Philosophical Debates in Marketing and the Application of Critical Realism to Online Relationship Marketing

Abstract

Research paradigms form a critical part of research, defining what is to be studied by a researcher and how it is to be studied. Marketing researchers have engaged in philosophical debates on paradigms arguing on which paradigm best fits marketing science. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ontological, epistemological and methodological debates in the field of marketing, and justify the choice of one of the paradigms to undertake a research on online relationship marketing practices in the Ghanaian banking sector. The paper reviews five paradigms, namely interpretivism, positivism, realism, relativism and critical realism, as they underpin the key debates in marketing. Concerning relationship marketing, though the debates have between positivist and interpretive/phenomenology, a conciliatory view, embracing the strengths of different research methods used in the two paradigms, have been echoed. The paper makes a case for using critical realism for a research seeking to describe how Ghanaian banks develop online relationship marketing practices, and to determine the constituents of these practices. The paper explains the fit of the paradigm with the research topic and discusses how the research could be undertaken. The paper concludes that marketing researchers need to understand the dynamism of marketing concepts and identify appropriate research problems and questions which can be adequately addressed within their research paradigms.