The predominant positivist paradigm in marketing: understanding differences, producing confluences and suggesting alternatives

Abstract

This article brings the recurring debate relating the predominantly positivist approach to marketing research and the need to make the discipline a consolidated science. For this, a survey related to objectivity and subjectivity in the social sciences, to the segmentation of researchers in positivist and interpretivism, associated to the recurrent demand for validation and accreditation of research, mainly qualitative (interpretivism), is made. These issues raise concerns that address these dilemmas. Triangulation is seen as a possible way to slow down problems related to credibility in research, by adopting as a research strategy multiple forms and methods of obtaining information. The methodological procedure followed referred to the bibliographical research, in this way, this article intends to organize and systematize the main issues involved to these barriers of the researches in marketing and to show the aspects of the triangulation that could soften the problems of the positivist hegemony in the research methodology of the area.