"Saying is one thing: doing is another" : the role of observation in marketing research

Observation does not often appear as a research methodology in the marketing literature: this may be because it is sometimes hard to quantify the outcomes of observational research at the outset, or because it is considered time‐consuming, or sometimes, as Lincoln and Guba (1985) suggest, it may be difficult to generalise the findings. Nevertheless, observation may be the only method to obtain data on consumers’ behaviour in certain situations, and in others it may prove to be highly appropriate (see, for example, Foxall, 1996; Grove and Fisk, 1992; Hirschman, 1986). By means of a case study, this paper discusses the appropriateness of observational methods for marketing research