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Applied Phenomenology: Marketing, Investing, AI
Not as a theory I reference occasionally — but as something that permanently changed how I perceive, think, and work.
What Is Phenomenology
Most philosophical traditions start with a theory and then look at the world through it. Phenomenology does the opposite. It starts with how things actually appear to us — and asks what that tells us about the world and about ourselves.
The tradition was founded by Edmund Husserl in the early 20th century. It examines the structures of conscious experience: how we perceive, how we understand, and how meaning forms before any theory or assumption enters the picture.
That sounds abstract.
In practice, it means examining what most people take for granted: perception, understanding, language, emotion, meaning. Not as psychological categories — but as structures that shape how any situation appears to someone before they even begin to analyse it.
The key figures — Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty — each explored different angles. Heidegger examined human existence itself. Gadamer studied how interpretation works. Merleau-Ponty focused on the body and perception.
What connects them is one belief: the way things appear to us is not obvious. It is worth examining seriously.
Why Most People Dismiss Phenomenology
Phenomenology does not reward impatience. The first thing it does is lower your confidence in how quickly you can understand anything at all. It tests your curiosity and your intellectual honesty in ways most disciplines do not.
The texts are dense. Understanding a single passage from Heidegger can take weeks. Many students encounter phenomenology once and move on. The ones who stay are the ones who find the difficulty itself interesting — not frustrating.
I was drawn to it precisely because it was the hardest thing I would encountered at university. When it got harder and more frustrating, I found myself more energised — not less.
It felt like discovering a world I would always lived in but never actually seen.
Where I Apply Phenomenology
My primary work involves applying phenomenology in marketing, managerial decision-making, and investing. I do qualitative research focused on how we perceive and understand the world around us — especially in areas where traditional analytical methods fall short.
In marketing, phenomenology does something data alone cannot — it tells me when something is not being understood. Not whether a campaign converted, but whether the offer even made sense to someone encountering it for the first time.
In investing, it helps me observe mood and narrative — not whether sentiment is positive or negative, but how the market is understanding the current situation and where that frame might be wrong.
And in the age of artificial intelligence, phenomenology is perhaps most underappreciated. It has produced serious research on perception, understanding, language, and meaning — topics foundational to what language models actually do.
This is what it changed.
University and the Path to Phenomenology
What phenomenology did almost immediately was turn a spotlight on things I would never examined seriously: perception, understanding, language, anxiety. I may have sensed these things before, the way anyone does. But I would never named them, never looked at them closely, and could not have used them as a basis for anything.
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Summary
Common questions on this article's topic
What is phenomenology?
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Why is phenomenology considered difficult to study?
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If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.
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