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Ethnography for Marketers

Hy Mariampolski

Sage 2006

QualiData Research Inc,

Applications for the New Marketing Ethnography (26)

Helps cultivate a highly details and context-specific understanding of consumer behaviour and

choice. Approach has become a competitive asset in business.

New Product Discovery: thinking how to improve on products. Most shoppers lack insights /ingenuity to imagine practice new product opportunities. Looking for clues / hints to new

opportunities, marketers need to watch for and interpret carefully. E.G. saw customers

mixing products for home cleaningrevealed benefits included stain removal, etc.

Observing combinations helped client company improve on existing lines of cleaning agents.

o Work-arounds: patching together unique ways of overcoming complex problems.Indifference: if poor product performance, Eth see dissatisfactionled to

development of effort-free bathroom cleaning products.

o Customers trace product failure to own deficiencies, extraneous factors.o Avoidance.o Imagining perfection. An understanding of consumers ideas of perfection was able

to drive the manufacturer into a number of alternative product-development

directions.

Commercial and Corporate Culture: studying corporate units, employee groups, commercialenvironments. Represent collective character / personality of organisation provide basis of

values, ideas and norms. Spradley and Mann (1975) and Gubrium (1975) pioneered usingethnographic methods in the study of service enterprisesfound cocktail waitress exert a

major influence in negotiating the relationship with customers. Variety of issues essential to

profitability / success.

o Integration of subgroups: address poor employee morale, high turnover, badpublicity, loss of shareholder value (when expose discriminatory practices: women,

minority).

o Workflow and adoption of new technologies: organisation change has culturaldimension. Alters socialization of new employees into work group (friction at

cultural level). Lead to discoveries on new business opportunities: gather customer

info make relevant to sales organisation, advocating shifts in corporate culture.o Productivity: contextually grounded understanding of work flow in organizations

leads to more than the discovery of potential problems and opportunities. Cultural

analysis can serve as diagnostic and strategic tools continuously advancing the larger

objectives of the enterprise and its overall health.

o Merging of corporate enterprises.o Adaptation to changeo Corporate social responsibility: is a cultural issue fostered by high level of

awareness, organizational focus, comms with int and ext audiences

Ethnic and Regional Subcultures: idea of multiculturalism taken root in contemporarysocieties. Marketers largely have found that regional and ethnic subcultures represent an

opportunity. Tailor made for niche markets. I.e. a local bank may find that recognizing

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community celebrations, hiring members of neighbourhood subgroups to serve as

managers, and investing in local businesses and service providers all serve to reinforce

allegiance to the brand. Established ethnic groups ethnic subcommunities. Products appeal

directly to the cultural distinctiveness of ethnic subcommunities

o QualiData, discovered the importance of olfactory signalsthe smell of pine,particularlyin informing Hispanic Americans that areas of the home have been

successfully cleaned (not verbalized), representations of this research-based

understanding can become powerful motivators for repeat product purchase.

o Wong (1993) sensitivity to culture / context essential in decoding meanings thatAsian Americans attach to constructs taken for granted in general market.

Retail navigation: detailed ecological analysis of sales and merchandising performance,compose retail store environments (lighting, smells, signage, displays of goods, location,

point-of-purchase displays, size, orientation of shelves, adjacencies: impact buying

behaviour). METHOD: time-lapse photography as tool for behavioural observation and data

collection. Underhill (2000) natural tendency to steer towards right when navigating

department stores. Video recordings of shopping behaviour Guerrilla Ethnography: pilot ethnography; street research. Mystery shoppingconstructing

usage scenarios

Usability and User Interface Design: contextual inquiryintensive exploration ofworkplaces and home environmentsunderstand needs and processes around which

technologies and other tools can be developed. QualData helped clients design home-

banking websites and ATMs, Listening to consumers expressed wishes and observing their

interactions with computer technology was coupled with careful examination of their

surroundings.

From ethnographic data to marketing intelligence