Using vignettes to study family consumption processes

Abstract

The use of vignettes for qualitative consumer research is discussed in this article. More specifically, vignettes are proposed as a useful research technique for conducting systematic and rigorous studies of consumer interaction processes, in particular as these relate to family consumption issues. Following an overview of methodological and practical problems of studying consumption interaction processes in families, a discussion of how vignettes may be used to enhance knowledge of family decision-making processes in real-life contexts is presented. Design implications are discussed and strategies for applying the vignette method are outlined and illustrated by two recent studies of pro-environmental consumer behavior in a family context. The paper concludes with a discussion of the benefits and the possible pitfalls of using vignettes.

Methods of Studying Economic Decisions in Private Households*

“…Although observational laboratory methods enable the investigation of participants' unconscious or non -verbal reactions in purchasing interaction processes (Grønhøj and Bech -Larsen, 2010), it is difficult to persuade spouses to come into the laboratory in order to fight over the allocation of an imaginary budget. Observing couples in their natural settings constitutes the problem of higher costs due to expenditure of time (ibidem) and participants might react to observer presence, which results in a tendency to keep interactions superficial.…”

“…More importantly, spouses corrected each other in their descriptions of past decision -making processes, implying that distorted results due to recall bias might be less likely using this research approach. Grønhøj and Bech -Larsen (2010) stress the effectiveness of using vignette methods (brief descriptions of situations) to complement conventional qualitative approaches. With this method, reactions to detailed, clearly defined situations can be elicited so that results can be more easily compared across participants.…”

“You can't buy friends, but … ” children's perception of consumption and friendship

“…To stimulate the children's drawing, the researcher gave the illustrated children a present: a picture of Swedish money (cf. Grønhøj and Bech-Larsen, 2010;Heisley and Levy, 1991). The interesting question was if and how the animated children could attract friends by means of economic resources.…”

Food quality assessment in parent–child dyads – A hall-test of healthier in-between meals for adolescents

“…As it is generally true for research in family consumption and decision-making (see Grønhøj & Bech-Larsen, 2010), the main reason for this inattention may be the problem of defining a unit of analysis that facilitates an integration of the two research perspectives of family consumption research, i.e. the relative influences and the interaction processes.…”

“…Since family consumption and children's influence on buying decisions first became a topic in marketing and consumer research in the seventies (e.g., Sheth, 1974;Ward, 1974), it has been approached from two research perspectives (Grønhøj & Bech-Larsen, 2010).…”