – The inherent mucky-mindedness of introspection as a formal
method lays its success or failure on the shoulders of the paper’s author.
Practical implications – Whatever their interpretive methodology of choice, arts marketers, indeed all
marketers, should give serious thought to integrating introspection into their research approach.
Originality/value – While many of the ideas in the paper are pilfered from other sources (see long list of
references), the author is proud to assert that precisely these words have never been written in precisely
this order.
Keywords Arts, Marketing, Consumption
Paper type Research paper
1. Art, ideology and introspection
And from my big apartment on the top ?oor I would be the analyst and synthesist of all that I
surveyed; comprehending the immensity of the human condition by knowing why people
shopped alone, or wore loud ties or citric perfume, or started taking exercise, or preferred a
natural ?nish on their furnishings. And then I would have won (Bracewell, 2002, p. 94).
2. Everybody wants to rule the world
Cliche´ , I know, but I was the classic angst-ridden teen. I spent the latter years of my
adolescence in solitary, bolted away in my little, airless bedroom. When I was not tending my
face’s fertile acne garden, mooning after some girl or other, writing wretched poetry, you
could be sure I would be searching for ‘‘answers’’ in the scores of novels that I was forever
carting home from the local library. If I would have had the nerve to get a tattoo, Morrissey’s
line, ‘‘There is more to life than books you know, but not much more’’, would have adorned
my pale back. Reading was (and is) very dear to me. I never read for entertainment or
escapism or any of that. For me, it was only ever about wanting to ?nd my inner self re?ected
in the books that I read, and rejoicing in that communion. Just as life-stories of all kinds –
autobiography, memoir, confession, journals, diaries, and that newest and most exhibitionist
family member, the blog – are extremely important reference points in our contemporary
DOI 10.1108/17506181011024760 VOL. 4 NO. 1 2010, pp. 57-69, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182
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PAGE 57
Anthony Patterson is based
at The Management
School, University of
Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Received September 2007
Revised June 2008
Accepted January 2009
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culture of self-obsession, my individual self, with all of its trials and traumas, was naturally of
great interest to me. The logic of Klosterman (2005, p. 217) in Killing Yourself to Live that
artworks, like novels, can instigate ‘‘the process of seeing yourself in things that you are not’’;
and McInerney’s (2005, p. 4) point that, ‘‘It is to the novel, ultimately, that we turn to con?rm
our own senses and emotions, to create narratives that reveal to us howwe feel nowand how
we live now, to reveal emotional truths that approach the condition of music,’’ is hard to fault. I
attempted to heighten this con?rmation by rarely reading anything but ?rst-person novels,
ones where I could imagine myself in the shoes of the narrator, that way it seemed as if I was
reading books that had been written just for me. I copied meaningful statements that
seemed to be about my human existence directly from these novels into hard-backed
notebooks. I have them still. Exquisite lines like the one I have typed atop this intro.
I amparticularly fond of this Bracewellian beauty because it says two things about me (which
may also apply to you) or at least about the profession of the marketing academic. It alludes,
of course, to the debate on postmodernism, speci?cally Featherstone’s (1991)
‘‘aestheticisation of everyday life’’ thesis which posits that contemporary consumers often
seek to turn their lives into work of arts through ‘‘a stylised performance of whatever would
constitute ‘the good life’ for the individual’’ (Askegaard and Csaba, 2000, p. 128). In the case
of marketing researchers, arts orientated or otherwise, aside from sexual conquest (Elliot,
1997), the ultimate lifestyle fantasy might involve being a mighty ponti?cator on marketing
matters, gaining peer recognition and accumulating immense wealth. Such is our simple
illusion of hope. Secondly, it describes, or at least I think it does, the abiding prerogative of all
interpretive marketing researchers who recognise – or should recognise if they have read
any books on research philosophy (e.g. Hunt, 2003) – that they must reconcile their
self-propelled subjectivity – which is created by the market values that drive them, like all
consumers, to desire ‘‘aesthetic experiences’’ (Venkatesh and Meamber, 2006) – with the
need for academic objectivity inherently imposed on themas marketing researchers seeking
to understand this same process of market exchange in other consumers.
Maybe it is partly down to the slant of my reading, but that just one line of Michael Bracewell’s
novel, Perfect Pitch, can so enlarge, illuminate, and enrich our perceptions is remarkable.
Still, interpretivists in consumer research, initially Belk (1986), and later and more
extensively, Brown (1998, 2005a), have, for some time, been pointing out the nigh breathless
range of discovery that novels can supply. They argue that novels are potentially not only
more enduring and in?uential than anything in marketing academia, but can provide
treasure troves of insight into the consumer and the machinations of marketing in such a
lively and entertaining fashion that the ?ndings of our commonly employed methodologies,
in comparison, make for rather dull reading. Anyone wishing to test this assertion (or
convince marketing students of the cultural pervasiveness of their subject of study), would
do well to visit the ‘‘?ction section’’ of their university library where contemporary
marketing-laden novels such as – Who Moved My Blackberry? (Lukes, 2005); PopCo
(Thomas, 2005); The Book, The Film, The T-shirt (Beaumont, 2002); and New, Free,
Chocolate, Sex (Lowe, 2003) – may be available on loan. Such titles glisten like those high
illuminated city signs spelling famous brand names, especially when considered next to the
contents of the ‘‘marketing section’’ where amid the tumbleweed, half a dozen, not very
dog-eared copies of Chisnall wait in dust-covered darkness for the reader that rarely comes.
Nonetheless, useful as these bright, brand-speckled novels are, in and of themselves – with
the possible exception of The Marketing Code and Agents and Dealers by Stephen Brown
(2006, 2008) – they remain artworks of incidental and circuitous marketing signi?cance that
need to be carefully mined in order to locate their sporadic, yet insightful, nuggets in the dark
vault of the consumer’s mind.
There is, however, a genre of academic writing whose creative spirit is perhaps closer to
?ction than the rigid doctrine offered by any meticulous methodology (Hackley, 2007). This
genre is one that takes its cue from the role of imagination in art, and the role of the creator
that invents his own rules rather than blithely obeying conventional canons (Robinson, 2005).
This kind of academic writing consists of articles and books that that have an afterlife and
manage to survive beyond the amnesia of contemporary, capitalist living (Huyssen, 1995).
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After all, the literature we most value is that which we revisit (Mullen, 2006). Sometimes
recognised as a methodology itself, it directly and unswervingly re?ects on phenomena in
the marketing world. The label assigned to this genre of writing is introspection, but it is not
just one method (e.g., Holbrook’s subjective personal introspection) but encircles several
ideas: introspection as an integral component of all writing and thinking; as a meta-method
much like in-depth interviews or reader response, where a researcher solicits numerous
introspections to order to analyse them as one would any qualitative data set; and
introspection as a formal method where one researcher re?ects on his/her own consumption
experiences by relating the re?exive ‘‘muck of the mind’’ with the wider world of consumption
in order to unlock places within the reader’s subjectivity that potentially can transform their
understanding of their consumption experiences (Hyde, 2006).
Although this paper is conceptual in nature, in a similar fashion to the dramatic device of
a-play-within-a-play it will occasionally use introspection to re?ect on introspection. I begin
by pulling apart the various strands of introspection and explain the controversial origins of
formal introspection in consumer research. I then proceed to outline its ideological
positioning as an art form, the possibilities and the pitfalls of research based on this method,
and how to successfully enter into its creative spirit. My goal is to motivate arts marketers, or
anyone else for that matter, contemplating introspective projects; to explore the enigma of
artistic invention (Gruber and Bo¨ deker, 2005); and inspire further discussion and dialogue
regarding all aspects of introspection. This paper does not seek to position introspection as
a major methodological choice; rather the intention is to show how introspection, in
conjunction with other empirical methods such as case study, personal experience, life story,
interviews, artefacts, cultural texts, observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts
can considerably enrich any qualitative research project (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003). In this
respect, this paper is perfectly in keeping with Caru and Cova’s (2008) contention that
introspection should be a key component of a complete ethnographic approach to
consumption experiences. This paper does not purport to be the ?rst to engage with
introspective issues, nor indeed the last, but it is the ?rst both to consider the subject
speci?cally as it applies to arts marketers, and interrogate its artistic ideology.
