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Business Ethnographic Methods

The document discusses business ethnographic methods, particularly focusing on ethnography as a methodology for understanding everyday life through fieldwork. It highlights the importance of participant observation and design ethnography, which aims to inform product development by understanding consumer needs and behaviors. The differences between academic ethnographic research and design ethnography are also outlined, emphasizing the shorter time frames and operational focus of design ethnography.

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Ishika Ratnam
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15 views

Business Ethnographic Methods

The document discusses business ethnographic methods, particularly focusing on ethnography as a methodology for understanding everyday life through fieldwork. It highlights the importance of participant observation and design ethnography, which aims to inform product development by understanding consumer needs and behaviors. The differences between academic ethnographic research and design ethnography are also outlined, emphasizing the shorter time frames and operational focus of design ethnography.

Uploaded by

Ishika Ratnam
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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BUSINESS ETHNOGRAPHIC

METHODS
:
ETHNOGRAPHY

• Ethno: People/ Race/ Culture + Graphy: an account/ description

• Ethnography: A methodology used to represent the perspective of everyday life.

• Most distinguishing feature of Anthropology: Fieldwork

• Fieldwork is time intensive


ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK

• Characteristics:
• Long term stay in the field
• Familiarization and Participation in the local life
• Methods/ Techniques:
• Participant Observation
• In-depth Interviews: Structured, Unstructured and Semi-Structured
Interviews
FIELDWORK

The anthropologists herself/himself is the most important ‘scientific


instrument’ used, investing a great deal of his or her own personality in
the process.

Important aspects: Gender, Race, Age Class, Caste of the anthropologist


PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

• Produces experiential knowledge


• Participant observation requires fieldwork but not all fieldwork is
participant observation
• In traditional ethnographic fieldwork PO involves learning a new
language (or a new dialect).
• PO involves immersing yourself in a culture/situation; learning to
remove yourself every day from that immersion so that whatever you
have seen and heard you can put that into perspective and write about
it convincingly
• It is a craft and like any craft it requires practice.
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

• Two types of Observers:

• Observing Participants: Those insiders who observe and record


some aspects of life around them. Example of Mark Fleisher’s study
(1989) of Federal Penitentiary in California.
• Participant Observers: Outsiders who participate in same aspects of
life around them and record what they can.
COMMON PROBLEMS IN FIELDWORK

• Limited knowledge of field language


• Paucity of time
• Funds
• Gender / Race/ Caste/ Class Bias
DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY

Design ethnography has business expansion as the goal

DE focuses on broad patterns of everyday life that are important and relevant for the conception,
design and development of new products and services.

Look deeper into what people do, what tools they use, and how they think to understand how to better
make and sell products.
DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY

Fieldwork and participant observation as basic grounding principles but over shorter time duration.

Compressed time frames compel DEs to draw on a wider tool kit of ethnographic methods -
interviewing (structured and informal), genealogies, photography, documentary film making and
videotaping, observation, archival research, and “deep hanging out”.

“Deep hanging out” - Mexican-American anthropologist Renato Rosaldo to capture that sense of
being profoundly immersed in a culture. He used “deep hanging out’ to describe participant
observation that was in-depth, reflexive and engaged but did not involve extended period of fieldwork
DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY

• People here, there or anywhere are not just consumers. They are social beings,
people with desires, wishes, needs, wants—some articulate, some unrecognized.
• 2 reasons why DE is important for business practices:

1. Designing technology that consumers want and need. Companies have relied on:
Developer organizations or on Marketing Organizations
2. DE interrupts the divide between work and home. There is “context cavity”
between living and working. Example: American work culture over the last 100 years.
DE renders the global marketplace into a series of commensurate local environments.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ACADEMIC
RESEARCH AND DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY
Academic Anthropological/ Design Ethnography
Ethnographic Work
1. Long-term fieldwork: Fieldwork period is short term and
spanned over months/ concentrated
years
1. Brings in more nuance and Brings together ideas that can be
texture to the research readily operationalized for product
outcome. development over a relatively
shorter duration of time.
1. Relies primarily on the DE can rely on consultants and
anthropological crafts/ market research apart from their
methods. It often makes own.
use of a research assistant
in the field if budget
allows.
1. This usually involves DE research is not constrained by
research work towards the need to carve out a research
fulfilling project demands project that will solely be the basis
so as to sustain and of the entire economic activity
support tenure of the supporting the people involved. It
anthropologist/ is one of the many aspects of
academician. product development.
DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY

• Salvador et al’s study of shopping spaces along the lines of the study
by Paco Underhill:
• Four commerce ecologies:
DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY

• There are no cookie-cutter recipes for getting results.

• One cannot predict the “deliverable” before it happens; this is the work of discovery, regardless of
product, service, or country.

• Ethnographic design methods change depending on the question or problem and the country or
region.
Thank You

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