Informed eclecticism: a research paradigm for the twenty-first century

The authors build on their paper presented at the MRS Conference 2000, repo rting on a large-scale study among MRS members and their vision of the futu re for the marketing research industry The authors start by examining the m ajor research paradigms within the market research industry. The reality of the reported shift away from positivism to the interpretivist paradigm is discussed and emergence of a new paradigm - informed eclecticism - is postu lated within the changing context of the marketing research industry. This new paradigm requires a greater knowledge and appreciation of how different disciplines, theories, models and metaphors can bring different perspectiv es and so greater insight to marketing issues. Informed eclecticism is one way of adding value to the research process. While past papers have discuss ed the nature of new paradigms few discuss how a paradigm education revolut ion can be implemented. This paper spells out some key human resource manag ement issues. The paper represents the authors' thinking based on an extens ive literature review, personal experience, exploratory depth interviews wi th clients and practitioners and a sample survey of PL IRS members (n = 339 ).