Introduction

The ethnography is the angular stone of the Anthropology and, for mention, of Social Sciences. Ethnography is a lot of things at the same time, but I would like to thinked as the sum of the art and the science to describe people, his behavior, his mental models and the form to act and all of thinks in his everyday lives, as objects or spaces. This is the reason of his etimologic meaning, his origin was in the Greek, ethnos —εθνος, “trible, town”— y grapho —γραφω, “I writte”— and the meaning is “description of the people”. The term was created in 1770 by August Schlozer to designate the “science of peoples and nations”.

Benefits

Despite being historically relegated to the academic world and especially to the image we have of the European or North American anthropologist who goes for a time to live with isolated tribes in Africa or Asia, his epistemology may also be of interest for market research as it allows gaps to be filled, such as:

• Define research questions and scope of the problem
• Identify stakeholders who act or were involved in the study object and which we had not taken into account
• Allow to access to motivations, doings and sayings in his natural context. In other words, access to these deep knowledge of the customer, or the implicit knowledge that is not verbalized and It is part of the relationship with brands, products or services.
• Normally, is common in the research plan thinking in present because it’s hard to make inferences to the future, while the selection of people to study or the ethnographic emplacement allow see a different temporality of the present. For example, if we want to observe how will be used a technology when it will be mainstream -that is, used by late-adopters to become mainstream by covering various population strata-, we can ethnografier early-adopters and inference this reality to identify stops and triggers. Other example is If we want to know how people will adopt a new service, we can go to other places in what service -or other similar- is a reality and prevent how can be assumed for other people. In the words of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz: “The place of study is not the object of study. Anthropologists do not study villages (tribes, villages, neighborhoods…); study in villages. You can study different things in different places, and in confined localities some things can be better studied.’ (Geertz, 1990, p. 33)
• Triangulate the insights we extract is mandatory, which provides validity and reliability, because is very easy to share and validate the vision emic -point of view of the people- and etic -point of view of the researcher- with the people with whom we have carried out the fieldwork and make sure that our descriptions and explanations are not the result of chance, but are based on fieldwork and the meaning attributed is correct
• Makes visible the contradictions between what people say (sayings) and what people do (doings), facilitating access to insights deep and actionable through the study from the natural context in which the research is carried out. Although it seems very obvious, people are full of contradictions, of reasons and emotions, with biases of social desirability so that only by looking at the natural context can we understand all this and see the contradictions that compose the human being.
• Being a multi-technical epistemology allows to the context of study. Although participant observation is usually used as a synonym for ethnography, documentary analysis, network analysis, and the interviews with relevant populations as well as analysis of secondary data sources are a part of this pool of ethnographic techniques. But always respecting the research context by having a naturist approach, conducting research where the action takes place.

Although their approaches have not changed much since their institutionalization, the popularisation of new information technologies (NIT) at the beginning of the XXI century has allowed reformulation and adaptation to the new consumption patterns and the new types of customers as well as their relationship with brands. Taking advantage of NIT to facilitate the  introduction of the researcher into the field work through technological mediation, in a natural step that we have taken from traditional ethnography to virtual ethnography -carried out in virtual spaces such as forums, chats or social networks- to digital ethnography that integrates this non-physical reality as a single space or even mobile ethnography to emphasize the mediation of the smartphone as a angular stone of information gathering.

How has the NIT benefit ethnography? People, in general, feel barriers to the unknown, with the popularization of the smartphone for more than 10 years, together with social networks, a climate of access to privacy has been created that has benefited ethnography for several reasons:

• People no longer feel the same apprehension about showing their privacy and the introduction of the researcher (moderator) in a context of studying a population of interest is much easier. This barrier is no longer exists and the deadlines for obtaining in-depth knowledge of the customer are being shortened: NIT have fostered this context of sharing and a greater impact of stimuli that an ethnographer can take advantage of to gain faster and deeper access to the privacy of customer practices.
• Sharing different aspects of our daily routine on social media has created the possibility of (re)exploiting these data to transform them into actionable brand insights, without the need to generate “ad hoc” information for research. Access to public conversations on social media allows us to access in real time and with a history of the relationship of a brand or service by consumers at different times like the launch, evangelization, problems in consumption, moments and emotions associated with consumption or brand, etc.
• The use of the smartphone or computer for people to build a research journal, in an environment that is familiar to them and in which they like to share, makes it easier to access their daily lives. I particularly like the option of video diaries in which consumers describe, for example, their home while they show it: how is their kitchen, how organise the weekly purchase, how distribute food in the kitchen or how it is prepared and consumed. The video diary functions as a kind of ethnographic diary in which the customer narrates, according to guidelines given by the researcher, the moments of consumption, their emotions or the role played by people, objects and spaces.
• The quantification of the different aspects of the everyday such as displacements and the means of transport, the time of use of the smartphone, vital signs like the pulse or the exercise that we do, are elements that can be taken into account when planning what and where to display advertising to get more attention to advertising impacts.

Epilogue

Market research has a golden opportunity to access an epistemology that facilitate to enter a constantly changing reality, which evolves towards the provision of services and the positioning of brands (brand positioning) in unexpected places in the life of customers, with requirements ethical and transparency for brands. Ethnography seems key as a solution that allows us to understand the contradictions between doing and saying, reaching the implicit in people’s behaviors, integrating emotions in the analysis phase and responding to a changing reality with an epistemology that adapts to this reality and the context in which it is carried out and, most importantly, with a terrifying ability to generate actionable insights that know how to see this opportunity.

 

Geertz, C. (1990). La interpretación de las culturas, Gedisa: Madrid

 

André Soren