3. You can’t touch this
3.1 Informal introspection
Informal Introspection stems from the simple recognition that we are all introspectors, all of
the time (Brown, 2007; Gould, 2007), a point recognized by Plato’s ‘‘Reminiscence Theory of
Knowledge’’ (Hergenhahn, 2004), Descartes’ ‘‘Theory of Mind’’ (Clarke, 2002), and
Socrates’ hypothesises on thinking, which all stress that knowledge is innate and accessible
only through introspection. Informal introspection then, amounts to an articulation and
textual rendering of the unceasing babble in our heads. At heart, it is the core of our
perception that interacts with the outside world directing what we do and say, and how we
act and feel. Informal introspection is the thoughts that we think; the individual
consciousness in each of us that makes it quite impossible for two equally gifted, equally
schooled, equally committed consumer researchers using exactly the same methodology,
data set, sample size, and results to write exactly the same academic paper; and what
positivist marketing researchers commonly try hard to disguise in their work by pointedly
refusing to write in the ?rst person, lest it be deemed unscienti?c, subjective or perhaps,
more importantly, unacceptable to the gatekeepers of the journals in which they publish,
even though they know that interpretation of all research results can only occur through what
Sherry and Kozinets (2001) call intraceptive intuition, which in simple terms means that
regardless of methodology, the researcher is always the paramount instrument of research.
Thus no paper springs into being of its own accord, as Drummond (2001, p. 243) eloquently
states, ‘‘Whatever our business plans, position papers and the like contain, ultimately they
contain us.’’
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3.2 Introspection as a meta-method
An increasingly employed adjunct of introspection are the empirical papers that use
introspective accounts much like in-depth interviews or reader response, where a
researcher solicits numerous introspections to order to analyse them as one would any
qualitative data set (Reid and Brown, 1996; Patterson et al., 1998; Ryan and Rodr? ´guez,
2001; Patterson, 2005; Baron et al., 2007). The principal advantage of employing this
meta-method is that casting numerous introspective perspectives over a marketing
phenomenon allows some scope for capturing different subjective responses, which is,
some believe, an improvement on relying solely, wholly and only on a solitary perspective
(Surowiecki, 2005). Researchers also report that the insights garnered using this technique
are more thoughtful than those similar interpretive studies provide (Patterson, 2005). The
major disadvantage of this meta-method is the dif?culty of persuading respondents to write
introspectively in the ?rst place, hence the over-reliance on student samples.
3.3 Narrative introspection/meta-cognitive introspection
The third and most frequently discussed type of introspection is a formal method that only a
solo researcher can employ. According to Gould (2007) it spans a continuum from
storytelling, ‘‘narrative introspection’’ at one end – which is closely af?liated with what Morris
Holbrook dubbed ‘‘subjective personal introspection’’ – to the not much of a plot going on
here, let’s just concentrate on mapping out our intense state-of-mind in a ‘‘meta-cognitive
introspection’’, at the other. Although there is evident overlap, the distinction between the two
types of formal introspection is useful. One of the key justi?cations for using introspection,
after all, is drawn fromAbram’s (1953) brilliant treatise on romantic theory, The Mirror and the
Lamp. The ?rst metaphor of the mind is the cognitive introspection that re?ects as objectively
as possible on various phenomena. The second antithetical metaphor is the lamp which
represents the illuminating narrative introspection that adds something to the object it
perceives. It is fair to say, that in this article, I will concentrate on work situated in this latter
category.
Stephen Gould (1991), whose extraordinarily courageous and refreshingly different Journal
of Consumer Research article, following Holbrook (1986), provocatively galvanised the
introspective movement. Gould’s article did so by breaking two taboos. The ?rst being the
employment of an exceptionally non-positivist, and in that moment relatively untested
methodology (i.e. introspection), and the second being the discussion of extremely intimate
issues that fortunately do not quite stretch to the joys of auto-erotic asphyxiation, but do
reveal lots about the products he uses to ‘‘Maintain and Accentuate Sexual Drive and
Energy’’. The article, rather than disappear into the usual sea of indifference that sinks so
many potentially ground-breaking papers, acquires a guarantee of permanent notoriety
following Wallendorf and Brucks (1993) condemnation, concluding with what they hoped
was some degree of ?nality, that the practise of formal introspection in consumer research is
inadvisable, inappropriate, and indefensible. They cited a number of arguments, too many
to individually discuss here, but to deal with one criticism, they do make the point that to be
introspective is to chew on the dried up placenta that ?rst nourished the psychologists in the
naissance of their discipline. Psychology did, after all, long ago move to distance itself from
introspection as an unfortunate misdirection, the excusable mistake of novices searching for
a path to follow. Gould (1995) and others (Campbell, 1996; Brown, 1997), of course, counter,
arguing that psychology, like marketing, and many of the social sciences, will obviously
reject the ?agrant subjectivity of introspection because psychology is af?icted by ‘‘physics
envy’’, and has, as Willis and Curry, 2004, p. 83) helpfully elaborate: ‘‘a correspondingly
strong tendency toward favouring the trivial and banal, which is most amenable to
quanti?cation’’.
So, rather than sink into oblivion, or get lost in a state of acute navel-gazing self-
consciousness, the introspectivists, under the guiding in?uence of Stephen Brown, whose
talent and sheer proli?cacy as a writer – despite being ‘‘out in the sticks’’ – has cast a long
shadow on marketing thought (Woodall, 2001; Venkatesh and Meamber, 2006), along with
the equally in?uential, Morris Holbrook, described by Brown (2005b, p. 145) as, ‘‘the
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foremost, writer in residence of the marketing discipline’’ and no less than the progenitor of
introspection in consumer research, cleverly managed to shift the debate into new and
unexpected territory. In the course of their incredible industry (do these guys ever sleep?),
they, directly and indirectly, built a robust defence of introspection by drawing in the main on
postmodern theory, which as Venkatesh (1999, p. 145) says, recognizes ‘‘subjective
experiences as a meaningful part of human practices’’; and romanticism, which according
to Day (1996, p. 101), above all else, emphasises ‘‘the inner processes of the individual
mind’’. The really clever move, however, the sine qua non, if that is the correct Latin phrase of
pretension, was to declare introspection beyond scienti?c scrutiny, since, as Brown (1997)
argues, it resides in the realm of art and is therefore impervious to scienti?cally-based
criticisms.
Thus emboldened by the broader growth of all interpretive methods in consumer research,
their own judicious justi?cation, the introspectionists, postmodernists, new romantics of
marketing, introverted extroverts, or whatever you want to call them, rushed out onto the
scholarly streets to ply their playful skills, spread provocative ideas and textual anarchy by
commandeering journals, publishing articles and organising their own thought-provoking
conferences (see my introspective review of one such conference in the quote below). M.C.
Hammer’s, You Can’t Touch This, an early anthem of that era, springs to mind as an
appropriate theme tune for this markedly ?amboyant period of pluralistic openness and
relativistic truths (Holbrook and Hubert, 2002). Other highlights of informal introspection in
that moment of interpretive freedom – for me, at least, as a student with a ringside seat –
include every article in the 1997 European Journal of Marketing double issue on
‘‘Postmodern Marketing’’, but especially Holbrook’s (1997) where he pokes fun at Calder
and Tybout (1987, p. 139) for being so emphatic in their refutation of ‘‘anarchy and
paroxysms of self-expression’’, and when the late Alan Smithee (1997, p. 318), champion of
epistemological relativism and fondly remembered as the Bill Hicks of marketing, declared
the dour positivists masters of the ‘‘art of artless writing’’:
The light fantastic!: An introspective perspective
On the ?rst weekend of September 1997 the Marketing Illuminations Spectacular commenced in
the sanctity of St. Clement’s Retreat House among the hills overlooking the city of Belfast. Two
years ago at this same venue the apocalyptic Marketing Eschatology Conference had laid
marketing scholarship to rest; now a ?fty strong congregation had returned to witness its
resurrection or at least to dance on its grave. Guided by the light of their papers they had come
fromnear and far; fromWarwick to Wisconsin, fromStirling to Strasbourg, fromUlster to Utah. The
luminaries cloistered therein represented the brightest lights of marketing research – Russell
Belk, Elizabeth Hirschman, Craig Thompson, Robin Wensley, Douglas Brownlie, David Mick, Eric
Arnould, Robert Grafton Small – to name but a few.
