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Interpretive Consumer Research
Edited by Cova, B. and Elliott, R.
Introduction
Noah took a photo of himself every day ... for six years ... Then he put the pictures in a mesmerizing sequence and uploaded the video onto YouTube. Noah was one of the candidates of the 2006 YouTube Awards. What lies behind this behaviour? What method can be applied to understand the YouTube phenomenon? What happens when videos refer to brands and consumption?
Consumers live in a narrative world in which stories are told and they write their own stories through deeds of consumption. In this sense, consumption is a narrative act, a conclusion which can be drawn from the current marketing and consumption literature ([25] Hopkinson and Hogarth-Scott, 2007; [39] Shankar et al. , 2001; [40] Shankar and Goulding, 2001). Marketing scholars have acquired an awareness of the relevance of narrative and narrative analysis applied to consumption and to marketing decisions. Branding, communication and consumption itself have been studied as narrative acts. We can currently observe a new field for the evolution of narrative analysis and narrative expression in consumption: YouTube.
YouTube is a rich repository of information and insights regarding markets and consumption. The aim of the paper is to contribute to a debate regarding the methods to study this new medium. How to extract knowledge about consumers from YouTube? That knowledge is embedded in the videos posted by consumers. Qualitative analysis can help to extract this knowledge. In particular, narrative analysis seems an interesting method to explore, due to the narrative nature of YouTube. The paper tries to contribute to the advancement of qualitative market research by exploring the application of the narrative approach to this new field.
Narrative and consumption
Narrative can be considered in a continuum from an ontological perspective, according to which "everything" is narrative, to a tool to understand specific marketing features (such as advertisements or brands). The first end of that continuum is probably to much wide to be operationally sound. The other end may limit the use of narrative analysis to few applications. The aim of this section is to define the boundaries of narrative analysis, by illustrating how narrative can be found in some aspects of consumption and marketing.
The relevance of narrative analysis...