Hybrid forums as a collaborative method for intervention: navigating tension and contestation in qualitative marketing research

Abstract

This paper aims to examine how hybrid forums can be operationalised as a qualitative research method for engaging with concern-work in mission-driven market contexts. It responds to a gap in existing scholarship by shifting attention from conceptual accounts of hybrid forums to their practical design, facilitation and analysis as an interventionist research methodology. This study adopts an interventionist qualitative research design based on a series of hybrid forums convened with non-profit arts organisations navigating tensions between mission-driven commitments and data-driven practices. The forums were organised as iterative, scenario-based workshops involving heterogeneous organisational actors and sector intermediaries. Data were generated through recorded discussions, workshop artefacts and reflexive observations, and analysed iteratively using multi-layered coding supported by NVivo to trace how controversies developed across forums over time. The findings show that hybrid forums function as sites of relational concern-work, where concerns emerge, layer and evolve through interaction rather than appearing as fixed problems. The forums enabled the articulation of intertwined economic, ethical and organisational tensions, particularly around data practices and organisational capacity. Scenario-based engagement also supported the articulation of prospective market imaginaries, revealing experiences of constrained agency in which data illuminated possible futures without guaranteeing action. This paper advances hybrid forums as an interventionist methodological approach for qualitative marketing research. It contributes to concerned markets scholarship by empirically demonstrating how concern-work unfolds in practice and by capturing the anticipatory and processual dimensions of market-making often inaccessible through conventional qualitative methods.