If you mean in academic literature-the answer is no. There is a lot of positivist based research, but also heaps of qual, ethnography, case study, text analysis etc etc.

If you mean in the real world of Marketing then Marketers don't think in these academic terms. Corporations etc use data analysis with financial analysis and numerical analysis; they model data; they utilise heaps of more qualitative and online insight. 

My conclusion is that good research in business utilises numerous approaches, methodologies and philosophies and insights if it is to be relevant and take account of real life business. Much current business academic research cuts up the business-consumer or similar relationships and interactions into tiny bits, studies bits and pieces without understanding real world context and concludes on them rather than a real life understanding of business-the result is like studying the front toes of a mouse and concluding about its perception of the world !

I very much agree with James. In addition see also two articles on theory and theorizing:

Thank you all, 

I got outdated article article about the dominance of positivism in consumer behaviour 

 ‘Positivism and Paradigm Dominance in Consumer Research’,

Journal of Consumer Research and was written by  Hunt (1991)

Another article that I found:

 ‘Interpreting the Past, Writing the Future’ by Shankar and Patterson (2001)

Shankar and Patterson (2001) argued in this article that positivism was dominant in consumer behaviour research, at least until the time of writing their study. They stated: ‘The dominant position within consumer research has been, and still is, occupied by positivism and its variants"

I personally believe that, in practice, "Positivism" refers to the use of quantitative  methods rather than epistemological and ontological assumptions about the reality. This is why I believe that the positivism is still dominant. 

Have you considered that the whole construct of "positivism" is just a manufactured concept?  Academics are always trying to create taxonomies and classification systems, but the world is not divided into boxes waiting to be labeled...it is a continuum. There is a continuum of research from most to least open-ended, more or less dependent on the analyst opinion/ interpretation, etc.   Different questions require different approaches.

Yes, Hunt is known for defending positivism in the literature.  Not necessarily strict positivism, but methods associated with positivism such as a strict adherence to statistical methods of hypothesis testing.  The trend has most definitely been swinging more toward interpretive inclinations which value qualitative as much as quantitative.  It is VERY important to note here that contemporary research recognizes the value and benefit of both schools of thought.  In the 90s there was some literature that polarized the two; however, research and science develops.  This is consistent with the post-modern view that modernism is not incorrect, nor should it be abandoned in contemporary thought... instead, it is the viewpoint that we include history of thought, including what modernism has contributed, to current thought.  As for a methodological approach, there is excellent literature about mixed methods approach to answer research questions.  One author in particular who approaches this subject is from the field of Education.  Here is a sample of his work:

Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come

Author(s): R. Burke Johnson and Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie

Source: Educational Researcher, Vol. 33, No. 7 (Oct., 2004), pp. 14-26

Also, in terms of consumer behavior, it is the area of Marketing least likely to embrace positivism.

This thread has been on my mind, and I wanted to add another point for clarification.  The focus on statistical testing is somewhat misleading.  Statistical hypothesis testing is certainly consistent with a positivist approach, but only from a methodological standpoint and therefore not as pertinent as the distinction in terms of philosophical approach, particularly the concept of truth.  Positivism supports the view that there is one and only one Truth, and research is about getting closer to that Truth, even if knowing it is unattainable.  This strict adherence to "one Truth" is the aspect of positivism which has been at the root of debates and some would say the diminishing of belief in positivism.  Other philosophical approaches allow for multiple truths, and the changing of truths with time and space.

This is, in general, one reason why consumer behavior is the part of marketing LEAST likely to embrace positivism.  Contemporary thought in consumer behavior recognizes the subjectivity of individualism and the notion that consumers cannot be pigeon-holed for everything.  Understand the person, not the purchaser, so to speak.

This is a very exciting topic for me, and I am happy to discuss it outside of this forum.

I agree with Paul on this....In the  commercial research field we are constantly dealing with changing consumer behaviour, and today with the web enabled and knowledge economy changes can be very fast. Having insight into how consumers are behaving through qualitative, ethnography and similar increasingly makes one aware of the way that one day a consumer can say something and the next day the opposite; they may say they do something but don't; etc etc. Whilst there may be a singular truth in pure sciences, it just does not ring true when one is constantly confronted by consumer behaviour. And the answer on a quantitative/positivist set of questions can be, and sometimes is way off from how people behave in real life. Our training of commercial researchers spent a lot of time and money on helping them see there are many ways of seeing truth about consumers- the narrower ones own mindset or way of seeing, the harder it is to get even close to what is going on out there. Perhaps the hardest job in training really good commercial researchers is the process of de conditioning them from how they personally see the world so that they can start to see it through another persons eyes. I've spent 30 years doing this.

Yes you use data as part of this understanding. Yes you may form research projects from a positivist perspective. But they are just part of the story. I ask my neighbour something today and he says X. Tomorrow he will say Y. 

From my point of view the absolutely best paper for this discussion is Arndt  (1985) published in Journal of Marketing. He took the original Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) article on this topic and discussed it for marketing.

After so many years Arndt article is the fundamental article on the dominance of positivism/functionalism and the struggle with interpretativist positions in marketing (particularly from consumer research).

Arndt, J. (1985)  On making marketing science more scientific: Role of orientations, paradigms, metaphors, and puzzle solving. Journal of Marketing, 49(3), 11–23

Agree with the references above (to Arndt and Burrell and Morgan): Donncha Kavanagh wrote a useful review of the 1980s debates in the European Journal of Marketing, called Hunt Vs Anderson Round 16 (1994) 28/3. Also see Stephen Brown (1996) Art or Science? Fifty Years of marketing debate in Journal of Marketing Management 12/4, and a European Journal of Marketing special issue on marketing science in a postmodern world 1997, 31 3/4. Since then, the field has resolved into paradigmatic silos that co-exist largely ignoring each other. The characterisation of positivism was never entirely accurate: its a long time since I read A.J.Ayer's work on logical positivism but as I recall a basic assumption was that all that could not be measured was metaphysics and hence beyond the scope of science. Anthropological work in marketing largely migrated across to consumer research after Sid Levy's 1959 JM paper on brands and symbolism, with quite a few notable exceptions of course.       

Quite a bit has changed since '85, especially in consumer research.  For many (I would say more than is indicated by the recent entries on this thread), the "silos" exist but from more of an historical perspective that serve as a foundation for current thought.  By that I mean instead of saying one perspective is "the right way" and the other is unacceptable, many researchers acknowledge that they have their own perspective but the other has merit.  I personally feel the degree to which this exists is a case by case basis depending on the individual researcher (sorry to put such an anti-positivist spin to that assessment :)  )

he positivists tend to take a realist position and assume that a single, objective reality exists independently of what individuals perceive (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988)

This reality is divisible and fragmentable; therefore, precise, accurate measurements and observations of this world are possible (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988).

The laboratory experiment exemplifies these beliefs about the nature of reality. Parts of reality are separated from their usual context and placed in controlled settings for observation (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988).

The positivists' approach to research includes the adherence to scientific protocol or the step-by-step organization as the principles of research design. Although different research designs exist, "the ideal of science is the controlled experiment" (Kerlinger 1973, p. 315). The experiment, as used in a positivist research process, allows the researcher to select and assign subjects randomly to experimental groups, control extraneous variables, manipulate the relevant independent variables, and observe the dependent variables. Positivists argue that the controlled experiment allows the researcher the most confidence in discovering causal relationships among variables (Kerlinger 1973). This control provides the ability to isolate and examine only those behaviors that are specified by the hypotheses.

I recommend you more on positivism and marketing in Shelby Hunt's articles and books.