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EJM COMMENTARY
38,3/4
Action research in marketing
Chad Perry
310 Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, Australia, and
Evert Gummesson
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Keywords Action learning, Marketing, Learning methods, Marketing strategy
Abstract Develops a definition of action research that is particularly suitable for marketing and
based on the articles in this issue of European Journal of Marketing, emphasising the breadth of
action research in marketing and its distinctive interest in analytic generalisation, that is, in
building a theory that extends beyond the particular situation that is being action researched to
other situations.. The three sections of this commentary include: definition of traditional action
research, action learning and case research. Second, drawing of four implications from the articles
within this special issue about how action research can be done in marketing. Finally, presents a
broad definition of action research in marketing.

The term “action research” was invented by the eminent social scientist Kurt
Lewin over half a century ago (Lewin, 1946). Since then, it has become
acclaimed and criticised. Reasons for controversy are that the label of action
research is rather broad, is often left undefined, or it used in different ways
(Coghlan and Brannick, 2001). For example, Gummesson (2000) distinguishes
four types of action research for management: societal action science (the
traditional type where researchers help underprivileged groups to solve
problems), management action science (where the purpose is to understand
organizations, markets and customers better, usually to make an operation
more efficient), real-time action science (working in a research project
planned for action research), and retrospective action science (letting past
experience and action through later scholarly reflection become data in a
research project).
Thus the aim of this commentary is to develop a definition of action research
that is suitable for marketing in particular. That categorisation is based on the
articles in this issue and emphasises the breadth of action research in
marketing and its distinctive interest in analytic generalisation, that is, in
building a theory that extends beyond the particular situation that is being
action researched to other situations.
This editorial has three sections. First, it defines traditional action research,
European Journal of Marketing
action learning and case research. Then four implications are drawn from the
Vol. 38 No. 3/4, 2004
pp. 310-320
articles in this special issue about how action research can be done in
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited marketing. Finally, a broad definition of action research in marketing is
0309-0566
DOI 10.1108/03090560410518567 presented.
Traditional action research Action research
Consider the traditional form of action research first. There are four elements of in marketing
a traditional action research project (this discussion is based on Carson et al.,
2001 and the references listed there). That is, traditional action research
involves:
(1) a group of people who use spiralling cycles of activities that involve 311
planning, acting, observing and reflecting upon what had happened,
shown diagrammatically in Figure 1;
(2) to try to improve workgroup processes of action;
(3) that help to solve complex, practical problems about which little is
known; and
(4) produces at least one report to the workgroup’s organisation about what
was found.
During these spiralling cycles, what is the relationship between an individual
researcher and the other members of the action research group? How do an
action researcher and others in the group interact? A key point is that an action
researcher and his or her clients differ in knowledge. Clients are the “problem
owners” and they have experience-based knowledge from their actual context.

