Market Interviews in Shared Traumatic Reality: A Trauma‐Informed, Co‐Constructed Framework

Qualitative market interviews may become trauma-sensitive when ordinary questions about consumption, work, finance, mobility, identity, professional continuity, or institutional trust intersect with displacement, insecurity, loss, or ongoing threat. This paper examines the issue through the lens of a shared traumatic reality, in which participants and moderators encounter the same or related crises. Empirically, it draws on 81 wartime interviews with 100 participants, including displaced Ukrainians and marketing academics, and is complemented by three psychologist-led moderator debriefs. The analysis identifies breakdown and repair points across the interview pipeline, from distrust and disruption to post-field reactivation. By integrating field observations, moderator reflection, trauma-informed interviewing, co-constructed inquiry, qualitative ethics, and researcher-exposure literature, this paper presents TI(C)MI: a flexible, non-clinical framework for trauma-informed, co-constructed market interviewing. It repositions trauma as a possible condition in the production of ordinary market data and considers bounded involvement and moderator protection as essential for methodological rigor.