Working the limits of method: the possibilities of critical reflexive practice in marketing and consumer research

Developed primarily through feminist critiques of the production of knowledge, researcher reflexivity has been identified in consumer research (Wallendorf and Brucks 1993; Hirschman 1993; Thompson 2002) and in the wider social sciences (e.g. Wasserfall 1993; Mauthner and Doucet 2003) as a way to address power and control in the research encounter, to attend to the researcher/researched dynamic and to give insightful commentaries into the research process itself. Following the call for consumer and marketing researchers to “exhibit a degree of refl exivity” in order to “recognise the role of the researcher in the production of knowledge” (Tadajewski and Brownlie 2008, p. 10), this paper develops a structured approach to the possibilities of critical reflexive practice in marketing and consumer research.