Marketing research in Brazil and the challenge/opportunity for contribution and legitimation in the pandemic

Abstract

In this year of 2020, 40 papers were published in four issues of the Brazilian Journal of Marketing (BJMkt) / Revista Brasileira de Marketing (ReMark). Its authors come from 15 Brazilian states, covering all its regions, and some foreign countries. It means an extensive recognition of the Journal by the academic Marketing community.

We are very grateful for the essential collaboration of the reviewers, who lend competence to the evolution of third-party manuscripts, in one of the most important stages of the editorial process in a periodic. They provide evolution and learning for the authors even when the manuscript is not accepted for publication.

We were pledged by the permanent dedication to the Journal of the librarian Cristiane dos Santos Monteiro. Support has also always come from Editora UNINOVE, the director of the Graduate Program in Administration at UNINOVE, Priscila Rezende da Costa, and from professor José Eduardo Storopoli.

A phenomenon dominated the year on the Planet Earth: the disease (Covid-19) caused by the new coronavirus (Sars-Cov-2), with alarming levels of contamination. In March, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic state; nine months have passed (OPAS, 2020). A global public health crisis took place. It would be the real milestone to distinguish the beginning of the XXI Century (Jansen, 2020). Virtually no one in the current world population has lived a similar precedent, since the Spanish Flu pandemic had ended (curiously) a century ago (Martino, 2017; Barry, 2020). So long afterwards, humanity's vulnerability to a viral pathology is surprising. Metaphorical descriptions range from the audience of a heady science-fiction film to a huge fireplace in which we are all burning (Muhammet, Alfiya, Masalimova, Cherdymova & Shaidullina, 2020).

The pandemic has generated and continues to generate profound impacts in several human, social, business and governmental dimensions. It is not even known when its adverse effects on society will disappear, despite the well-founded expectations regarding vaccines, with numerous development projects, both in the West and in the East. Health Sciences, in its various branches, continues to research the prevention and treatment of the new and complicated pathology (Carvalho, Lima & Coeli, 2020; Heymann & Shindo, 2020). On this front, even though health management in Brazil appears abroad as one of the most complicated case in the application of Science (Gostin, 2020), it is the base that can be counted on. With it, the countries of the United Kingdom, this December, became the first in the West in vaccination against the illness; and seek to achieve record speed in the immunization process (Strasburg and Fidler, 2020); it is the struggle of all nations.

This scientific effort has repercussions, as never before, in people's daily lives. It is not from today the recognition of the role of Science in crisis situations, when fundamental needs of the human species are put in check (Oliveira, 1998). But, in the present, the press constantly brings news to laypeople about scientific results and perspectives. Despite some noise controversies, the majority of the population acknowledges and values the crucial role of Science, which advances, with determination and sacrifice, in understanding the ecosystem that has the new disease at its center (Lipsitch, Swerdlow & Finelli, 2020; Velloso, 2020). Only Science can find solutions to remedy the crisis or, at least, alleviate its implications and this unique role is recognized by the population. It is the way to develop ways to face fear, deprivation, anxiety, impatience, pain, and, at the limit, death and hopelessness.

The commitment goes far beyond the Health Sciences, spreading to practically all fields. Demography (Dowd, Andriano, Brazel, Rotondi, Block et al., 2020), Criminology (Ashby, 2020), Engineering (Goel, Hawi, Goel, Thakur, Agrawal et. Al., 2020) and Librarianship (Ali & Gatiti, 2020) are some examples of this scope. Even in the Administration sphere, there are initiatives in several disciplines (Zhang, Hu & Ji, 2020), in the business and also public domains (Lunn, Belton, Lavin, McGowan, Timmons & Robertson, 2020).

On the other hand, the tremendous and understandable interest, in most people, in news about the pandemic, its consequences and solutions, can open space to the temptation of distorted practices, if not of frauds covered with science or pseudoscience (Scheirer, 2020; Berruyer, 2020). It is essential to speed up the preliminary availability of research results, but this practice also poses risks to the quality of scientific production and to the dissemination to practitioners. Just think of the controversy surrounding the potential curative or not of the drug Hydroxychloroquine (Gautret, Lagier, Parola, Hoang, Meddeb et al., 2020).

