Technology and innovation to decolonise marketing research methods

This chapter explores decolonisation’s politics and implications for countries’ branding and positioning in the globalised economy through marketing and market research techniques and perspectives. We offer insights on how the globalisation process has contributed to exacerbating conflicts between nations as a result of former colonisation processes and how the remains of old dynamics still influence today’s market research with significant connotations on the development of market theory, research methods and the impact that they have in the marketing educational context. The discussions are enhanced by offering a critical and reflective analysis of the role that technology and innovation can play to help decolonise research practices and methods that can help support the development of a more inclusive research epistemology and ontology framed in the context of conflict and exclusion. The core research findings offer significant evidence of how marketing research and practice are driven by the dominance of Western practices that are not suitable for countries that are defined by different cultures, ethnicities and races that are neglected as part of the dominant neoliberal model whose tentacles spread towards the marketing field, which directly and indirectly impacts on society images, trends and the creation of stereotypes.