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Complete samenvatting tentamen Consumer Studies for Sustainability (YSS36806)
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Begrip DefinitieLecture 1: Lenses on Consumer Studies
“Lenses on consumer studies” About the same situation may be looking differently when looking at it from a different
point of view.
▪ Assumptions can lead to mistakes.
▪ Having a different lens/perspective on things can help avoid mistakes and
make inclusive decisions.
Making invalid assumptions/ assumptions not valid for everybody or
looking from own point of view → decisions problematic for some
others – E.g. right-handed coffee cup is not a good idea from different
points of view.
▪ Challenging assumptions is important → can help create consumer experience
for all.
Science (Knowledge from) the careful study of the structure and behaviour of the physical world,
esp. by watching, measuring, and doing experiments, and the development of theories
to describe the results of these activities.
Social (consumer) science The (scientific) study of (consumption) society and the way people (consumers) live.
RQ Central to science → trying to figure out the general structure of the world and how
it behaves = what we want to know → links to research questions.
▪ Knowledge from answering different types of research questions.
Exploratory RQ To comprehend a new phenomenon.
Exploratory as you’re creating a new idea of ▪ New phenomenon we hardly know anything about (blank area); not enough
a structure! – About development of theories
theories or models to fill it up → create structural knowledge by observing.
▪ Observations might show repeating patterns (observe) → induce underlying
structure (induce)
▪ From observations to a more generic conclusion about what binds all
the observations together.
Confirmatory RQ To confirm whether explored regularities hold, and to confirm assumed relations.
Confirmatory as you’re confirming ▪ We have an idea of a structure (induced by observing or found from
expectations (developed theories, theories/previous research) and are going to confirm whether that holds true /
relation,..)! – About describing results and whether assumptions made from that hold.
testing theories
Explanatory RQ To interpret outcomes of exploratory and confirmatory questions towards real world
Explanatory as you try to explain other things relevance.
you find!
▪ Find something ”different” in confirmatory research → adjust theory/
expectations but also in need of additional insights to explain where
differences come from.
RM Research questions can be answered by using relevant research methods.
▪ Method should fit RQ
2 groups of methods:
Qualitative: to try bringing new information through interviews, focus groups, or
observations without making strong statistical or qualitative claims.
Quantitative: a more technical approach by using surveys (e.g. election polls -
% for each party) or experiments (e.g. test different products against each
other and look how much people like it) to get numbers in order to create
distributions or likelihoods, or run statistical tests on relations.
Types of activity, research aim, question Research questions and research methods tend to link (not one on one).
and method ▪ Observe to create regular schemes (explore to understand) – induction
▪ Make predictions from regular schemes, e.g. whether two things are the same
– deduction
▪ Test them (try to confirm predictions) – testing
▪ Evaluate amount to which they are true (explain differences) – evaluation
Methods tend to be more qualitative in exploratory questions, and more quantitative in
testing. But! You can also do a survey in observation and generalize from it. E.g. ask
, questions → look for clusters of people (you have no idea which clusters might occur)
= inducing structure from survey.
Philosophy of sciences Addresses big questions such as what qualifies as science, what makes theories reliable,
E.g. positivism and what is the purpose of science?
3 elements to science:
Philosophy of science About “What is science?”
▪ Position on what is the truth, how it can be studied and the researcher’s role
therein (positivist vs (e.g.) interpretivist)
Research questions About “What do I need to know from my research?”
▪ Do I want to explore things I do not know (exploratory), confirm things I
suspect (confirmatory), or explain things that mismatch my expectation
(explanatory)?
Research methods About “How do I answer my question?”
▪ By having the more (open) qualitative or (closed) quantitative data?
Example mixed methods One study explores something with interviews and immediately confirms that with an
experiment.
▪ 2 different research questions: 1) find out what matters, and 2) test whether
it is the best way forward
Survey = not always confirmatory; it can be exploratory! Esp. when creating unknown
segments of consumers. E.g. “Looking at age, gender, etc., are there specific
constellations of these factors that occur frequently?” instead of “Does age matter?”
▪ Older, white, highly educated males are more often SEO’s = exploration rather
than confirmation
RQ’s Exploratory: broad to narrow (build structures/theories)
Confirmatory: narrow (validate or reject)
Explanatory: narrow to broad (broaden up to understand)
Philosophy of science (POS) and look Photographers apply lenses to gain different views of the world → POS also gives a
on the world
different view on the world.
▪ 2 main POS approaches in social sciences: positivism, interpretivism
Philosophical looks on the world of (Logical) Positivism: there are real truths that can be unveiled by neutral
science researchers that don’t put anything of themselves in the research.
: there are some truths, but they are coloured by biases and understanding
of the researchers and the context.
Positivism Philosophical perspective stereotypically associated with (the whole idea of) science (in
particular natural science).
▪ Ontology (view on reality) = realism: there are real truths, independent of
others (scientist) (scientists don’t metaphor that truth, but are there to unveil
that truth).
▪ Epistemology (view on knowledge) → scrutinizing an object (if correctly) gives
more true information leading to full understanding when stacked up (rather
naïve).
▪ Objectivism and Dualism: there is an objective way of looking and there is a
separation between the researcher and what they study.
o Separate emotions from facts / mind from body to find true
knowledge.
o Probabilistic and partial information increases understanding.
Post-positivism Epistemology (view on knowledge) → scrutinizing an object (if correctly) gives more
probabilistic, partial information that gradually increases understanding.
▪ Only gets more likely that it’s the case.
▪ One counter-example completely nullifies pile of examples.
▪ Objectivism and Dualism: there is an objective way of looking and there is a
separation between the researcher and what they study.
o Full separation of emotions from facts, from context is impossible.
, o Probabilistic and partial information increases understanding but can
be revised.
