مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد پیشرفت در تحقیقات بازاریابی (الزویر)

In the social sciences, much attention has been given to the status of theories and how these theories should be tested (e.g., Kuhn, 1962; Popper, 1980; Wilkinson, 2013; Kenworthy and Sparks, 2016; Yadav, 2010). Rather less attention is directed to the genesis of these theories. How do new ideas come into the minds of researchers in the first place? What helps or hinders this creative thinking? Let us start by admitting that much scientific activity is not that creative. Many of our findings rest on the application of established thinking but, occasionally, we get evidence that raises questions about widely held beliefs and practices or suggests an answer to a persisting problem. Such findings may redirect our work and we need to foster the circumstances that create this sort of outcome. What will assist the production of new theoretical ideas? One way of exploring the origin of these ideas is to look at the scientists themselves: what drives these researchers? How do they conduct themselves? This has been done by Sternberg et al. (2016) but their account tends to focus on the individual traits of the behavioural scientists they studied and these are not easily modified or emulated, which limits the change that is possible via this route. Another approach could focus on the social aspect. Research is usually conducted collaboratively with fellow researchers. Thus, if we ask how new thinking came about, the answer often relates to interactions with others within the social setting in which science is performed. The multiple authorship of many papers suggests that new ideas prosper in an interactive context but we also note that some of the greatest contributors to science acted individually (e.g., Newton, Darwin and Einstein), so this matter is not clear cut. We can also look at the established practices governing science – how can the reviewing process be improved, for example? Reviewers are often strongest on the methodological aspects of research and may not understand the new ideas or attach enough importance to them when they do understand. In contrast to such approaches, our focus is quite narrow. After a discussion of what is involved in idea generation, and noting that new ideas are often generated by new data, we look at the data yield provided by two different methods: experiments and surveys. We argue that we should invest more effort in methods that produce large amounts of data because it is here that new findings may emerge that require a new explanation. We suggest that survey work is undervalued as a source of new ideas in social science.