7 - Scientism in Action

Summary

In the last chapter, I showed how the research team's initial engagements with the data they collect is influenced by their understandings and assumptions about a client. I argued that they work on the basis that their clients are bounded rational decision- makers who turn to marketing organizations to absorb uncertainty for them so they can make decisions. As we saw in our discussion of administrative theory, uncertainty absorption occurs when organizational decision- makers allow others to create simple models of their external environment for them. For this to be effective, organizational decision- makers must have confidence in the people absorbing uncertainty for them. Uncertainty absorption works through the modeller more than their models.

In this chapter, I want to explore how marketing research is organized to absorb uncertainty. Here, we will see that the discourse of Marketing Science plays an important role. Market researchers at Super integrate scientific discourses, images, and artefacts, not to mention the very idea of ‘marketing science’ as it appears in academic and industry discussions, to encourage their clients to believe them. Science, in particular computational science, is materialized in the objects and built environment in Super's offices. The products and services Super sells to its clients are packaged through references to scientific ideas and Super uses computational scientific discourses to communicate with its clients. My claim is that, thanks to the social legitimacy of the ethos of science discussed in Chapter 1, this is a powerful mechanism of uncertainty absorption.

It is important to note at the start that this is not necessarily a false impression. As we will see in Chapter 8, where I document Super's research processes and practices in more detail, Super's research involves a great deal of data, computational analysis, and is supported by many academic ideas and Marketing Science conventions. The key point here, though, is that the way Super display its work to its clients is largely unrelated to these activities and is better explained through the lens of uncertainty absorption.

Scientism

To begin with, let us think about the ways that images of science have traditionally been used outside of the lab. As discussed in Chapter 1, scientific knowledge has a special value in many societies (Merton, 1973). Scientific facts can trump folk, spiritual, and other knowledge claims (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1944).