This was my ?rst, my very ?rst, marketing conference, and so for me it seemed particularly
appropriate that the ‘‘Illuminations’’ hallmark was stamped on the conference proceedings. Indeed,
I was dazzled by the often outlandish cornucopia of ideas, images and sounds that were presented
over the course of three days. To begin we were ?red by the vibrancy of Stephen Brown’s opening
address on the mystical tradition, and in particular how the work of Arthur Rimbaud might provide
the gleaming, golden path to marketing understanding. The star-spangled showcase continued
with the expressive Elizabeth Hirschman who with a languorous lilt beautifully articulated with words
the inherent inarticulacy of words. Erhm... Well, that’s postmodernism for you! Douglas Brownlie
looked both manic and hilarious surrounding by his curious props (some of which he had secreted
fromhis daughter’s bedroom); a spotlight trained on the side of his head, a Barbie doll, a toy troll, an
unlit cigarette, and John Desmond as his assistant stooge. The image of Eric Arnould, resplendent
in a conjurers purple robe, complete with a talisman dangling around his neck, held the audience
spellbound, as he intoned the connection between magic and marketing. Russell Belk, with silken
tie, and hair in customary ponytail, masterfully delivered a presentation – through the metaphor of
Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale The Goblin and the Huckster – on the desire of Eastern
Europeans to possess luxury goods. The pyrotechnics reached new heights when Craig
Thompson, a shameless refugee from the revitalized new-man syndrome, took to the stage ?ring
from all cylinders. His frenetic energy carried the audience, willingly it must be said, over the
allotted time slot, as he cast his sceptical eye over marketing’s new-fangled caring,
relationship-building veneer, by drawing parallels with the Hollywood blockbuster Jerry ‘‘Show
me the money!’’ Maguire.
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Other highlights included; Maisie the Pig, Einstein the Commodity, hymns by Van Morrison, a
Trivia Pop Quiz, The Emperor’s NewClothes, Postcards fromthe Edge, and howcould I forget the
great philosophical conundrums that were bandied about. Just who is Batman? Does having a
gold?sh, or not having one – as the case may be – really determine the nature of your sexual
proclivity? And most bizarrely of all, who, dear God who, are the cross-dressing lumberjacks?
Often those who become disillusioned with their creed embark on a retreat and sometimes, just
sometimes, such a journey kindles a spark of renewed faith. It seemed to me, as I sift through the
lambent traces, the still ?ickering embers of the Marketing Illuminations Spectacular that the
cod-cynicism with which our brand of postmodern marketing dismisses the marketing of
marketing as a panacea and its good-humoured, wholehearted acceptance of what it truly is – a
lovable rogue – is the ?rst step towards conquering the malaise of modern marketing. Posterity
will applaud the embattled minority gathered at this (un)convention who each had the courage to
step out of the shadows and paint their own bright shimmering patterns amid the prevailing
gloom.
While introspection is certainly not the only artistic mode for understanding subjective
experiences in consumer behavior – Sherry and Schouten (2002), for instance, has made a
strong case for poetry in consumer research – its credentials as an art form are worthy of
serious consideration. The perennial art critic argument about what precisely constitutes art
could be made in respect of introspection, but anyone entering the world of introspective
research, lest they be complete philistines, cannot fail to be impressed by the small fraternity
of part-time introspective practitioners they will encounter. I myself marvel at the force of
nature that is Stephen Brown, enduring auto-ethnographer, ?uent ‘‘skaz’’ speaker and
meteoric metaphor maker; enjoy the extensively researched, elegantly written, cogently
argued and immensely readable articles by Morris Holbrook; savour Maclaran’s (2003)
touching allegories; revel in the well turned anecdotes that Chris Hackley (2006, 2007)
delivers; enjoy Schau’s (2003) meaningful mediations, delight in Avi Shankar’s (2000)
relaxed, jocular, idiomatic familiarity, am fond of Steven’s (2006) telling tales, and I am
impressed, if not a little scared, of the celebrity-stalking, bunny-boiling,
new-kid-on-the-block, Marcus Wohlfeil (see Wohlfeil and Whelan, 2007, 2008). Just as
painters make art with colors and musicians with sounds, introspectors do so too with words.
Despite its artistic credentials, introspection has recently found itself embroiled in a fresh
controversy concerning its scienti?c utility. Woodside (2004, 2006) contends that
introspection suffers from a number of serious methodological problems, speci?cally:
attribution error, the inherent cultural prejudice of the researcher, and a general bias towards
self-fabrication. Gould (2006a), in response, outlines his own extensive efforts to control for
such problems, and wishes that Woodside would relax his requirement for con?rmation and
appreciate the inherent idiosyncratic value of introspective studies, the ?ndings of which
might not apply to broader consumer cohorts, but nonetheless retain some value in this age
of increasingly personalized marketing activity. Certainly, cognizance and controls for the
real concerns Woodside raises, would garner the method much more credibility in the
scienti?c marketing community, and perhaps help realize his prediction that ‘‘the future is
bright and the possibilities are profound for advancing SPI [subjective personal
introspection] in consumer research’’ (Woodside, 2006, p. 269). Nonetheless, proceeding
in a scienti?c direction might also have the unintended consequence of constricting the
unrestrained imagination and mad-genius pedigree of its most gifted narrators.
4. Aestheticism in arts marketing
Given the ideological positioning of introspection as an art form, how does it ?t in with arts
marketing? Certainly, one would presume that arts marketers would be very amenable to this
type of artistic approach, and often they are. On the academic side of the equation easel, the
topics that arts marketers study such as artistic perceptions, aesthetic appreciation, the
development of tastes over time, and other elements of ‘‘consumer aesthetics’’ are well
suited to introspective investigation (Holbrook, 1996). On the ground too, de Monthoux
(2004, p. 23), albeit without speci?cally mentioning introspection, notes that the mindset of
art-orientated ?rms, in line with introspection, tends not to ?t general rules to speci?c cases,
rather, ‘‘Examples of the speci?c are a starting point for an aesthetic judgement. People are
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elevated to the level of the universal. Instead of subsuming, humans judge or re?ect on
matters of aesthetics on the basis of single cases only.’’ Arts ?rms also increasingly
recognise that the marketing effort of their businesses – say in the serene, quiet
surroundings of a museum or gallery – should privilege not the art object itself but the
customer-perceived experiential value the object provokes (Berridge, 2007; Robertson and
Chong, 2008). Obviously, in such experience-oriented settings, it would be helpful if
marketing managers knew better the minds of their customers. Introspective research
potentially could illuminate this unknown. What is more, Bernstein and Kotler (2006) stress
the need for arts managers to understand how consumers ?t art into their lives. And if these
days it is true that, ‘‘a pile of bricks or dog s**t can be transformed into a work of art’’
(Lodziak, 2002, p. 41) then appreciation of aesthetic experiences seems set to increase, and
with it, a corresponding need for introspective research.
Yet despite this coalescence of interests and applications, introspection in arts marketing,
excepting the few studies mentioned earlier, is a relatively rare occurrence. Perhaps this
paucity occurs simply because like all creative approaches, making generalisations and
replication from introspective studies is dif?cult due to its subjective and intangible nature
(Fillis and Rentschler, 2005). Or could it be that despite all of the talk in our discipline about
the importance of things like creativity, art, and imagination (Kotler and Scheff, 1997; Brown
and Patterson, 2000; Fillis and Rentschler, 2005) we are still guilty of anti-aesthetic
tendencies of our own? Hastrup’s (2001, p. 53) astute observation that ‘‘there is still a slight
feeling of an inherently marginal positioning of the creative element in culture. . . creativity
has been put aside with the playful’’, has, I think, some relevance to the discipline of arts
marketing and especially of introspection viewed as a methodological approach. It is ironic
that we often boast of how the artistic fraternity now recognise the value of marketing and
even celebrate it, yet we, on the other hand, do not fully embrace artistry ourselves, at least in
a methodological sense. Perhaps this is because some of us subscribe to the mistaken but
widespread belief that the ideological purpose of art is merely to entertain, and that art is the
expression of humankind’s playful nature, and therefore cannot and should not be
associated with the hard labour that goes into constructing academic papers. Szostak
(1999) challenges this viewpoint. In making the case for art in economics, he assembles a
roster of authorities who strongly believe that art and labour belong together, and that art
should be a major focus of every academic’s work. Davis (2007, p. xiii) arguing, in a similar
fashion, about the diminution of art’s ideological positioning in the theatre, stresses that all art
‘‘works at the very foundations of the formation of consciousness. In doing so, it exceeds and
overturns ideology by revealing all of its contradictions and showing where, in our own lives,
those contradictions operate.’’ Introspection itself, like all good art, has a similarly serious
purpose, a point that Gould (2006b) makes clear, in asserting that introspective self
examination, is absolutely crucial, among other things, to the continued development of a
‘‘critical marketing’’ movement in our ?eld. Introspection in arts marketing then could also
have the same serious purpose by helping scholars and managers better portray,
comprehend and contend with the speci?c artistic challenges of their ?eld.
