The investigation commenced with a textual analysis of the alcohol adverts aired on television, then employed in-depth interviews with the Singha and Chang executives, and advertising agency executives on how making the adverts and brand promotional approach. This approach was adopted to allow an examination of how the brand masculinity was formulated (themed) and of the advertising strategies (ad appeal and executions) used for brand promotions. Finally, focus groups were employed to explore how the audience or consumer perceived the masculine representation of the Singha and Chang brands. Thematic analysis was employed as the key analytic approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006), as it can provide a rich, and detailed, yet complex, account of data. Therefore, its flexibility and accessibility is beneficial ‘for an early or new researcher who has not much theoretical and technological knowledge in the field’ (Braun and
Clarke, 2006 p.78). As Braun and Clarke (2006) explained, thematic analysis is a method that has much in common with the three qualitative analytic methods, namely grounded theory, discourse analysis, and narrative analysis, as these analytic methods also aim to analyse or search for patterns or themes within the data. However, there are slight differences. For example, narrative analysis (Riessman, 1993; Murray, 2003) focuses on searching themes that are derived from only one data item such as an individual interview(s), which seems to guide data interpreting process as in a biographical or case study form of analysis. In contrast, thematic analysis, grounded theory analysis, and discourse analysis are all focused on an analysis of a whole data set.
Braun and Clarke (2006) explained also that one might consider ‘thematic analysis overlap with grounded theory and discourse analysis’ (p.81). As indicated by these authors, neither thematic analysis nor grounded theory relies on any pre-conceived coding system and themes, rather using those that develop from the data itself. Grounded theory is a kind of analytic method that focuses on generating theoretical ideas from the grounded data (Glaser, 1992) and is, ‘one that is inductively derived from the study of phenomena it represents’ (Corbin and Strauss, 2008, p.23). However, thematic analysis is a major coding process used within the grounded theory (Ryan and Bernard, 2000), which led Braun and Clarke (2006) to suggest that thematic analysis could be regarded as a method on its own right.
Discourse analysis is an analytic method that focuses on the relationship between the latent meaning of language used and social structure (Burman and Parker, 1993; Willig, 2003). Braun and Clarke (2006) argued that discourse analysis overlaps with thematic analysis as both are a constructivism directed by the same epistemological position, which assumes that knowledge or reality is a social construct or context-based. More specifically, discourse analysis requires a knowledge of theory and is suitable for an experienced researcher, as it focuses on the language use or the fine-grained functionally of speech. It is this point that can be seen as a disadvantage to thematic analysis. However, the ‘advantages of using the thematic analytic method for an early or new researcher is that it requires less theoretical and technological knowledge and it can provide flexible, abundant and detailed, yet complex accounts of data’(Braun and Clarke, 2006, p.78 ). Therefore, the thematic analytic method for my data analysis was applied to this project for the purpose of examining the representations of the brand masculinity (ies) in Thai alcohol. The outcome of the thematic analytic process for the current study is presented in Appendix A5.
To search for the themes was a time-consuming and recursive process as a researcher had to spend time to be familiar with the data, before starting grouping the ideas and codes, and looking for potential themes. The process firstly started from gathering the adverts for the content analysis, then watched them and started to identify themes within the adverts. At this stage, it was found that the masculine theme were the dominant representations that were mainly created by Singha and Chang. Therefore, these findings then began to shape particular areas of focus, about the masculinities that are promoted by the Singha and Chang brands, in which, the Singha and Chang brands were referred to as the case studies for an investigation. As a result, the themes found in Singha and Chang were such as monarchy loyalty, inspirational capitalist, Social Responsibility, Thai nationalism, and cosmopolitan masculinities. Secondly, the interview with Singha and Chang executives was applied exploring the process of how they made the adverts based on the themes found from the content analysis and how they dealt with state regulations. In short, themes found from the interview such as: solutions of the Singha and Chang brands coping with the regulations, unique identities used in Singha and Chang, brand evaluations of success, Singha and Chang views on the importance of television media, and challenges found between men and women in the alcohol industry. Lastly, the focus groups with audiences were applied to explore how they perceived the adverts. Themes emerged from the discussions found such as Monarchy Royalty, Inspirational Capitalist, Social Responsibility, Thai Nationalism and Cosmopolitan, and these corresponded to the themes from content analysis. Audiences perceived the adverts differently, in ways such as: agree, negotiate, and opposed to the message. (See Appendix A5: A blueprint of the thematic analytic outcome)