Does Ethnography make sense in Marketing??

T

he term ethnography has come to be equated with virtually any qualitative research project (e.g., see Research Gateway) where the intent is to provide a detailed, in-depth description of everyday life and practice. This is sometimes referred to as "thick description" -- a term attributed to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz writing on the idea of an interpretive theory of culture in the early 1970s (e.g., see The Interpretation of Cultures, first published as a collection in 1973).  The use of the term "qualitative" is meant to distinguish this kind of social science research from more "quantitative" or statistically oriented research. The two approaches, i.e., quantitative and qualitative, while often complimentary, ultimately have different aims.

Ethnography comes from social research and anthropology. Ethnographic marketing research studies apply this core behaviour methodology tools to marketing research environment. Ethnography is a popular technique for study of buyer behaviour surrounding product use and full product category consumer – computer interaction (HCI). Some theorist say that ethnography is an excellence tool to stimulate innovation, Cochrane believes, for example the Japanese are turning to ethnography to help drive a new wave of innovation in the face of strong global competition, particularly from China. Other source also say that, ethnography research bring marketers, designers and planners as close to customer as possible in order to solve important business problems. Site visits and observational encounters with customers in their accustomed habitats are the core component of marketing ethnography   

Ethnography is most helpful for:

1)      Achieving a high-level overview of your customers’ environment and the ongoing “pain points” they experience

2)      Identifying important customer “jobs” to be done, and devising an initial product development roadmap

3)      Developing a detailed understanding of how customers perform certain tasks or use specific products, in an effort to identify gaps in product performance and areas for potential improvement and innovation

4)      Establishing a comprehensive set of customer needs (as part of a Voice of the Customer study), by ensuring that what customers do, as well as what they say, is reflected in the final affinity diagram of customer needs

5)      Validating that a new product concept or prototype meets customer needs by placing it with customers and observing their usage in a real-life setting 

The Challenge of Ethnography

    Before start to do research related to ethnography, we need to examine more deeply the culture so as not to conflict with any other culture. In addition, another challenge is that we must be careful in order to sort out the appropriate title not affect a sensitivity of a culture. Other than that, the researcher must the researcher must understand the respondent pertinence such questions should be easy to understand in order to get the right answer.

Reference :

http://www.ams-inc.com/npd/ethnography.asp

http://www.powerdecisions.com/ethnography.cfm