5. Initiating introspection
Perhaps the lack of introspection in arts marketing is also caused by the fear of attempting
such an intensely literary and creative project. Certainly, if you have ever read the oeuvre of
the top incumbent introspectionists with a view to emulating their work, it is likely that you will
be a little daunted by the task in hand. All too easily one can feel that one is in the company of
greatness, of rare geniuses exercising their mighty minds on marketing matters, of people
that have said all there is to say and said it better than you ever possibly could. Is it really
realistic that one day you too could become a superstar scholar with unrivalled intellectual
prowess? To put it bluntly, if – perish the thought – one of the presiding introspectionists
were to die tomorrow, could anyone – even with full access to all of their resources, their
research assistants, their book-buying bank accounts – do what they do? If truth be told,
probably not. There is no magic wand to wave or simple set of instructions that will ready a
budding introspective researcher. Given the task, a great many of us would ?ounder, for just
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as ‘‘autobiographers put down the events of their lives without consulting experts or
discussing theories of autobiographical composition’’ (Bauer, 2003, p. 119), so too
introspectionists suffuse their articles with what seems like a kind of manic methodlessness
allowing their individual life histories and inimitable whim, wit and wisdom to rule the day
(Sternglass, 1988). Indeed, Hackley (2003, p. 51) in relation to this type of research reckons,
‘‘that you have to be a very experienced and creative scholar, and a con?dent writer, to
produce a credible research report in as frankly a subjective vein as these authors.’’
Nonetheless, given certain ideological conditions, there are things that can bring
journeymen academics – like me – a little closer to the gurus of introspection. To begin, if
you are of the persuasion, ‘‘I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like – science’’, or
if you are a quant jock or a maths modeller, then formal introspection of any kind is probably
not for you. But if you have ever kept a diary or blog, are an avid fan of literature, or have
simply been known for your artistic sensitivity, then it is likely that you will naturally be
amenable to introspective writing. Though I am not sure how religiously they are practised in
the upper echelons of introspection, Gould (2007) also offers a series of useful exercises
such as: thought watching; thought content watching; watching senses and feelings; and
watching and engaging watching that can help ready the mind for introspective research.
At heart, though introspection is really about writing, a skill that Martin Amis has adroitly
described as ‘‘a sort of sedentary, carpet slippers, self inspecting, nose-picking,
arse-scratching, just you in your study and there is absolutely no way around that’’
(Topping, 2007). Closer to home, in an intensely re?exive rumination, Brownlie (1997, p. 265)
also says that as marketing academics: ‘‘Writing is probably the most demanding task that is
asked of us.’’ So how does one write right? With blood, sweat and tears, seems to the
answer. In the course of composing any article, there is usually an initial period of pain where
we delete, rephrase or reposition passages as we explore alternative lines of thought.
Following this usually comes a period of high elation when the author realises he has written
something that is as unfamiliar and surprising to him as he hopes it will be to his audience
(Abrams, 1953). Another essential to good writing is the understanding that it stems in the
main from reading, and from being highly attuned to the cultural environment. As Groys
(2002, p. 56) notes ‘‘few artists today will claim that they are the sole originator of their work.
Instead, the mark of an artist is in showing that he has been able to take an already existing
object and make use of it in an interesting way.’’
6. Hello, ‘‘I’’ must be going
This article attempts to show that introspection is fundamental to arts marketing research.
The article illustrates how introspection equates with arts marketing’s inherent interest in
consumption, creativity, and aestheticisation. While the exploration of aesthetic experiences
in arts marketing is undoubtedly in rude health, there is still not enough art evident in its
methods, especially coming from academics themselves who, on the one hand, are happy
to laud marketing as an art, but remain unwilling to practise what they preach, by producing
research that can itself be construed as an art form. Instead, they do what Feyerabend
(1975) warns against: they rely on procedural methods that are explicit, systematic, and
repeatable and are thus anything but artful. Gummesson (2002, p. 342) is quite correct in
saying that: ‘‘Marketing professors – with few exceptions – seem scared of the art part, the
scholarship. It is safer to stick by peer-approved methodology and techniques traditions –
the hammer and the saw – and the axioms of the current mainstream.’’ Such an approach
also sti?es creative thinking and could, at worst, turn academics into drones all producing
the same humdrum analyses of aesthetic consumption experiences. After all, the more we
purport to knowthe ways and means of howto do something, the more dif?cult it is to learn to
do it things differently.
Just as Scitovsky (1992, p. 76) argues, ‘‘Some books, plays, works of art, and other sources
of stimulation are gripping, exciting: they are able to shake us up and heighten our
consciousness’’, well-written introspections can provide a similar function by delivering rich
stream-of-consciousness accounts of marketing-relevant goodness from beginning to end.
Above and beyond the insight of its art, Gould (2006b, p. 69) has recently stressed the
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higher importance of introspective research, arguing passionately that despite its
controversial and confessional history it:
Can free us from any particular ideology (i.e. just another form of conceptualization) and release
us into a fuller and richer understanding. The ideology to be sure may stand up to our
examinations or it may not, but at least, we have attempted to take the investigation into a different
realm that goes beyond the simple bromides of any particular view. Moreover, without
considering the introspective, meditative, and meta-cognitive aspects of consciousness and
mind, how can we understand spirituality, consumption, or any other phenomenon?
Finally, let us kill the idea that introspection belongs in a category of research that Arnould
and Thompson (2007, p. 4) describe where ‘‘?ndings are context bound and a-theoretical
and that . . . only investigates entertaining esoterica (the wild and wacky world of consumer
oddballs) that lack practical relevance’’. This unwarranted belief that such singular studies
might be interesting and highly readable, but are too idiosyncratic and peculiar to merit
widespread dissemination; and that introspection should only be the preserve of scholarly
eccentrics – like the quintessential introspectivist, Morris Holbrook, who resides comfortably
on the fringes of the mainstream, churning out beautifully written vignettes on the latest
imponderabilia of his fancy, is misguided. Putting your ‘‘self’’ into your work, articulating the
enigma of interior life, does not necessarily situate you on the fringes, but rather smack in the
middle of contemporary research agendas. How so? Well, as you should know, a lot of
column inches in journals delve deep ‘‘inside consumption’’ (Mick and Ratneshwar, 2005),
focus on developing compelling brand personalities, and have stories to tell. Now as far as I
can tell, there are few sections of our scholarly community that take these lessons so
completely to heart, despite their so-called oddball credentials, as the subjective personal
intro-spectionists. Their intellectually passionate and strikingly innovative method, by
default, takes them deep into the subjective world of consumption, lays their distinctive
personalities bear, and creates story-tellers of them all.
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Topping, A. (2007), ‘‘Students, meet your new tutor: Amis, the Enfant Terrible, turns professor’’,
The Guardian, February 15, available at:http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,2013359,00.html
Venkatesh, A. (1999), ‘‘Postmodernism perspectives for macromarketing: an inquiry into the global
information and sign economy’’, Journal of Macromarketing, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 153-69.
Venkatesh, A. and Meamber, L. (2006), ‘‘Arts and aesthetics: marketing and cultural production’’,
Marketing Theory, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 11-39.
Wallendorf, M. and Brucks, M. (1993), ‘‘Introspecting in consumer research: implementation and
implications’’, Journal of Consumer. Research, Vol. 20, pp. 339-59.
Woodall, T. (2001), ‘‘The epistobabble kid rides again: a Stephen Brown (selective) retrospective’’,
The Marketing Review, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 147-67.
Woodside, A. (2004), ‘‘Advancing from subjective to con?rmatory personal introspection in consumer
research’’, Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 21 No. 12, pp. 987-1010.
Woodside, A. (2006), ‘‘Overcoming the illusion of will and self-fabrication: going beyond na? ¨ve
subjective personal introspection to an unconscious/conscious theory of behavior explanation’’,
Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 257-72.
Willis, R. and Curry, P. (2004), Astrology, Science and Culture: Pulling down the Moon, Berg, Oxford.
Wohlfeil, M. and Whelan, S. (2007), ‘‘How Jena Malone saved me: an introspective study on a
consumer’s fan relationship with a movie actress’’, Proceedings of Irish Academy of Management,
Belfast.
Wohlfeil, M. and Whelan, S. (2008), ‘‘Confessions of a movie-fan: introspection into a consumer’s
experiential consumption of Pride and Prejudice‘‘, in Borghini, S., McGrath, M.A. and Otnes, C. (Eds),
European Conference of the Association for Consumer Research, Milan, European Advances in
Consumer Research, pp. 137-43.
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Further reading
Canterbery, E.R. (2001), A Brief History of Economics: Artful Approaches to The Dismal Science, World
Scienti?c Publishing, London.
Elshof, G.T. (2005), Introspection Vindicated: An Essay in Defense of the Perceptual Model of
Self-Knowledge, Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, VT.
Foley, R. (2001), Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Other, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Hartley, J. (2005), Creative Industries, Blackwell Publishing, London.
