EveryWhen: An Australian Indigenous Knowledge System and Methodology

Abstract

Recently, there has been growing interest among the global marketing research community to create space for Indigenous knowledges and perspectives. This article introduces EveryWhen, positioning it as both an Australian Indigenous knowledge system that offers a nonlinear perception of time and a methodology with wide-ranging applications in marketing research. Time is culturally constructed, and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’, EveryWhen represents time as the infinite present—unmeasured, indivisible, and elastic, where the past, present, and future co-exist. Through a case study with Australian Indigenous doctoral student consumers, this article demonstrates how the multisensory EveryWhen methodology utilises Australian Indigenous storytelling/yarning, three-dimensional earth-drawn artefact creation, and an adaptation of Bishop and Tynan’s (2025) Kin and Country five-perspective analytical lens to capture nonlinear consumer temporalities. Conducted by and with Indigenous Australians and adhering to Indigenous research design principles, the case study also models best practice in Indigenous research. The EveryWhen findings revealed layered, dynamic consumer journeys, showing how new marketing research insights emerge when temporality is foregrounded. EveryWhen is portable across a range of contexts and applicable to all consumers, representing a pathway to decolonisation and Indigenising marketing research. For marketing researchers, the value of EveryWhen lies not only in introducing nonlinear temporalities but also in extending multisensory methodologies to broaden the ways consumer journeys are accessed, captured, and represented in marketing research.