We move on to Marketing! An unusual and significant phenomenon such as the pandemic must have multiple repercussions on the models and theories of Marketing, leaving to decipher them. This year, two articles in ReMark addressed the phenomenon: “COVID-19 pandemic: trails for future marketing research involving the regulatory role of prosocial consumption”, in issue 3; “The intention of prevention and future spending during COVID-19: a study considering decision-making at risk”, in this number 4. These are initial steps and so many others will come right here.

In parallel, there is a succession of commercial research and practitioners' reflections on the immediate and more lasting consequences of the pandemic. Several Brazilian and global market research and consulting firms have completed surveys with consumers and companies. They cover consumer behavior as much as marketing management. The press, in general and specialized newspapers and magazines, disseminates these findings. The own media of research and consultancy companies do so on websites, blogs and social networks.

Along these lines, PwC (2020) compared city dwellers in many countries (including Brazil) before and after the pandemic. It provided insights into the reinvention - in progress and possibly in the future - of people's shopping, consumption, learning, communication, entertainment and work journeys, amid the accelerated use of digital channels. It outlined implications for managing market relationship, which requires reinvention.

GfK (2020) mapped consumption and post-crisis habits in Brazil, with subsidies for the management in the reality of the 'new normal', a modified standard of normality. It took into account characteristics of the population (high proportion of people with low income and education) and other dimensions of the country's macro environment (previous years of economic crisis, unemployment rate, health). GfK still publishes, twice a month, an updated picture of the 'consumer pulse' in face of the new coronavirus.

KANTAR (2020) has published more than 10 editions of its research on the influences of the pandemic on consumers in Brazil. In one of the latter, it reports the intention of many people to maintain behavioral changes in the 'new reality' to come (although it is not known when it will come).

IPSOS (2020) investigated changes in the consumer's life in the country in terms of shopping hours, migration between channels, determinants, reasons and barriers to purchase, under the effects of uncertainty, tensions and fears. It added a new meaning to the role of buyer. It discussed the changes already manifested and the prospect of continuity beyond the pandemic.

NIELSEN (2020) unveiled six key stages in the consumer adaptation process, associated with concerns about the pandemic, as well as the heterogeneity in Brazilian regions, states and cities, interspersed with much learning about consumption. It alerted companies to opportunities to raise awareness of consumers about the crisis and, thus, strengthen ties with them and expand business ahead.

This is just an excerpt from a large collection, very useful and praiseworthy. But that is more “market” or “problem solving” research (Hunt, 2015: 64-66), with its undeniable value. Such collection, however, is not a substitute for scientific research, capable of providing genuine new, validated and generalizable contribution to the discipline of Marketing, in general, and in the field of Consumer Behavior, in particular. Maintaining a critical spirit, Bunge's lesson (1998: 3-6) is taken: science is not just an extension or even a mere refinement of common knowledge. Science constitutes knowledge of a special kind, since it deals primarily (though not only) with unobservable events, not suspected by the layperson, articulates conjectures beyond ordinary knowledge and tests such them with the help of special techniques. Therefore, there would be no way to take commercial research as Science.

Continuing with the solid foundations of Bunge (1998), we turn to the contexts of discovery and justification. The discovery also emerges from non-scientific means (such as creativity and inspiration), which attracts more the attention of the press. Yet justification - reasoning about evidence, replicability, substantiating hypotheses, empirical testing of propositions and theories, validity, etc. - is linked to the scientific method and its agents (scientists).

Marketing research - academic, guided by the scientific method - is also already engaged in the investigation of the ongoing and intricate reality of the pandemic. Its pace is not what you would like and need. We did not have significant budgets for Marketing research in Brazil; such a resource has now become even more scarce. However, the mobilization of other resources - especially the training and intrinsic motivation of the researchers - will bear fruit in this situation, when their contributions are potentially useful as never before. ReMark / BJMkt has its doors open to welcome advances in this direction. Increasing its speed is a challenge to be faced. Challenge that constitutes an exceptional opportunity to legitimize Marketing as Science. The Brazilian Journal of Marketing adhere and is open to initiatives towards such target.

We sincerely wish you, the reader, strength, health and overcoming, in addition to productivity, in 2021!

Good reading!