بررسی تاثیر قوم نگاری بازارمحور(1994)آرنولد و دالندرف

This paper evaluates the significance and research impact of Arnould and Wallendorf's (1994), “Market-Oriented Ethnography: Interpretation Building and Marketing Strategy Formulation” (A&W). A&W provides a comprehensive theoretical aspect of market-oriented ethnography which is useful to marketing practitioners in formulating marketing strategy. A citation analysis is conducted to assess the scholarly impact of A&W. In the 13 year period (1996–2009), A&W receives 204 citations in Google Scholar and 86 citations in Scopus. In total 43 journals include citations to A&W. The findings show that the cited authors are referencing the work of A&W mainly in two aspects: (1) using an ethnographic approach as an exemplar qualitative methodology; and (2) using an etic/emic perspective to provide deeper insights in a cultural context. Evidence in this report supports the assertion that A&W is a seminal contribution to advancing alternative research methods in marketing in general that go beyond the continuing dominant logic of empirical positivism.

The positivist paradigm, a quantitatively oriented approach that follows a linear deductive path, is dominant in marketing research. The growing emphasis in the subjectivity of perception and the constructed nature in marketing research, is transforming the marketing phenomenon to be more a socially constructed enterprise (Hirschman, 1986). Hunt (1990, p. 8) agrees with this changing phenomenon and asserts that “marketing research seems implicitly to assume a realist perspective.” Consequently, this leads to the emergence of the interpretive paradigm into the marketing research. The present paper discusses Arnould and Wallendorf's (1994) contribution as an interpretive paradigm. A&W emphasizes how ethnography, an interpretative paradigm, plays a crucial role in studying consumption behaviour ultimately which can lead to an efficient marketing strategy. A&W is a profoundly important scholarly work because the article lays out a comprehensive theoretical aspect of market-oriented ethnography for marketing researchers and practitioners. In addition, A&W provides implication details of market-oriented ethnography for marketing practitioners. The overall objective of this paper is to probe the significance of A&W in terms of its impact on research in marketing. According to Armstrong (2003), a journal article is significant if its research impact satisfies four criteria: replication, validity, usefulness, and surprise (which apply in some situations). A&W meets the criteria of replication and validity as many researchers are citing the paper in both theoretical and methodological aspects. In terms of usefulness, A&W clearly depicts how the use of ethnography methods are applicable in evaluating consumers' consumption and usage in terms of market segmentation and targeting; product and service positioning; and product, service and brand management. A systematic citation analysis of A&W from Scopus is conducted to achieve the paper's objective. As Woodside (2009, p.1) suggests, the “number of citations of an author's journal articles, books, and other publications by other authors is a measure of impact of an author's work.” Although the number of citations can be useful in evaluating the impact of a journal paper, this does not necessary substantiate that the particular journal paper is valuable. According to Armstrong and Green (2007), a research journal article is only valuable when it provides evidence-based knowledge to its readers. This paper is organized as follows. First, this article discusses A&W in depth and describes its specific research context. Next, the present article includes a discussion of the significance and research impact of the paper by using its number of citations as a criterion. Finally, the article discusses conclusions and limitations.

The present study summarizes A&W for two reasons. First, the interpretive paradigm has become more significant in marketing research. Second, A&W is an important scholarly work in terms of comprehensive theoretical and methodological perspectives and its impact in the relevant literature. The analysis of recent and primacy of citations leads to the conclusion that authors are citing A&w for the following reasons: (1) market-oriented ethnography as an exemplar qualitative methodology; and (2) etic/emic perspective to provide deep insights into the processes of antecedent conditions that affect outcome conditions within cultural contexts. This impact analysis has a number of limitations. First, the present study only uses Google.Scholar and Scopus to analyze the impact of one journal article. Therefore future research might use other databases as an analysis tool to extend the discussion. Second, this paper only discusses the five recent, most cited, and earliest journal papers citing the target article, thus future research might examine the most recent papers in each year so as to examine the trends of how and why the authors are citing the target journal article.