Rethinking Marketing

Walle surveys the qualitative social sciences and humanities for instances where by design or accident they have had important things to say on the theory and practice of marketing and consumer research. He sees them as alternatives to the scientific method and quantitative analysis — complements but not surrogates. He describes examples of humanistic analysis that readers without special grounding in the humanities can grasp, a discussion of specific humanistic methods and how they relate to marketing research and management, a view of the intellectual roots that show scholars what these tools can accomplish (and their limitations as well), ending with a provocative appendix that distinguishes humanistic empiricism from other systems of thought and defines clearly its usefulness in marketing. Written in an entertaining, informal style, Walle's book is thought provoking, robust, and filled with insights that will give marketing and consumer researchers an unusual view of new strategies and techniques to do even the most familiar tasks better.

Walle reminds the reader that the humanities and qualitative social sciences offer a diverse and conflicting array of theories and methods, but he insists that their specific methods must not be embraced outside an appropriate context. Although marketers might prefer universally applicable methods that can be routinely plugged into any problem at hand, humanistic methods must be applied with an unusually subtle awareness of what they can and can not accomplish. He also shows how they are not merely analytical techniques, but embody a wide array of substantive knowledge as well, knowledge that must and can be recognized and considered. In his review and critique of the existing marketing research literature he shows that without guidance from the substantive thought derived from the humanities and qualitative social sciences, marketers can become trapped in counterproductive analysis and make significant errors in judgment. Well illustrated with stories, anecdotes, and his own research in the fields he is writing about, Walle's book is as useful as it is entertaining.