Figure 1.
The spiralling cycles of
activities of traditional
action research
EJM In contrast, the researcher has her or his theorybased knowledge, but such
38,3/4 knowledge can be crucial to more precisely identify actual problems, clarify
implicit assumptions, and through interaction and training change a client’s
perspective on the need to undertake actions for improvements (Argyris, 1983).
In more detail, there are three levels of researcher participation in an action
research project: technical, practical and emancipatory (Carr and Kemmis,
312 1986). In the first, technical level of participation the action researcher is merely
a technical “expert”, a consultant who tells other people what to do. This is the
normal form of a consultant’s project; for example, a technical agribusiness
consultant is working in a grain development project in a developed country
and simply transfers the technology across. This is the simplest form of action
research and may not even meet the requirements of traditional action research
noted above.
The second, practical level of participation by a researcher is like the
starting point of a “process consultant” (Schein, 1990), where the researcher
has a Socratic role, encouraging participation and reflection about processes
so that others can learn about learning about doing, and not just learn
about doing. The researcher helps the client understand of how he or she
fits into a system.
The third, emancipatory level of researcher participation is the ideal
according to some action researchers (Carr and Kemmis, 1986). Here the
researcher becomes a co-researcher with the other people, for responsibility for
the project is shared equally among everyone. In emancipatory action research,
the researchers aim to change the whole context of the problem and thus
liberate themselves from its causes, including their mental context. That is, this
type of participation:
. . . aims not only at technical and practical improvement [technical] and the participants’
better understanding [practical] . . . but also at changing the system itself and/or those
conditions which impede desired improvement in the system or organisation. It also aims at
the participants’ empowerment and self confidence (Zuber-Skerritt, 1996, p. 5).
This third level of participation is indeed an ideal one and is probably only
really achieved by “revolutionaries” who change the structure within their
whole organisation or community. In other words, this type of action researcher
becomes a transformative intellectual who transforms the view that people had
of their world and so emancipates them from their mental prison bars. When
emancipatory action research is being done in Latin America, for example, it
might aim to lead to revolutions to liberate the poor (Freire, 1972). When
emancipatory action research is done in education, it can lead to more
democratic classrooms. When it is done in business, it may not be so dramatic
but it can lead to new ways of thinking that restructure processes and save
costs. For example, action researchers from several departments can come
together to look at functional interrelationships affecting what was at first
thought to be just a marketing problem. This traditional form of action
research is rare in marketing. One reason may be that marketing is highly Action research
controlled by the market and its external forces, above all customers and in marketing
competitors, as noted in this special issue’s commentary – “In marketing, the
company’s external environment is always more important than the internal . . .
The external environment is neither particularly knowledgeable nor interested
in the company and its development.” (Gummesson, 2000, p. 105). In contrast,
traditional action research is more focused on employee resolution of internal
313
affairs.
A second reason is that marketing research as taught and practised in
business school today, emphasises the positivist survey methodology as the
highway to rigorous research and generalizable results. This positivistic,
theory testing research retards theory development in marketing. Moreover, it
is too often oriented to techniques rather than to useful results that can improve
understanding of essential phenomena and have an impact on enterprises and
society, as shown by the extreme disinterest in business school research by
managers. In one survey of marketing managers, “clear evidence was obtained
that academic marketing journals are neither read nor recognised by the great
bulk of the sample” (Mckenzie et al., 2002, p. 1196). Similarly, a thorough
investigation of senior managers, new MBA recruits into firms, their superiors
and consultants, found that business school research was definitely not useful
to practising managers:
... as far as we could tell, many key managers and executives pay little or no attention to
such research and findings [of business academics] . . . the direct impact appears nil . . .
not a single [manager] . . . who was interviewed cited the research of business schools as
either their most important strength or their major weakness.. The business world is . . .
ignoring the research coming out of business schools (Porter and McKibbin, 1988, p. 180;
emphases added).
A third reason is that marketing researchers are ignorant of action research
and even if they have read about it there are few academic environments where
they are encouraged to use it. The action research project becomes high risk –
”Where can we find examiners and reviewers that understand it and will accept
it?” – and is consequently hazardous to an academic career. A fourth reason is
that action research could be considered to be too demanding. Traditional
action research requires involvement, a secure personality and creativity as
well as an initial “preunderstanding” of business practices beyond those
provided in marketing textbooks (Gummesson, 2000, p. 15). It also requires an
ability to make decisions, take action, and balance the split personality of a
simultaneously involved actor and detached scholar. These demands of
traditional action research are explored in articles in this special issue.
In brief, a key difference between traditional action research and other
methods like surveys is that the action researcher is both an actor and a
researcher and attempts to contribute both to practice and academe. It requires
the involvement of the researcher as a consultant and expert, a facilitator or an
EJM interventionist in a change process, and a desire to dig into complex
38,3/4 mechanisms by living them.

Action learning is a sub-set of action research

The traditional action research above can be distinguished from action learning
314 (Zuber-Skerritt, 2001).Traditional action research necessarily focuses on a
workgroup within an organisation or community, all of whom are involved in
joint cycles of planning/acting/observing/reflecting. In contrast, action learning
emphasises individual learning from experience, and taking action as a result of
this learning. Admittedly, this action learning takes place within a group of
people that is called a set of learning associates or “comrades in adversity”
(Revans, 1982), but each individual within that group learns from separate
experiences that do not necessarily involve other associates, and the separate
experiences may not even involve workgroups. Action research involves action
learning, but not vice versa, because action research is more deliberate,
systematic and rigorous.

