Within, in-between, out-of-bounds? Locating researcher positionalities in multicultural marketplaces

Culturally heterogenous and globally interconnected societies represent complex and fluid research fields, in which the multiple and dynamic identity affiliations of researchers intersect with those of research collaborators, contributors and with wider contextual factors. These intersections can shift and distort researchers’ cultural positionality stances. Researcher positionality dynamics and complexities thus pose unique benefits and challenges to epistemological, methodological and ethical aspects of contemporary cultural research within consumer realities. Yet, marketing and consumer research literature lacks frameworks that denote and explicate the dynamic and complex nature of researchers’ cultural positionalities. This paper examines the potential implications of cultural positionality complexity and dynamics for cultural research and develops sensitizing considerations for determining and operationalizing cultural positionalities in individual and collaborative research in multicultural marketplaces.