Heilbrun, J. and Gray, C.M. (2004), The Economics of Art and Culture, 2nd ed., Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Hirschman, E.C. (1992), ‘‘Recovering from drug addiction: a phenomenological account’’, in Sherry, J.F.
and Sternthal, B. (Eds), Advances in Consumer Research, Association for Consumer Research, Provo,
UT, pp. 541-9.
Holbrook, M.B. (1995), Consumer Research: Introspective Essays on the Study of Consumption, Sage,
Thousand Oaks, CA.
Jensen, K.B. (2002), Handbook of Media and Communications Research: Qualitative and Quantitative
Methodologies, Routledge, London.
Kernan, L.D. (2005), ‘‘Film: the business and marketing of Hollywood’s products’’, in Ritzer, G. (Ed.),
Encyclopedia of Social Theory, Vol. 1, Sage, London.
Kotler, P. (2005), ‘‘The role played by the broadening of marketing movement in the history of marketing
thought’’, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 114-16.
Weisberg, R.W. (2006), Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention,
and the Arts, Wiley, London.
Corresponding author
Anthony Patterson can be contacted at: [email protected]
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doc_388873257.pdf
The purpose of this paper is to explore introspection in marketing research, its controversial
origins, its positioning as an art form, the possibilities and the pitfalls of research based on this method,
and how to successfully enter into its creative spirit.
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Art, ideology, and introspection
Anthony Patterson
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Art, ideology, and introspection
Anthony Patterson
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore introspection in marketing research, its controversial
origins, its positioning as an art form, the possibilities and the pitfalls of research based on this method,
and how to successfully enter into its creative spirit.
Design/methodology/approach – Although its overall approach is broadly conceptual, in a similar
fashion to the dramatic device of a-play-within-a-play, the paper makes a habit of using introspection to
re?ect on introspection.
Findings – While it is clear that well-written introspections can deliver rich stream-of-consciousness
accounts of marketing-relevant goodness from beginning to end, they provide more than just frivolous
entertainment. The innermost imperative of introspection equates well with consumption, creativity and
aestheticisation, the corner-stones of arts marketing.
Research limitations/implications – The inherent mucky-mindedness of introspection as a formal
method lays its success or failure on the shoulders of the paper’s author.
Practical implications – Whatever their interpretive methodology of choice, arts marketers, indeed all
marketers, should give serious thought to integrating introspection into their research approach.
Originality/value – While many of the ideas in the paper are pilfered from other sources (see long list of
references), the author is proud to assert that precisely these words have never been written in precisely
this order.
Keywords Arts, Marketing, Consumption
Paper type Research paper
1. Art, ideology and introspection
And from my big apartment on the top ?oor I would be the analyst and synthesist of all that I
surveyed; comprehending the immensity of the human condition by knowing why people
shopped alone, or wore loud ties or citric perfume, or started taking exercise, or preferred a
natural ?nish on their furnishings. And then I would have won (Bracewell, 2002, p. 94).
2. Everybody wants to rule the world
Cliche´ , I know, but I was the classic angst-ridden teen. I spent the latter years of my
adolescence in solitary, bolted away in my little, airless bedroom. When I was not tending my
face’s fertile acne garden, mooning after some girl or other, writing wretched poetry, you
could be sure I would be searching for ‘‘answers’’ in the scores of novels that I was forever
carting home from the local library. If I would have had the nerve to get a tattoo, Morrissey’s
line, ‘‘There is more to life than books you know, but not much more’’, would have adorned
my pale back. Reading was (and is) very dear to me. I never read for entertainment or
escapism or any of that. For me, it was only ever about wanting to ?nd my inner self re?ected
in the books that I read, and rejoicing in that communion. Just as life-stories of all kinds –
autobiography, memoir, confession, journals, diaries, and that newest and most exhibitionist
family member, the blog – are extremely important reference points in our contemporary
DOI 10.1108/17506181011024760 VOL. 4 NO. 1 2010, pp. 57-69, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182
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PAGE 57
Anthony Patterson is based
at The Management
School, University of
Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Received September 2007
Revised June 2008
Accepted January 2009
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culture of self-obsession, my individual self, with all of its trials and traumas, was naturally of
great interest to me. The logic of Klosterman (2005, p. 217) in Killing Yourself to Live that
artworks, like novels, can instigate ‘‘the process of seeing yourself in things that you are not’’;
and McInerney’s (2005, p. 4) point that, ‘‘It is to the novel, ultimately, that we turn to con?rm
our own senses and emotions, to create narratives that reveal to us howwe feel nowand how
we live now, to reveal emotional truths that approach the condition of music,’’ is hard to fault. I
attempted to heighten this con?rmation by rarely reading anything but ?rst-person novels,
ones where I could imagine myself in the shoes of the narrator, that way it seemed as if I was
reading books that had been written just for me. I copied meaningful statements that
seemed to be about my human existence directly from these novels into hard-backed
notebooks. I have them still. Exquisite lines like the one I have typed atop this intro.
I amparticularly fond of this Bracewellian beauty because it says two things about me (which
may also apply to you) or at least about the profession of the marketing academic. It alludes,
of course, to the debate on postmodernism, speci?cally Featherstone’s (1991)
‘‘aestheticisation of everyday life’’ thesis which posits that contemporary consumers often
seek to turn their lives into work of arts through ‘‘a stylised performance of whatever would
constitute ‘the good life’ for the individual’’ (Askegaard and Csaba, 2000, p. 128). In the case
of marketing researchers, arts orientated or otherwise, aside from sexual conquest (Elliot,
1997), the ultimate lifestyle fantasy might involve being a mighty ponti?cator on marketing
matters, gaining peer recognition and accumulating immense wealth. Such is our simple
illusion of hope. Secondly, it describes, or at least I think it does, the abiding prerogative of all
interpretive marketing researchers who recognise – or should recognise if they have read
any books on research philosophy (e.g. Hunt, 2003) – that they must reconcile their
self-propelled subjectivity – which is created by the market values that drive them, like all
consumers, to desire ‘‘aesthetic experiences’’ (Venkatesh and Meamber, 2006) – with the
need for academic objectivity inherently imposed on themas marketing researchers seeking
to understand this same process of market exchange in other consumers.
Maybe it is partly down to the slant of my reading, but that just one line of Michael Bracewell’s
novel, Perfect Pitch, can so enlarge, illuminate, and enrich our perceptions is remarkable.
Still, interpretivists in consumer research, initially Belk (1986), and later and more
extensively, Brown (1998, 2005a), have, for some time, been pointing out the nigh breathless
range of discovery that novels can supply. They argue that novels are potentially not only
more enduring and in?uential than anything in marketing academia, but can provide
treasure troves of insight into the consumer and the machinations of marketing in such a
lively and entertaining fashion that the ?ndings of our commonly employed methodologies,
in comparison, make for rather dull reading. Anyone wishing to test this assertion (or
convince marketing students of the cultural pervasiveness of their subject of study), would
do well to visit the ‘‘?ction section’’ of their university library where contemporary
marketing-laden novels such as – Who Moved My Blackberry? (Lukes, 2005); PopCo
(Thomas, 2005); The Book, The Film, The T-shirt (Beaumont, 2002); and New, Free,
Chocolate, Sex (Lowe, 2003) – may be available on loan. Such titles glisten like those high
illuminated city signs spelling famous brand names, especially when considered next to the
contents of the ‘‘marketing section’’ where amid the tumbleweed, half a dozen, not very
dog-eared copies of Chisnall wait in dust-covered darkness for the reader that rarely comes.
Nonetheless, useful as these bright, brand-speckled novels are, in and of themselves – with
the possible exception of The Marketing Code and Agents and Dealers by Stephen Brown
(2006, 2008) – they remain artworks of incidental and circuitous marketing signi?cance that
need to be carefully mined in order to locate their sporadic, yet insightful, nuggets in the dark
vault of the consumer’s mind.
There is, however, a genre of academic writing whose creative spirit is perhaps closer to
?ction than the rigid doctrine offered by any meticulous methodology (Hackley, 2007). This
genre is one that takes its cue from the role of imagination in art, and the role of the creator
that invents his own rules rather than blithely obeying conventional canons (Robinson, 2005).
This kind of academic writing consists of articles and books that that have an afterlife and
manage to survive beyond the amnesia of contemporary, capitalist living (Huyssen, 1995).
