CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 1,142Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and IdentificationConsumer Behavior and Market DynamicsDigital Marketing and Social Media

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 103 of the 104 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Interpreting Consumers: A Hermeneutical Framework for Deriving Marketing Insights from the Texts of Consumers’ Consumption Stories

Thompson, Craig J.·1997·Journal of Marketing Research
DOI 10.1177/002224379703400403
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The author describes and illustrates a hermeneutically grounded interpretive framework for deriving marketing-relevant insights from the “texts” of consumer stories and gives an overview of the philosophical and theoretical foundations of this approach. Next, the author describes a hermeneutic framework for interpreting the stories consumers tell about their experiences of products, services, brand images, and shopping. An illustrative analysis demonstrates how this framework can be applied to generate three levels of interpretation: (1) discerning the key patterns of meanings expressed by a given consumer in the texts of his or her consumption stories, (2) identifying key patterns of meaning that emerge across the consumption stories expressed by different consumers, and (3) deriving broader conceptual and managerial implications from the analysis of consumer narratives. This hermeneutic approach is compared and contrasted to the means—end chains laddering framework, the “voice of the customer” approach to identifying consumer needs, and market-oriented ethnography. The author concludes with a discussion that highlights the types of marketing insights that can result from a hermeneutic interpretation of consumers’ consumption stories and then addresses the roles creativity and expertise play in this research orientation.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/002224379703400403

Cites

103 of 103 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 104 references

Research works printed but not linked: 35

  1. BarthesRoland (1957/1972), Mythologies, Annette Lavers, trans. New York: Hill and Wang.
  2. BarthesRoland (1974), S/Z, Richard Miller, trans. New York: Hill & Wang.
  3. BartosRena (1989), Marketing to Woman Around the World. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
  4. BourdieuPierre (1984), Distinction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  5. BrownStephen (1995), Postmodern Marketing. London: Routledge.
  6. 10.1177/002224377701400311 · DOI
  7. de CerteauMichel (1984), The Practices of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  8. DerridaJacques (1976), Of Grammatology. Gayatri C. Spirak, trans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  9. DichterErnest (1964), The Handbook of Consumer Motivation. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  10. GadamerHans-Georg (1993), Truth and Method, 2d ed., translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall. New York: Continuum (Original German version published in 1960).
  11. GeertzClifford (1983), Local Knowledge. New York: Basic Books.
  12. GergenKenneth J., and GergenMary M. (1986), “Narrative Form and the Construction of Psychological Science,” in Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct, SarbinTheodore R., ed. New York: Praeger, 22–44.
  13. GlaserMilton (1985), “I Listen to the Market,” in On Signs, BlonskyMarshall, ed. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 467–74.
  14. GrossBarbara L. (1987), “Time Scarcity: Interdisciplinary Perspective and Implications for Consumer Behavior,” in Research in Consumer Behavior, Vol. 2, ShethJagdish N., and HirschmanElizabeth C., eds. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1–54.
  15. HirschmanElizabeth C. (1987), “Theoretical Perspectives of Time Use: Implications for Consumer Behavior Research,” in Research in Consumer Behavior, Vol. 2, ShethJagdish N., and HirschmanElizabeth C., eds. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 55–81.
  16. HuizingaJohan (1950), Homo Ludens. Boston: Beacon Press.
  17. JenksChris (1993), Culture. New York: Routledge.
  18. KellnerDouglas (1992), “Popular Culture and the Construction of Postmodern Identities,” in Modernity & Identity, LashScott, and FriedmanJonathan, eds. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 141–77.
  19. KohlerWolfgang (1947), Gestalt Psychology. New York: New American Library Press.
  20. 10.1177/002224299005400201 · DOI
  21. LavinMarilyn, and ArchedeaconThomas J. (1989), “The Relevance of Historical Method in Consumer Research,” in Interpretive Consumer Research, HirschmanElizabeth C., ed. Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 60–68.
  22. LiftonRobert Jay (1993), The Protean Self: Human Resiliance in an Age of Fragmentation. New York: Basic Books.
  23. LipsitzGeorge (1990), Time Passages. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  24. MacFarquharLarissa (1994), “This Semiotician Went to Market,” Lingua Franca, 4(September/October), 59–66.
  25. MatthewsGlenna (1987), Just A Housewife. New York: Oxford.
  26. NeisserUlric (1976), Cognition and Reality. New York: W.H. Freeman
  27. RandazzoSal (1993), Mythmaking on Madison Avenue. Chicago: Probus Publishing.
  28. RobinsonJohn A., and HawpeLinda (1986), “Narrative Thinking as a Heuristic Process,” in Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct, SarbinT., ed. New York: Praeger, 111–28.
  29. SarbinTheodore R. (1986), “The Narrative as a Root Metaphor for Psychology,” in Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct, SarbinTheodore R., ed. New York: Praeger, 3–21.
  30. SartreJean Paul (1956), Being and Nothingness. New York: Washington Square.
  31. SchorJuliet B. (1992), “Exiting the Squirrel Cage,” in The Overworked American. New York: Basic Books, 139–66.
  32. TambyahSiok Kuan (1997), “A Sociohistoric and Phenomenological Analysis of an Ethnic Enclave,” working paper, School of Business, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
  33. van den BergJan H. (1970), A Different Kind of Existence: Principles of a Phenomenological Psychotherapy. Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press.
  34. WiddershovenGuy (1993), “The Story of Life: Hermeneutic Perspectives on the Relationship Between Narrative and Life History,” in The Narrative Study of Lives, JosselsonRuthellen, and LieblichAmia, eds. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1–20.
  35. WillisPaul (1981), Learning to Labor, 2d ed. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 201–300 of 1,000

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Thompson, C. J.
Affiliations
University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
Corresponding author
Thompson, Craig J.
ORCID
Thompson, Craig J.
Venue
Journal of Marketing Research
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
1997-11
Volume
34
Issue
4
Pages
438-455
ISSN
  • 0022-2437 (ISSN-L)
  • 1547-7193
DOI
10.1177/002224379703400403
OpenAlex
W2323074043
Cited by
1,142
References
104
Citations by year
2026: 21 · 2025: 38 · 2024: 35 · 2023: 48 · 2022: 38 · 2021: 45 · 2020: 58 · 2019: 52 · 2018: 73 · 2017: 57 · 2016: 58 · 2015: 72 · 2014: 66 · 2013: 67 · 2012: 51
FWCI
14.09
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
Journal of Marketing Research (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Consumer Behavior and Market Dynamics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Digital Marketing and Social Media
Keywords
hermeneutics, consumer narratives, customer experience, marketing insights, voice of the customer, brand image, creative research

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review