Ethnography has remained most often as a "fly on the wall" technique, with the anthropologists loitering in people's homes to observe the consumers pure lives. The authors claim this description does not do justice to the increasingly significant role in formulating business strategy of ethnography or to the manner ethnography really works in the corporate world. To arrive at a more indepth understanding of how corporations use ethnography to their advantage, the authors conducted interviews with executives in various industries worldwide, including Wells Fargo and Ford. Whether expressed in video format, presentations or reports, these narratives describe how people confront and surmount the hurdles they encounter in meeting their responsibilities and satisfying their hopes in our globalized consumer culture.
By delving into the richness of people's life stories, ethnographic research can pivot businesses away from less significant segmentation parameters, like purchase history or demographics, and toward those that drive behavior, including motive and aim. Quantitative techniques like factor analysis can afterwards be applied to find and size market segments. Consistent with the idea that ethnography helps organizations cope more effectively with market complexities, the executives the authors interviewed often talked about as having helped them sort out vexing ethnography data. Additionally they underline the point that ethnographic stories frequently provide insight into consumer behavior that is difficult to find in other ways, while the understanding that ethnography is only an exploratory technique is called into dispute by these discussions.
Stories That Deliver Business Insights case study solution
PUBLICATION DATE: January 01, 2014 PRODUCT #: SMR475-HCB-ENG
This is just an excerpt. This case is about SALES & MARKETING
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