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After all, the literature we most value is that which we revisit (Mullen, 2006). Sometimes
recognised as a methodology itself, it directly and unswervingly re?ects on phenomena in
the marketing world. The label assigned to this genre of writing is introspection, but it is not
just one method (e.g., Holbrook’s subjective personal introspection) but encircles several
ideas: introspection as an integral component of all writing and thinking; as a meta-method
much like in-depth interviews or reader response, where a researcher solicits numerous
introspections to order to analyse them as one would any qualitative data set; and
introspection as a formal method where one researcher re?ects on his/her own consumption
experiences by relating the re?exive ‘‘muck of the mind’’ with the wider world of consumption
in order to unlock places within the reader’s subjectivity that potentially can transform their
understanding of their consumption experiences (Hyde, 2006).
Although this paper is conceptual in nature, in a similar fashion to the dramatic device of
a-play-within-a-play it will occasionally use introspection to re?ect on introspection. I begin
by pulling apart the various strands of introspection and explain the controversial origins of
formal introspection in consumer research. I then proceed to outline its ideological
positioning as an art form, the possibilities and the pitfalls of research based on this method,
and how to successfully enter into its creative spirit. My goal is to motivate arts marketers, or
anyone else for that matter, contemplating introspective projects; to explore the enigma of
artistic invention (Gruber and Bo¨ deker, 2005); and inspire further discussion and dialogue
regarding all aspects of introspection. This paper does not seek to position introspection as
a major methodological choice; rather the intention is to show how introspection, in
conjunction with other empirical methods such as case study, personal experience, life story,
interviews, artefacts, cultural texts, observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts
can considerably enrich any qualitative research project (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003). In this
respect, this paper is perfectly in keeping with Caru and Cova’s (2008) contention that
introspection should be a key component of a complete ethnographic approach to
consumption experiences. This paper does not purport to be the ?rst to engage with
introspective issues, nor indeed the last, but it is the ?rst both to consider the subject
speci?cally as it applies to arts marketers, and interrogate its artistic ideology.
3. You can’t touch this
3.1 Informal introspection
Informal Introspection stems from the simple recognition that we are all introspectors, all of
the time (Brown, 2007; Gould, 2007), a point recognized by Plato’s ‘‘Reminiscence Theory of
Knowledge’’ (Hergenhahn, 2004), Descartes’ ‘‘Theory of Mind’’ (Clarke, 2002), and
Socrates’ hypothesises on thinking, which all stress that knowledge is innate and accessible
only through introspection. Informal introspection then, amounts to an articulation and
textual rendering of the unceasing babble in our heads. At heart, it is the core of our
perception that interacts with the outside world directing what we do and say, and how we
act and feel. Informal introspection is the thoughts that we think; the individual
consciousness in each of us that makes it quite impossible for two equally gifted, equally
schooled, equally committed consumer researchers using exactly the same methodology,
data set, sample size, and results to write exactly the same academic paper; and what
positivist marketing researchers commonly try hard to disguise in their work by pointedly
refusing to write in the ?rst person, lest it be deemed unscienti?c, subjective or perhaps,
more importantly, unacceptable to the gatekeepers of the journals in which they publish,
even though they know that interpretation of all research results can only occur through what
Sherry and Kozinets (2001) call intraceptive intuition, which in simple terms means that
regardless of methodology, the researcher is always the paramount instrument of research.
Thus no paper springs into being of its own accord, as Drummond (2001, p. 243) eloquently
states, ‘‘Whatever our business plans, position papers and the like contain, ultimately they
contain us.’’
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3.2 Introspection as a meta-method
An increasingly employed adjunct of introspection are the empirical papers that use
introspective accounts much like in-depth interviews or reader response, where a
researcher solicits numerous introspections to order to analyse them as one would any
qualitative data set (Reid and Brown, 1996; Patterson et al., 1998; Ryan and Rodr? ´guez,
2001; Patterson, 2005; Baron et al., 2007). The principal advantage of employing this
meta-method is that casting numerous introspective perspectives over a marketing
phenomenon allows some scope for capturing different subjective responses, which is,
some believe, an improvement on relying solely, wholly and only on a solitary perspective
(Surowiecki, 2005). Researchers also report that the insights garnered using this technique
are more thoughtful than those similar interpretive studies provide (Patterson, 2005). The
major disadvantage of this meta-method is the dif?culty of persuading respondents to write
introspectively in the ?rst place, hence the over-reliance on student samples.
3.3 Narrative introspection/meta-cognitive introspection
The third and most frequently discussed type of introspection is a formal method that only a
solo researcher can employ. According to Gould (2007) it spans a continuum from
storytelling, ‘‘narrative introspection’’ at one end – which is closely af?liated with what Morris
Holbrook dubbed ‘‘subjective personal introspection’’ – to the not much of a plot going on
here, let’s just concentrate on mapping out our intense state-of-mind in a ‘‘meta-cognitive
introspection’’, at the other. Although there is evident overlap, the distinction between the two
types of formal introspection is useful. One of the key justi?cations for using introspection,
after all, is drawn fromAbram’s (1953) brilliant treatise on romantic theory, The Mirror and the
Lamp. The ?rst metaphor of the mind is the cognitive introspection that re?ects as objectively
as possible on various phenomena. The second antithetical metaphor is the lamp which
represents the illuminating narrative introspection that adds something to the object it
perceives. It is fair to say, that in this article, I will concentrate on work situated in this latter
category.
Stephen Gould (1991), whose extraordinarily courageous and refreshingly different Journal
of Consumer Research article, following Holbrook (1986), provocatively galvanised the
introspective movement. Gould’s article did so by breaking two taboos. The ?rst being the
employment of an exceptionally non-positivist, and in that moment relatively untested
methodology (i.e. introspection), and the second being the discussion of extremely intimate
issues that fortunately do not quite stretch to the joys of auto-erotic asphyxiation, but do
reveal lots about the products he uses to ‘‘Maintain and Accentuate Sexual Drive and
Energy’’. The article, rather than disappear into the usual sea of indifference that sinks so
many potentially ground-breaking papers, acquires a guarantee of permanent notoriety
following Wallendorf and Brucks (1993) condemnation, concluding with what they hoped
was some degree of ?nality, that the practise of formal introspection in consumer research is
inadvisable, inappropriate, and indefensible. They cited a number of arguments, too many
to individually discuss here, but to deal with one criticism, they do make the point that to be
introspective is to chew on the dried up placenta that ?rst nourished the psychologists in the
naissance of their discipline. Psychology did, after all, long ago move to distance itself from
introspection as an unfortunate misdirection, the excusable mistake of novices searching for
a path to follow. Gould (1995) and others (Campbell, 1996; Brown, 1997), of course, counter,
arguing that psychology, like marketing, and many of the social sciences, will obviously
reject the ?agrant subjectivity of introspection because psychology is af?icted by ‘‘physics
envy’’, and has, as Willis and Curry, 2004, p. 83) helpfully elaborate: ‘‘a correspondingly
strong tendency toward favouring the trivial and banal, which is most amenable to
quanti?cation’’.
So, rather than sink into oblivion, or get lost in a state of acute navel-gazing self-
consciousness, the introspectivists, under the guiding in?uence of Stephen Brown, whose
talent and sheer proli?cacy as a writer – despite being ‘‘out in the sticks’’ – has cast a long
shadow on marketing thought (Woodall, 2001; Venkatesh and Meamber, 2006), along with
the equally in?uential, Morris Holbrook, described by Brown (2005b, p. 145) as, ‘‘the
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foremost, writer in residence of the marketing discipline’’ and no less than the progenitor of
introspection in consumer research, cleverly managed to shift the debate into new and
unexpected territory. In the course of their incredible industry (do these guys ever sleep?),
they, directly and indirectly, built a robust defence of introspection by drawing in the main on
postmodern theory, which as Venkatesh (1999, p. 145) says, recognizes ‘‘subjective
experiences as a meaningful part of human practices’’; and romanticism, which according
to Day (1996, p. 101), above all else, emphasises ‘‘the inner processes of the individual
mind’’. The really clever move, however, the sine qua non, if that is the correct Latin phrase of
pretension, was to declare introspection beyond scienti?c scrutiny, since, as Brown (1997)
argues, it resides in the realm of art and is therefore impervious to scienti?cally-based
criticisms.
Thus emboldened by the broader growth of all interpretive methods in consumer research,
their own judicious justi?cation, the introspectionists, postmodernists, new romantics of
marketing, introverted extroverts, or whatever you want to call them, rushed out onto the
scholarly streets to ply their playful skills, spread provocative ideas and textual anarchy by
commandeering journals, publishing articles and organising their own thought-provoking
conferences (see my introspective review of one such conference in the quote below). M.C.
