What is the difference between a regular marketing research and an ethnographic marketing research?

Corporate ethnography is central to gaining a full understanding of customers and the appropriate business strategies. Over the past years, I have been helping international brands to delve deeper into the mindset of their customers, particularly in emerging markets. Each project has been different in terms of respondent's location, age, income level, but one thing encompass my findings in all these projects: With an open-ended, ethnographic research approach, the client gained valuable insights about their brand that surpassed the expectations of their traditional approach to market research. The best research has been those that were initiated with as few assumptions as possible; it is an approach that allows the consumer to shape the brand. To sustain and accelerate growth in new markets, companies have to tailor their response to fragmented regional cultures and sub-cultures by constantly launching customized product and service offerings. They also need to understand perhaps, subtlety, the dreams and aspirations of its consumers as these influence their behavior to invest in the product or service. In many ways, success in emerging markets will depend in large part on how quickly companies can understand and respond to differences in attitudes, spending behavior, and preferences among the increasingly affluent consumers. Within the context of a business partnership, a trained ethnographer will contribute a deep understanding of cultural and social theory to the analysis process of entering new markets. This goes beyond casual observation and rather, will pull together a web of intimate field research and best practices that make visible underlying structures of why people do what they do. For this reason, any analysis should always work within a framework grounded in social sciences. Analysis takes time, but the results will include models of behavior and practice, experience frameworks, design principles, and cultural patterns that enables those involved to build long lasting relationships. Once the data has been analyzed and crafted into something meaningful, the research team will be able to provide a rich story with a clear set of genuine discoveries. In the end, the goal of getting closer to the consumers is to better understand their cultures and behaviors, and in the process develop aspiring and meaningful products and services relevant to their lives. Related article:

What makes Ethnography different is the approach and setting. Ethnographic studies make use of the subject's environment and attempt to observe a respondent's life with the least amount of artificial interference possible. Questions asked are also very open and more about the why and how and less about providing any kind of prompts or direction to respondents. Why would someone want this type of research? Often when companies are seeking out ways to improve an existing product or service they might want to see how current customers are utilizing their product (or their competitor's product) in real life. These studies are often part of a greater project of redesigning the way a company offers its product or service. Some great examples of this research used to improve products can be found at design companies like IDEO. Ethnographic research can be done in conjunction with "regular" market research as defined above, but as a way to get into more depth with an individual respondent. Typically sample sizes are also smaller so more extrapolation has to be done from a small subset of people to the larger user population than doing say 5-10 large focus groups across the US and a 250 person online study. Again, as with all questions, the use of the Ethnographic approach is really dependant on the goals of the research. The best project candidates cannot have strict limitations or pre-defined goals because the research may uncover a completely unknown issue or solution. Thus these are also often studies done for big budget high profile types of products or services because the design for the solution may be quite extensive. New technology like mini video cameras and smartphones with high quality video and the memory capacity to take longer video clips are making this type of research easier and more cost effective than ever before. The traditional approach for this research was for the researcher to travel to respondents' homes or workplaces and observe in person, but today this can be done virtually with less interference and fewer interruptions in the flow of the respondents' day-to-day life so that a more accurate picture can be painted. In some cases, respondents really do seem to forget there are cameras rolling and provide rich insights. That said, respondents will also need to be given some guidance and Ethnographers also have a specific approach to asking their questions that cannot be underestimated, so a combination of an in person visit with a follow up "video diary" type approach may be the best way to leverage the new technology. So, in general, if you don't know what you don't know about your project and you have some flexibility in the end solution (and the money and time to design something from the ground up) this might be a better starting place than the traditional focus groups and online survey approach, but if you are strapped for cash and time and you know approximately what you need to get feedback on from your respondents, then a more traditional approach might be a better fit.