Abstract:
While marketing researchers widely use case-study research in business settings, its application in the classroom remains limited. When business schools use cases in class, they mean scenarios inspired by managerial challenges that students solve by pretending to be the decision maker. However, cases receive criticism because of its emphasis on a heroic leader, lack of evidence-driven learning, and even anti-intellectualism. This paper argues for reinventing the case-method by flipping research into teaching, thus conducting case-research in class with the students as a viable pedagogy for co-creating knowledge, a practice that we call “collaborative casing.” We report on a collaborative research effort together with students in the wine market. Collaborative casing introduces a flat ontology that encourages a performative view of the world, enabling students to explore multivocality, tensions, and contestations in complex market systems. Casing is transformative how we understand the production of knowledge in the classroom.
