Hermeneutics and Consumer Research

This article reviews the nature of hermeneutic philosophy and the assumptions and features of a textual interpretation consistent with this perspective. The relationship of hermeneutic philosophy to the interpretive and critical theory traditions in consumer research is also discussed. T he term hermeneutics and related derivations have appeared with increasing frequency in con-sumer research (App. A). Although these terms have most often appeared in studies taking an interpretive approach (Hudson and Ozanne 1988), the relationship of hermeneutics to this approach remains obscure. Moreover, the questions, What is hermeneutics? and Does hermeneutics have a unique contribution to make to consumer research? remain unanswered. This article attempts to answer these questions and, in the process, follows Hudson and Ozanne by identifying differences among interpretive approaches. Hermeneutic philosophy is concerned with the in-terpretation of understanding (Bernstein 1983; Bleicher 1980; Gadamer 1989). This philosophy holds that un-derstanding has an ontological status. It emphasizes that all understanding is linguistic. Furthermore, herme-neutic philosophy explores how the sUbject-object di-chotomy may be bridged by an interpreter engaging the other through a reading that is grounded in, but not determined solely by, the interpreters pre-under-standing. The relevance of hermeneutics to consumer research is threefold. First, in purporting to understand under-standing itself, philosophical hermeneutics is basic to any scientific or scholarly endeavor. The concept of pre-understanding accounts not only for existing the-ory and research findings but also for the knowledge that researchers as subjects share with the human objects of their inquiry. Second, hermeneutic philosophy refines our under-standing of the interpretive approaches used in con-