Hammer’s, You Can’t Touch This, an early anthem of that era, springs to mind as an
appropriate theme tune for this markedly ?amboyant period of pluralistic openness and
relativistic truths (Holbrook and Hubert, 2002). Other highlights of informal introspection in
that moment of interpretive freedom – for me, at least, as a student with a ringside seat –
include every article in the 1997 European Journal of Marketing double issue on
‘‘Postmodern Marketing’’, but especially Holbrook’s (1997) where he pokes fun at Calder
and Tybout (1987, p. 139) for being so emphatic in their refutation of ‘‘anarchy and
paroxysms of self-expression’’, and when the late Alan Smithee (1997, p. 318), champion of
epistemological relativism and fondly remembered as the Bill Hicks of marketing, declared
the dour positivists masters of the ‘‘art of artless writing’’:
The light fantastic!: An introspective perspective
On the ?rst weekend of September 1997 the Marketing Illuminations Spectacular commenced in
the sanctity of St. Clement’s Retreat House among the hills overlooking the city of Belfast. Two
years ago at this same venue the apocalyptic Marketing Eschatology Conference had laid
marketing scholarship to rest; now a ?fty strong congregation had returned to witness its
resurrection or at least to dance on its grave. Guided by the light of their papers they had come
fromnear and far; fromWarwick to Wisconsin, fromStirling to Strasbourg, fromUlster to Utah. The
luminaries cloistered therein represented the brightest lights of marketing research – Russell
Belk, Elizabeth Hirschman, Craig Thompson, Robin Wensley, Douglas Brownlie, David Mick, Eric
Arnould, Robert Grafton Small – to name but a few.
This was my ?rst, my very ?rst, marketing conference, and so for me it seemed particularly
appropriate that the ‘‘Illuminations’’ hallmark was stamped on the conference proceedings. Indeed,
I was dazzled by the often outlandish cornucopia of ideas, images and sounds that were presented
over the course of three days. To begin we were ?red by the vibrancy of Stephen Brown’s opening
address on the mystical tradition, and in particular how the work of Arthur Rimbaud might provide
the gleaming, golden path to marketing understanding. The star-spangled showcase continued
with the expressive Elizabeth Hirschman who with a languorous lilt beautifully articulated with words
the inherent inarticulacy of words. Erhm... Well, that’s postmodernism for you! Douglas Brownlie
looked both manic and hilarious surrounding by his curious props (some of which he had secreted
fromhis daughter’s bedroom); a spotlight trained on the side of his head, a Barbie doll, a toy troll, an
unlit cigarette, and John Desmond as his assistant stooge. The image of Eric Arnould, resplendent
in a conjurers purple robe, complete with a talisman dangling around his neck, held the audience
spellbound, as he intoned the connection between magic and marketing. Russell Belk, with silken
tie, and hair in customary ponytail, masterfully delivered a presentation – through the metaphor of
Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale The Goblin and the Huckster – on the desire of Eastern
Europeans to possess luxury goods. The pyrotechnics reached new heights when Craig
Thompson, a shameless refugee from the revitalized new-man syndrome, took to the stage ?ring
from all cylinders. His frenetic energy carried the audience, willingly it must be said, over the
allotted time slot, as he cast his sceptical eye over marketing’s new-fangled caring,
relationship-building veneer, by drawing parallels with the Hollywood blockbuster Jerry ‘‘Show
me the money!’’ Maguire.
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Other highlights included; Maisie the Pig, Einstein the Commodity, hymns by Van Morrison, a
Trivia Pop Quiz, The Emperor’s NewClothes, Postcards fromthe Edge, and howcould I forget the
great philosophical conundrums that were bandied about. Just who is Batman? Does having a
gold?sh, or not having one – as the case may be – really determine the nature of your sexual
proclivity? And most bizarrely of all, who, dear God who, are the cross-dressing lumberjacks?
Often those who become disillusioned with their creed embark on a retreat and sometimes, just
sometimes, such a journey kindles a spark of renewed faith. It seemed to me, as I sift through the
lambent traces, the still ?ickering embers of the Marketing Illuminations Spectacular that the
cod-cynicism with which our brand of postmodern marketing dismisses the marketing of
marketing as a panacea and its good-humoured, wholehearted acceptance of what it truly is – a
lovable rogue – is the ?rst step towards conquering the malaise of modern marketing. Posterity
will applaud the embattled minority gathered at this (un)convention who each had the courage to
step out of the shadows and paint their own bright shimmering patterns amid the prevailing
gloom.
While introspection is certainly not the only artistic mode for understanding subjective
experiences in consumer behavior – Sherry and Schouten (2002), for instance, has made a
strong case for poetry in consumer research – its credentials as an art form are worthy of
serious consideration. The perennial art critic argument about what precisely constitutes art
could be made in respect of introspection, but anyone entering the world of introspective
research, lest they be complete philistines, cannot fail to be impressed by the small fraternity
of part-time introspective practitioners they will encounter. I myself marvel at the force of
nature that is Stephen Brown, enduring auto-ethnographer, ?uent ‘‘skaz’’ speaker and
meteoric metaphor maker; enjoy the extensively researched, elegantly written, cogently
argued and immensely readable articles by Morris Holbrook; savour Maclaran’s (2003)
touching allegories; revel in the well turned anecdotes that Chris Hackley (2006, 2007)
delivers; enjoy Schau’s (2003) meaningful mediations, delight in Avi Shankar’s (2000)
relaxed, jocular, idiomatic familiarity, am fond of Steven’s (2006) telling tales, and I am
impressed, if not a little scared, of the celebrity-stalking, bunny-boiling,
new-kid-on-the-block, Marcus Wohlfeil (see Wohlfeil and Whelan, 2007, 2008). Just as
painters make art with colors and musicians with sounds, introspectors do so too with words.
Despite its artistic credentials, introspection has recently found itself embroiled in a fresh
controversy concerning its scienti?c utility. Woodside (2004, 2006) contends that
introspection suffers from a number of serious methodological problems, speci?cally:
attribution error, the inherent cultural prejudice of the researcher, and a general bias towards
self-fabrication. Gould (2006a), in response, outlines his own extensive efforts to control for
such problems, and wishes that Woodside would relax his requirement for con?rmation and
appreciate the inherent idiosyncratic value of introspective studies, the ?ndings of which
might not apply to broader consumer cohorts, but nonetheless retain some value in this age
of increasingly personalized marketing activity. Certainly, cognizance and controls for the
real concerns Woodside raises, would garner the method much more credibility in the
scienti?c marketing community, and perhaps help realize his prediction that ‘‘the future is
bright and the possibilities are profound for advancing SPI [subjective personal
introspection] in consumer research’’ (Woodside, 2006, p. 269). Nonetheless, proceeding
in a scienti?c direction might also have the unintended consequence of constricting the
unrestrained imagination and mad-genius pedigree of its most gifted narrators.
4. Aestheticism in arts marketing
Given the ideological positioning of introspection as an art form, how does it ?t in with arts
marketing? Certainly, one would presume that arts marketers would be very amenable to this
type of artistic approach, and often they are. On the academic side of the equation easel, the
topics that arts marketers study such as artistic perceptions, aesthetic appreciation, the
development of tastes over time, and other elements of ‘‘consumer aesthetics’’ are well
suited to introspective investigation (Holbrook, 1996). On the ground too, de Monthoux
(2004, p. 23), albeit without speci?cally mentioning introspection, notes that the mindset of
art-orientated ?rms, in line with introspection, tends not to ?t general rules to speci?c cases,
rather, ‘‘Examples of the speci?c are a starting point for an aesthetic judgement. People are
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elevated to the level of the universal. Instead of subsuming, humans judge or re?ect on
matters of aesthetics on the basis of single cases only.’’ Arts ?rms also increasingly
recognise that the marketing effort of their businesses – say in the serene, quiet
surroundings of a museum or gallery – should privilege not the art object itself but the
customer-perceived experiential value the object provokes (Berridge, 2007; Robertson and
Chong, 2008). Obviously, in such experience-oriented settings, it would be helpful if
marketing managers knew better the minds of their customers. Introspective research
potentially could illuminate this unknown. What is more, Bernstein and Kotler (2006) stress
the need for arts managers to understand how consumers ?t art into their lives. And if these
days it is true that, ‘‘a pile of bricks or dog s**t can be transformed into a work of art’’
(Lodziak, 2002, p. 41) then appreciation of aesthetic experiences seems set to increase, and
with it, a corresponding need for introspective research.