Case research is also included in this special issue

Finally, consider case research about a person’s or a group’s actions that
occurred in the past and that can affect our present understanding and
knowledge, and can in turn affect future actions. Essentially, case research
(based on Perry, 1998; 2001 and the references listed there) is:
.
an investigation of a contemporary, dynamic phenomenon and the
emerging body of knowledge about that phenomenon;
.
within the phenomenon’s real-life context where the boundaries between
the phenomenon and its context are unclear;
.
when explanation of causal links are too complex for survey or
experimental methods so that single, clear outcomes are not possible; and
.
the use of interviews, observation and other multiple sources of data that
could include the diaries and minutes of meetings that are the sources of
data in project action research.
Recent examples of case research in marketing that have been published in
journals are Alam (2002), Alam and Perry (2002), Batonda and Perry (2003),
Madden and Perry (2003), Riege et al. (2001) and Riege and Perry (2000).
Essentially, these articles have a literature review that develops some research
issues or objectives. Then the methodology’s data collection and analysis
processes (based on the considerable literature about them) are described, along
with a justification for its use. Then the data are analysed, based on the
research objectives, and a final theory is built. Case research is not wide spread
or well understood in scholarly marketing, although it has been used in PhD
programs in Sweden, Finland and Australia.
 That is, case research offers empirical data to be used for creating concepts, Action research
categories, models and general theories, even testing theories; it’s not just for in marketing
class-room exercises, examples, illustrations, and trendy success stories in
textbooks. It demands a lot from the researcher in both understanding the
techniques of case study research and accepting its hardships. Case study
research takes a systemic, holistic stance recognizing reality as it is, not just
settling for descriptions but adding value through conceptualization. It does
315
not assume away complexity, chaos, ambiguity, fuzziness, uncertainty and
dynamic forces for the convenience of the researcher and his or her analysis. It
is primarily qualitative and interpretive, although quantitative research can be
part of it. An observation, which is both amusing and scary, is that quantitative
research starts and ends with qualitative assumptions and subjective
interpretation, and even in its most regulated and systematic collection and
processing of numbers, is dependent on judgment calls and inter-subjective
agreements.

This issue’s concern about theory building in action research is

distinctive
Case research is not usually placed within the umbrella of action research, but
it is for this special issue, because it raises important points about theory
building from particular situations for the emerging body of knowledge about a
phenomenon. The discussion of action research and action learning above
emphasised the particular situation within which it occurs, but what about
other situations in the firm or in similar types of firms, and in other firms in the
same industry or other industries? That is, a traditional action research project
may enhance learning within one organisation, but it rarely addresses the
question: how can the action research project also make a contribution to a
body of knowledge that interests academics and consultants interested in
principles that can apply in other organisations? That is, a researcher faces two
goals or “imperatives” (McKay and Marshall, 2001, p. 46). One goal is to solve a
practical problem within an organisation, and the second is to generate new
knowledge and understanding about other organisations. How to address both
these goals has been addressed rarely in the action research literature and there
is “little direct guidance on ‘how to do’ it” (McKay and Marshall, 2001, p. 49)
(although guidance for thesis writers is in Perry and Zuber-Skerritt, 1994;
Zuber-Skerritt and Perry, 2002).
Because there is this little guidance in action research literature in other
disciplines, it is somewhat surprising that both these goals of addressing the
particular situation and generalising from it to other situations, is discussed in
nearly all the articles in this special issue! Indeed, it is this feature that provides
the cutting-edge feature of this collection of action research articles. Perhaps
this feature is caused by the fact that many marketing phenomena are clearly
determined by the external reality of a marketplace, as noted above. In contrast,
EJM action researchers in other disciplines like management can emphasise just the
38,3/4 one organisational situation because their internal, particular world is so
powerful.
These two goals of the particular and the general reflect the different
paradigms of organisational action researchers and the readers of academic
journals and theses. Those two goals can be best understood by distinguishing
316 three “worlds” of phenomena that scientists can investigate. For each world,
scientists share a worldview or paradigm that is internally consistent, rational
and logical. In more detail, we consider three worlds identified by Popper and
their corresponding scientific paradigms (based on Magee, 1985 and Guba and
Lincoln, 1994):
(1) World 1 fits the positivism paradigm consisting of objective, material
things. Here, in essence, reality is a straightforward concept that is easy
to measure. We need not consider this physical sciences world further
here because marketing is a social science.
(2) World 2 fits the critical theory and constructivism paradigms and
“consists of the subjective world of minds”, that is, of meanings. The two
paradigms of this world are sometimes combined into one paradigm
called the hermeneutic or interpretive paradigm (Gummesson, 2000;
Zuber-Skerritt, 2001). In this world, “perception is reality”. Traditional
action research fits into this world 2 and the critical theory paradigm;
action learning fits into this world 2 and the constructivism paradigm.
(3) World 3 fits the realism paradigm and consists of abstract things that
are born of people’s minds but exist outside and independently of any
one person. These abstract things are the phenomena investigated by
many social scientists. Here, a person’s perceptions are important
because they are a window on to that blurry, external reality, rather than
being important for their own sake. Case research often fits into this
world and the realism paradigm. This is the world and paradigm of
readers of academic journals and theses, and also the world of theories
within a consultant’s mind when he or she approaches a new action
project.
Case research has addressed the important issue of bridging the two different
worlds of traditional action research and academic/consultant knowledge. This
bridge can be called analytic generalisation (Yin, 1994). This analytic
generalisation is theory building, that is, the development of a holistic
framework out of past, particular situations that can be used to plan action in
future, other situations (Gummesson, 2000); in contrast, statistical
generalisation that is the cornerstone of positivism and tests if a random
sample fits a population. In-depth case interviews, action learning or traditional
action research can all be used as the data to be used in the process of theory
building, for all three provide the in-depth understanding of structure, process
and driving forces that are required to construct the frameworks that will be Action research
the basis of future action. Indeed, the major difference between the three types in marketing
of research considered in this special issue is that the researcher is personally
involved in action research and action learning, and the researcher learns about
this involvement in action through other people in case research. In other
words, traditional action research is allied to case research although traditional
action research is “the most demanding and far-reaching method of doing case
317
study research” (Gummesson, 2000, p. 116).

