The Stories You Tell

Advertisers and marketers leverage big data to track and influence consumer behaviors, (re)evaluate messages, and enhance customer engagement through digital platforms. But these data do not capture the complexity of market contexts or address questions about how or why specific behaviors occur. The authors provide a pathway for unearthing insights from deep data to inform marketing strategy. They call for the use of qualitative research to organize chaos, capture lived experiences, and investigate diffusion of social practices. This paper offers a primer for crafting managerially relevant articles. The authors demonstrate how to use qualitative methods through a practitioner-oriented, systematic sensemaking process.