Comte → Durkheim → Wundt ▪ Comte: adopted the (recent) scientific method in physics to social phenomena/
social science.
▪ Durkheim: modernized Comte’s ideas by keeping the “natural science”
approach of looking at society with objectivity, rationalism and causality.
▪ Wundt: “father of experimental psychology”→ had first psychological labs
where people were exposed to experiments to look at whether regularities in
human behavior of individuals could be found.
Pragmatism Thinking of or dealing with problems in a practical way, rather than by using theory or
abstract principles.
▪ Early debate in the social sciences was about language.
▪ Social phenomena often involve language (words carry deeper loadings).
▪ William James: interpret language according to what you want to study (“Let’s
not make language leading, let’s be pragmatic about what language means”)
▪ Rephrase the question pragmatically for what we need to know!
Post-positivism Karl Popper →(Logical) Positivism grinded down.
▪ Stacking observations (logical positivism) is not enough, it’s not inevitably
building a theory!
▪ 1 counterexample counts heavier than many examples (one counterexample
needed to throw away whole stack).
Counterexample? Revise theory.
Positivism – Post positivism – Are Empiricist paradigms.
Pragmatism ▪ Genuine knowledge is true (by definition or derived)
From reason and logic (previous theory)
Observations
▪ Observations trump theories (observation > literature, counterevidence >
literature → revise theory not observation)
▪ Observations lead to theory about cause – effect relations
▪ Combining causal relations gives insight into society (say something about
society by building big networks of cause-effect relations)
Reductionism – everything needs to be simplified to get to cause-effect relations →
brings along an associated approach called reductionism.
Reductionism Says that understanding comes from combined observations.
▪ Efficient to subdivide a phenomenon in simple observations (simple
observations can be more rigorous) → recombination leads to the
understanding.
Problem! Destroying links, interaction effects, feedback loops leads to individualized
cause-effect relations → bringing them back up into a more complex social situation
becomes messy because all the interactions are more important than the small parts.
Criticism on “hard” reductionism (1) Ignores conditional effects / interactions / feedback loops (e.g. strengthening of an effect
through different things).
▪ Interactions and feedback loops can cause irreducible complexity which
requires - systems approach
Feedback loops create a complexity that cannot be understood by
looking at a single causal relation.
Agent based modelling, causal loop diagrams, challenges, draw
system boundaries to keep system smaller than the world,
computational capacity, comprehensiveness
Criticism on Positivism / Reductionism Poorly applied reduction can lead to observations that cannot be generalized. E.g. a lot
(2) of medicine not tailored to women (pharmaceutical research on adult males (less
hormonal fluctuation v.v. women, less ethical issues v.v. children))
▪ Underlying assumption (paradigm) = adult males represent all of humanity →
nasty results!
Criticism on Reductionism (3) Reductionism is unavoidable to make any study feasible.
, Criticism – tend to caricatures ▪ (Most) positivists do not reduce everything to the movement of atoms. Instead
they look for meaningful systems (Dennett) (so they do not reduce in
absurdism, but find a meaningful level of reduction).
▪ (Most) interpretivists do not consider the position of Jupiter in all their research.
They draw system boundaries (so they reduce).
The same clues can lead to many different conclusions and honing in on one conclusion
can create a lot of tunnel view.
Criticism on Positivism “Clean and logical observations” can be achieved by researchers being completely
detached from topic of study
▪ Assumes that researchers lack personal motivation, emotions, conviction, but
can a male medical researcher do that?
▪ ^ Even in the hard technical sciences, taking the interpretations of researchers
in the mix, is unavoidable → interpretivism (ideas of Kuhn)
Criticism – but let’s not throw out the ▪ Good (positivist) scientists keep revising their work to fit context and are aware
baby… they may have biases (even if they cannot control them).
▪ Good scientists do not ignore robust findings because they were found by
someone else (who does not share their values).
Where do we stand? ▪ Keep what you need, from hard facts and truths.
▪ Criticize what is truly biased and find other ways (exploratory or explanatory
research questions and methods to help open the blinds and see what is behind
it).
Interpretative paradigm
On the importance of understanding The interpretative approach makes different assumptions than the positivist approach.
assumptions ▪ Ontology (what is?): assumptions about what constitutes reality – To what
extent does a genuine reality that can be shared by all of us actually exist?
▪ Epistemology (what does it mean to know?): assumptions about what
knowledge is and how we know what we know – Where does the knowledge
stem from (e.g. measuring consumer attitudes by surveys, observation)?
▪ Paradigm (set of assumptions of reality and knowledge): research tradition
based on a shared set of epistemological and ontological assumptions –
Positivist vs Interpretative paradigm
▪ Methodology (how can the inquirer go about finding out whatever they believe
can be known?): how do we gain knowledge about the world in a way
consistent with assumptions?
Related with paradigm → if you do not accept a 1 reality (it’s context-
dependent so no general rules) → no computational analyses.
▪ Method (techniques/procedures used to collect and analyze data): what
approaches (method) to collect and analyze data produce that knowledge?
Summary of assumptions
Assumptions Positivist qualitative Interpretative
Ontological (nature of reality) Objective; tangible; single; fragmentable; Socially constructed; multiple; holistic;
divisible; deterministic; reactive contextual; voluntaristic; proactive
There is an objective reality that is divisible Reality is a social construction, it’s multiple
into pieces. Studying separate relationships as everyone can experience a complete
(X leading to Y) is useful. different reality and we have to understand
why.
Nature of social beings Deterministic; reactive Voluntaristic; proactive
Giving a person a stimulus gives a response, Each individual responds differently to
e.g. information about a product → higher information or might already see that
information different.
buying intention.
Axiological (overriding goal) Explanation; prediction Understanding
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