An Uneven Relationship: Psychology, Sociology, and Qualitative Market Research – Part 1

What is qualitative market research, and what makes it unique?

These are questions that concern clients and those working in the field. Understandably so. As for some, qualitative market research (QMR) remains a loosely defined and contested domain. 

Over time, responses to what QMR is and what makes it unique have produced two parallel modes of self-understanding. 

First, there is the answer that QMR is an oral tradition involving tacit knowledge that is passed on through training sessions, informal mentoring, and team practices[i].

On the other hand, there are more public efforts at self-definition, such as books, position papers, and thematic journal issues reflecting on QMR’s nature and potential evolution.

Taken together, these documents form what Michel Foucault[ii] would have called a discursive archive: a body of texts that not only describes QMR but actively constitutes it.

This archive is worth examining. Especially considering how the field legitimizes itself by drawing on other disciplines. This is the aim of this three-part series.

Part 1: An Uneven Relationship examines how psychology has come to dominate the field’s self-understanding.

Part 2: What Sociology Contributes explores the analytical resources sociology offers to qualitative inquiry.

Part 3: Moving Towards Pluralism argues for an expanded disciplinary horizon that includes structural perspectives.

I write from the perspective of the German qualitative research landscape. Some of my examples are context-specific. But the broader patterns, particularly those concerning disciplinary framing are likely to speak to a broader audience.

Why Psychology?

One pattern stands out: When QMR writes about itself, it often turns to psychology. Psychology is the discipline QMR relies on when it wants to appear credible to clients.

But the kind of psychology we’re talking about here isn’t necessarily the one taught in universities.

In academic psychology, quantitative methods and experimental designs dominate. Qualitative approaches, on the other hand, tend to occupy a peripheral space[iii].

Therefore, what we’re dealing with isn’t so much a reference to a coherent body of scientific knowledge as it is a kind of signifier. Psychology becomes a flexible discursive tool. It lends QMR an aura of scientific legitimacy and connects it to culturally familiar figures: the therapist, the depth psychologist, the expert in unconscious drives.

In that sense, psychology doesn’t stand for a clearly bounded discipline. Instead, it tries to denotate a cluster of loosely associated meanings. It acts as a placeholder – open enough to absorb different narratives, yet stable enough to signal depth, expertise, and seriousness.

A Freudian Shadow

Why does psychology play such a prominent role in how qualitative research presents itself? If there’s one tradition that gives some shape to this otherwise diffuse term, it’s psychoanalysis[iv]. 

Freud’s visits to the U.S. in 1909 marked the beginning of a cultural uptake that extended far beyond academic circles – into advice literature, film, and advertising[v]. He referred to his work as depth psychology (Tiefenpsychologie)[vi], a framing that left a lasting mark: to understand people, one must go beneath the surface.

This logic continues to inform how consumers are imagined and how products are positioned, as expressions of unconscious desire. Many qualitative techniques – deep interviews, projective methods, metaphor elicitation – draw explicitly or implicitly on psychoanalytic assumptions. 

The term “deep dive” is telling: it evokes an image of penetrating surface-level responses, reaching into psychic depths, and retrieving insights that seem authentic precisely because they are hidden. Often, qualitative findings are valued for how deep and authentic they feel.

This isn’t to say that such approaches are wrong. But it’s worth asking: does this psychological framing continue to serve the field? Or does it narrow how qualitative researchers think about what they do?

A Comfortable Illusion

That question becomes even more pressing when we consider what gets pushed aside. It crowds out alternative frameworks, most notably sociology. And that’s striking, given how central sociological methodologies are to much of the work qualitative market researchers do.

Methods like ethnography, grounded theory, or discourse analysis were shaped in sociological traditions. In practice, the field often operates with a sociological mindset. What’s missing is the label. Sociology, to borrow a psychoanalytic term, is disavowed: present in method, absent in name – replaced by the more familiar, more marketable signifier of psychology.

Looking Forward

In the next article, I’ll take a closer look at what sociology has to offer. It is not an alternative to psychology. Rather, it is a necessary complement. It's a way of thinking that can help qualitative market research better understand the social worlds it seeks to explore.

[i] Ereaut, G., Imms, M. & Callingham, M. (2002). About Qualitative Market Research: A Background to the Series. In J. Chandler & M. Owen (eds.), Developing Brands with Qualitative Market Research (pp. 6–11). Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781849208840

[ii] Foucault, M. (2002). Archaeology of Knowledge. Psychology Press.

[iii] Schreier, M., & Breuer, F. (2006). Describing the Disciplinary Irrelevance of Qualitative Research Methods. An Introduction to Norbert Groeben. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-7.4.180

Mey, G. & Mruck, K. (2020). Qualitative Forschung in der Psychologie: eine Kartierung. In Handbuch Qualitative Forschung in der Psychologie (2nd ed., pp. 1–24). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-18234-2_1

[iv] Frank, D. (2023). Wie viel Theorie ist für gute qualitative Forschungspraxis notwendig? Planung & Analyse, 1, 32-36. www.horizont.net/planung-analyse/nachrichten/basiswissen-wie-viel-theorie-ist-fuer-gute-qualitative-forschungspraxis-notwendig-212186

[v] Illouz, E. (2008). Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. University of California Press.

[vi] Freud, S. (2020). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Library of Alexandria.