Practitioner Spotlight
An Australian Indigenous Knowledge System and Methodology
The context
This project introduces EveryWhen as both an Australian Indigenous knowledge system and a research methodology.
It responds to growing interest in creating more space for Indigenous knowledges in marketing research and offers an alternative to linear, Northern/Western assumptions about time. In EveryWhen, time is understood as the infinite present — unmeasured, indivisible, elastic, and co-existing across past, present, and future. The article demonstrates the methodology through a case study with Indigenous Australian doctoral students, using storytelling/yarning, earth-drawn three-dimensional artefacts, and an adapted Indigenous analytical lens to reveal layered consumer journeys. The work is positioned as a contribution to the decolonisation and Indigenisation of marketing research and models best practice in Indigenous-led research design.
The project adapts the Kin and Country Framework into an EveryWhen five-perspective analysis approach.
EveryWhen sits at the centre as the eternal present, surrounded by four temporal orientations: Eagle (horizon gazing), which identifies broader macro patterns and long arcs of time; Ant (moment noticing), which attends to fine-grained details and micro-moments; Kinship past, which highlights histories, ancestors, and intergenerational continuity; and Kinship future, which foregrounds legacy, accountability, and future generations. This adapted framework enables analysis of consumer journeys as nonlinear, relational, and layered rather than sequential and individualised.
Multisensory methods matter.
Combining yarning with earth-drawn artefacts broadens how experiences are accessed, expressed, and represented in research.
Key Learnings
Time is culturally constructed, and consumer experiences cannot always be understood through linear timelines alone.
From EveryWhen reveals consumer journeys as co-present and layered, where institutional demands, personal experience, history and future responsibility intersect.
EveryWhen is portable across a range of contexts beyond doctoral education and can inform broader marketing, service, and consumer research practice.