Yet despite this coalescence of interests and applications, introspection in arts marketing,
excepting the few studies mentioned earlier, is a relatively rare occurrence. Perhaps this
paucity occurs simply because like all creative approaches, making generalisations and
replication from introspective studies is dif?cult due to its subjective and intangible nature
(Fillis and Rentschler, 2005). Or could it be that despite all of the talk in our discipline about
the importance of things like creativity, art, and imagination (Kotler and Scheff, 1997; Brown
and Patterson, 2000; Fillis and Rentschler, 2005) we are still guilty of anti-aesthetic
tendencies of our own? Hastrup’s (2001, p. 53) astute observation that ‘‘there is still a slight
feeling of an inherently marginal positioning of the creative element in culture. . . creativity
has been put aside with the playful’’, has, I think, some relevance to the discipline of arts
marketing and especially of introspection viewed as a methodological approach. It is ironic
that we often boast of how the artistic fraternity now recognise the value of marketing and
even celebrate it, yet we, on the other hand, do not fully embrace artistry ourselves, at least in
a methodological sense. Perhaps this is because some of us subscribe to the mistaken but
widespread belief that the ideological purpose of art is merely to entertain, and that art is the
expression of humankind’s playful nature, and therefore cannot and should not be
associated with the hard labour that goes into constructing academic papers. Szostak
(1999) challenges this viewpoint. In making the case for art in economics, he assembles a
roster of authorities who strongly believe that art and labour belong together, and that art
should be a major focus of every academic’s work. Davis (2007, p. xiii) arguing, in a similar
fashion, about the diminution of art’s ideological positioning in the theatre, stresses that all art
‘‘works at the very foundations of the formation of consciousness. In doing so, it exceeds and
overturns ideology by revealing all of its contradictions and showing where, in our own lives,
those contradictions operate.’’ Introspection itself, like all good art, has a similarly serious
purpose, a point that Gould (2006b) makes clear, in asserting that introspective self
examination, is absolutely crucial, among other things, to the continued development of a
‘‘critical marketing’’ movement in our ?eld. Introspection in arts marketing then could also
have the same serious purpose by helping scholars and managers better portray,
comprehend and contend with the speci?c artistic challenges of their ?eld.
5. Initiating introspection
Perhaps the lack of introspection in arts marketing is also caused by the fear of attempting
such an intensely literary and creative project. Certainly, if you have ever read the oeuvre of
the top incumbent introspectionists with a view to emulating their work, it is likely that you will
be a little daunted by the task in hand. All too easily one can feel that one is in the company of
greatness, of rare geniuses exercising their mighty minds on marketing matters, of people
that have said all there is to say and said it better than you ever possibly could. Is it really
realistic that one day you too could become a superstar scholar with unrivalled intellectual
prowess? To put it bluntly, if – perish the thought – one of the presiding introspectionists
were to die tomorrow, could anyone – even with full access to all of their resources, their
research assistants, their book-buying bank accounts – do what they do? If truth be told,
probably not. There is no magic wand to wave or simple set of instructions that will ready a
budding introspective researcher. Given the task, a great many of us would ?ounder, for just
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as ‘‘autobiographers put down the events of their lives without consulting experts or
discussing theories of autobiographical composition’’ (Bauer, 2003, p. 119), so too
introspectionists suffuse their articles with what seems like a kind of manic methodlessness
allowing their individual life histories and inimitable whim, wit and wisdom to rule the day
(Sternglass, 1988). Indeed, Hackley (2003, p. 51) in relation to this type of research reckons,
‘‘that you have to be a very experienced and creative scholar, and a con?dent writer, to
produce a credible research report in as frankly a subjective vein as these authors.’’
Nonetheless, given certain ideological conditions, there are things that can bring
journeymen academics – like me – a little closer to the gurus of introspection. To begin, if
you are of the persuasion, ‘‘I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like – science’’, or
if you are a quant jock or a maths modeller, then formal introspection of any kind is probably
not for you. But if you have ever kept a diary or blog, are an avid fan of literature, or have
simply been known for your artistic sensitivity, then it is likely that you will naturally be
amenable to introspective writing. Though I am not sure how religiously they are practised in
the upper echelons of introspection, Gould (2007) also offers a series of useful exercises
such as: thought watching; thought content watching; watching senses and feelings; and
watching and engaging watching that can help ready the mind for introspective research.
At heart, though introspection is really about writing, a skill that Martin Amis has adroitly
described as ‘‘a sort of sedentary, carpet slippers, self inspecting, nose-picking,
arse-scratching, just you in your study and there is absolutely no way around that’’
(Topping, 2007). Closer to home, in an intensely re?exive rumination, Brownlie (1997, p. 265)
also says that as marketing academics: ‘‘Writing is probably the most demanding task that is
asked of us.’’ So how does one write right? With blood, sweat and tears, seems to the
answer. In the course of composing any article, there is usually an initial period of pain where
we delete, rephrase or reposition passages as we explore alternative lines of thought.
Following this usually comes a period of high elation when the author realises he has written
something that is as unfamiliar and surprising to him as he hopes it will be to his audience
(Abrams, 1953). Another essential to good writing is the understanding that it stems in the
main from reading, and from being highly attuned to the cultural environment. As Groys
(2002, p. 56) notes ‘‘few artists today will claim that they are the sole originator of their work.
Instead, the mark of an artist is in showing that he has been able to take an already existing
object and make use of it in an interesting way.’’
6. Hello, ‘‘I’’ must be going
This article attempts to show that introspection is fundamental to arts marketing research.
The article illustrates how introspection equates with arts marketing’s inherent interest in
consumption, creativity, and aestheticisation. While the exploration of aesthetic experiences
in arts marketing is undoubtedly in rude health, there is still not enough art evident in its
methods, especially coming from academics themselves who, on the one hand, are happy
to laud marketing as an art, but remain unwilling to practise what they preach, by producing
research that can itself be construed as an art form. Instead, they do what Feyerabend
(1975) warns against: they rely on procedural methods that are explicit, systematic, and
repeatable and are thus anything but artful. Gummesson (2002, p. 342) is quite correct in
saying that: ‘‘Marketing professors – with few exceptions – seem scared of the art part, the
scholarship. It is safer to stick by peer-approved methodology and techniques traditions –
the hammer and the saw – and the axioms of the current mainstream.’’ Such an approach
also sti?es creative thinking and could, at worst, turn academics into drones all producing
the same humdrum analyses of aesthetic consumption experiences. After all, the more we
purport to knowthe ways and means of howto do something, the more dif?cult it is to learn to
do it things differently.
Just as Scitovsky (1992, p. 76) argues, ‘‘Some books, plays, works of art, and other sources
of stimulation are gripping, exciting: they are able to shake us up and heighten our
consciousness’’, well-written introspections can provide a similar function by delivering rich
stream-of-consciousness accounts of marketing-relevant goodness from beginning to end.
Above and beyond the insight of its art, Gould (2006b, p. 69) has recently stressed the
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higher importance of introspective research, arguing passionately that despite its
controversial and confessional history it:
Can free us from any particular ideology (i.e. just another form of conceptualization) and release
us into a fuller and richer understanding. The ideology to be sure may stand up to our
examinations or it may not, but at least, we have attempted to take the investigation into a different
realm that goes beyond the simple bromides of any particular view. Moreover, without
considering the introspective, meditative, and meta-cognitive aspects of consciousness and
mind, how can we understand spirituality, consumption, or any other phenomenon?
Finally, let us kill the idea that introspection belongs in a category of research that Arnould
and Thompson (2007, p. 4) describe where ‘‘?ndings are context bound and a-theoretical
and that . . . only investigates entertaining esoterica (the wild and wacky world of consumer
oddballs) that lack practical relevance’’. This unwarranted belief that such singular studies
might be interesting and highly readable, but are too idiosyncratic and peculiar to merit
widespread dissemination; and that introspection should only be the preserve of scholarly
eccentrics – like the quintessential introspectivist, Morris Holbrook, who resides comfortably
on the fringes of the mainstream, churning out beautifully written vignettes on the latest
imponderabilia of his fancy, is misguided. Putting your ‘‘self’’ into your work, articulating the
enigma of interior life, does not necessarily situate you on the fringes, but rather smack in the
middle of contemporary research agendas. How so? Well, as you should know, a lot of
column inches in journals delve deep ‘‘inside consumption’’ (Mick and Ratneshwar, 2005),
focus on developing compelling brand personalities, and have stories to tell. Now as far as I
can tell, there are few sections of our scholarly community that take these lessons so
completely to heart, despite their so-called oddball credentials, as the subjective personal
intro-spectionists. Their intellectually passionate and strikingly innovative method, by
default, takes them deep into the subjective world of consumption, lays their distinctive
personalities bear, and creates story-tellers of them all.
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Weisberg, R.W. (2006), Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention,
and the Arts, Wiley, London.
Corresponding author
Anthony Patterson can be contacted at: [email protected]
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