Reflexivity Theory in Marketing

Abstract

The dominant theoretical paradigm in marketing--logical positivism--assumes the task of scholarly inquiry to encompass four broad sets of activities: i) observation; ii) theory building; iii) hypothesis formulation; and iv) hypothesis testing. The goal of logical positivism is to develop models and theories which adequately explain the “objective situation”. Insight is achieved, knowledge created, theories refined, and the field is advanced as succeeding generations of theory-based hypotheses are accepted and/or rejected. A key assumption of the perspective is that interactions between phenomena observed (strategy, performance, market share, etc.) and observer (the marketing scholar) are not relevant to the inquiry. Indeed, the ideal has the observer detached, objective, and unobtrusive. For a variety of reasons, this ideal may not always hold up.