IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-030-10794-9_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Nature and Relevance of Theories

In: Research Methodology in Marketing

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Eisend

    (European University Viadrina)

  • Alfred Kuss

    (Freie Universität Berlin)

Abstract

Scientific findings are systematized and summarized mainly by theories. Theories are thus the basis for innumerable practical applications and serve to preserve and communicate knowledge as well as to develop understanding. This constitutes their central importance for all scientific disciplines. The first section describes what a theory is. This is then illustrated by the example of the Elaboration Likelihood Model, a well-known theoretical model in consumer and communication research. Typically, theories serve to help in the understanding of certain aspects of reality. Therefore, the relationship between theory and reality is discussed later (Sect. 2.2). Essential applications of theories (➔ “Relevance of theories”) refer to explanations of real phenomena and the establishment of scientific laws (see Sect. 2.3), the prognosis of events and developments, and the use of such findings for (practical) applications in reality, for example the development of strategies and decisions (see Sect. 2.4). The end of this chapter (Sect. 2.5) presents some typical scientific conclusions (induction, deduction and abduction). In all of these considerations, theories used in different areas of marketing research are the focus of attention.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Eisend & Alfred Kuss, 2019. "The Nature and Relevance of Theories," Springer Books, in: Research Methodology in Marketing, chapter 2, pages 19-57, Springer.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-10794-9_2
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-10794-9_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-10794-9_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.