Theory construction and data analysis in marketing communication

The history of science shows that the development and growth of disciplines is a matter of developing and testing theories that best represent the elements that define the discipline and make it unique. The main methodological issue in construction theories in marketing communications is the complexities of the domain and the difficulties to define variables and state their interactions. This paper provides an overview of facet theory (FT), a systematic approach to facilitate theory construction, research design, and data analysis for complex disciplines, that is appropriate for developing marketing communications theories and particularly advertising. The use of facet theory and conceptual tools like ‘Mapping Sentence' and ‘Universe of Content', is shown to provide new insights into existing advertising data; it allows for the diagnosis and discrimination of marketing communications constructs and makes the generalizability and replication of findings easier.