Four implications of the special issue’s articles for marketing action

research
This collection of articles about traditional action research, action learning and
case research has four implications for readers of EJM and other marketing
researchers. First, action research does have a role in many areas of the
marketing discipline. Wherever a workgroup of marketing people has to
grapple with its work processes, traditional action research can indeed be used
to improve those processes. That action research can consist of a researcher
working within a group for as long as six months (as in the article by O’Leary,
Rao and Perry) and even for longer times (as in Ballantyne), or in shorter
workshops (as in Daniel and Wilson).
Second, what seems to mark action research in marketing is a greater
emphasis on the external, outside world of the market place; in contrast, action
research in other settings usually emphasises the internal, subjective world of
the participants or the social world within an organisation. That is, action
research in marketing is more concerned with generalising from a particular
situation to many others than it is in some other disciplines. An understanding
of scientific paradigms can help this generalisation to be done and can
“liberate” some researchers from the one paradigm of their personal
preferences and training; in brief, this understanding allows action research
to be a methodology rather than an ideology. Thus marketers should be careful
that their action research projects are not judged by action researchers from
other disciplines like management who sometimes appear to ignore the
importance of phenomena in Popper’s world 3 and look at only the subjective
elements of a constructed, world 2 reality. Examiners of marketing research
theses and reviewers of marketing journal articles should be chosen with care,
to ensure they appreciate that phenomena from both of Popper’s worlds 2 and 3
can interest social scientists.
Next, note how all the articles deal with marketing managers rather than
consumers. Marketing management phenomena are legitimate topics for
marketing research, but the methodologies to investigate them have to focus on
complex activities in an in-depth way that quantitative methods cannot do. As
well, competitive secrecy makes response rates to surveys too small. Thus
EJM these three forms of action research are effective and efficient methods to
38,3/4 investigate marketing management phenomena.
The final implication is that action research is an umbrella term in
marketing that can cover the three methods of project action research, action
learning and case research. These three methods cover a person’s or a group’s
actions that occurred in the past and that can affect our present understanding
318 and knowledge, and can in turn affect future actions. Thus they represent three
closely related ways of exploring the social science world of marketing in an
appropriate way.
In brief, these four implications suggest action research in marketing should
be called “marketing action research” or “interactive marketing research” or
“marketing action science” (Argyris et al., 1985) to reflect its greater breadth
than traditional action research, for action research in marketing can cover
action learning and case research. This breadth is required because of the
importance of the eternal reality of customers and competitors to marketing
management, and because of the related importance that marketing researchers
place upon analytic generalisation. This marketing research has the merit of
privileged access to reality (Clark, 1972), and does not just rely upon the claims
of respondents and their perceptions in a survey. Anthropological approaches,
using direct or participant observation, are useful but they do not take you as
far as marketing action research can do. There is always the risk in this broad
approach to action research that the methodology of traditional action research
will be deprived of its core and that its practice will be diluted; but that risk has
to be balanced against the risk in a fundamentalist strategy for applying the
methodology that it will be useless except in some very select cases. Some kind
of compromise and balance between different and conflicting demands is
needed. For further discussion of methodological issues for research in
marketing and in management where action research plays a role, see
Gummesson (2000; 2001; 2002).

Conclusion
In conclusion, action research in marketing must address the importance of the
eternal reality of customers and competitors to marketing management, and
the related importance that marketing researchers place upon analytic
generalisation. What should be recognised under the label of action research in
marketing need not be conclusively established here. But this special issue of
EJM is a first step towards an understanding of what that label could cover.
That first step is that marketing action research is about a person’s or a group’s
involvement in actions related to a market place that occurred in the past and
that can affect our present understanding and knowledge, which can in turn
affect future actions. This research can use data sources ranging from the
emancipatory participation of a researcher in a traditional action research
project through to case research. The cutting-edge examples of this kind of
action research in this special issue make us hope that its use will increase. If Action research
that happens, practising marketing managers will begin to read reports of in marketing
business school research, and marketing students and researchers will master
management action competencies as well as academic ones.

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Further reading
Perry, C., Riege, A. and Brown, L. (1999), “Realism’s role among scientific paradigms in
marketing research”, Irish Marketing Review, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 16-23.