Demystifying Ethnography

From Fuzzy To Focus
As a part of the practice of applying a Consumer Anthropology framework to strategic research, we use ethnographic approaches; those focused on gathering facts generated by social mores and behaviors. The goal is to explore the culture that surrounds and shapes consumer lifestyles and their relationships with brands and products.
Often, in discussions with clients, or even amongst ourselves as strategic research practitioners, ethnography is used as a term or title to efer to a stand-alone research approach that involves in-home interviews, observation of consumers while they are involved in a specific activity, or some other narrow definition of a particular research tool.
This is not unusual. Even seasoned researchers who sell ethnography to their clients sometimes assume that engaging in ethnographic research means using the traditional anthropological approach of participant observation. However, in Consumer Anthropology, participant observation is merely one method for uncovering ethnographic insights. Ethnography in this case (and even more broadly in modern academic research practices) is actually a collection of methodologies that allow us to understand consumer context.
There are a number of ways to collect ethnographic data, with some examples including:
• Response-based group discussions (among strangers, friends or peer groups): this type of data collection is best used to gain input on new topics and in order to develop hypotheses

• Response-based one on one discussions: to get at deeper look at attitudes, values, motivations and behaviors and identify patterns of reactions and actions

• Ethnographic immersion: participant observation, in-situ, and either one on one or among a family or subculture group lasting anywhere from several hours to several days.

• Narrative Creation: asking consumers to write stories will provide context and language that describe how they relate to a brand, product or category. The trick here is to use this tool with the right target consumers: for obvious reasons, creative types often are better at constructing narratives.

• Ethnographic photos, video diaries or journals: consumer generated photography or videography of their lives that often include stories or narrative will add further texture and insight.

• Metaphor elicitation: having participants create collages of words, pictures and other imagery around a specific topic help participants to think more critically and abstractly. Usually assigned as homework, collages are an interesting way to identify cultural patterns.

It is also important to note that when it comes to sources of ethnographic data collection, we are only limited by our vision! That means that as the world changes and we evolve as researchers, the possibilities are limitless. If it can be observed, it counts as data. So we should always feel free to make customization a top-of-mind option for ethnographic research methodologies.

Why Do We Care?
And, why would we want to study consumer context? What is the value of conducting research that goes outside the sphere of asking consumers for their opinions or to report their attitudes, values and behaviors?
Ethnographic methodologies allow us to collect the context that helps us give meaning to consumer behavior, framing it in the influence of environmental and social factors. The greater the understanding of context and the stronger the collaboration between consumers and marketers (AKA “clients”) the more likely an increasing return on investment (ROI) will result.
This is the central philosophy of Consumer Anthropology and the reason why ethnographic methods are used as part of the “Consumer Context” sphere of the “3 C’s”(see previous blog on this topic).
At the core of the reasons to utilize ethnographic approaches is the desire to compensate for the limitations faced when using siloed approaches to gather insights, such as exclusive use of custom quantitative or qualitative studies. It is important for us to know not only what different types of research techniques can do, but also what they fail to do.
First, traditional quantitative and qualitative studies are very useful for helping develop models that seek to predict consumer behavior and for uncovering attitudes that consumers hold toward brands or products.
There is no opportunity, however, to identify patterns and differentiate between what consumers say and what they actually do, nor is there an ability to understand the impetus for those actions and the cultural influences explaining why certain patterns exist.
And, while qualitative and quantitative methodologies can create opportunities and lines of questioning that go deep, what these approaches often miss is the cultural context for interpreting the results. We don’t want to look at research in a vacuum. We want it tied to real world events, trends, and experiences.
Ethnography is a method of discovery that seeks to compensate for these limitations inherent in traditional qualitative and quantitative research.
Specifically, if in a more strategic focused research initiative (such as defining / segmenting consumer targets, assessing brand health or identifying innovation opportunities) research relies exclusively on what consumers say in a response-based setting, such as focus groups or surveys for insights, they risk missing bigger pieces of the puzzle and leaving holes in the efficacy of their final solution.
In focusing on the lived experience of research participants among other cultural factors, we gain insight into patterns of behavior that allow us as ethnographers to recognize unspoken assumptions, making the invisible visible to both the participants themselves as well as our clients!
Thus, the specifics of a research methodology or set of tools used in a strategic research approach, whether it involves primary or secondary data, matter less than its application. In other words, it is the entirety of the research approaches used that make a project ethnographic; the way they combine to provide understanding and meaning of sociocultural practices is ultimately what is important.
Getting To The Point
Ethnography is not a stand-alone offering that sits in a set of mutually exclusive products we offer to help develop strategic research solutions for our clients. Nor is a research methodology inherently ethnographic just because we are taking the experience off the survey page our out of the focus group facility.
Ethnography is, however, a set of approaches we can use to bring depth and breadth to the solutions we deliver to clients. Strategic research results that have a foundation in the understanding of human and cultural context elevate findings to insights, and elevate the return on investment clients can expect from application of those insights, both in the near and long term.
Ethnography is also a way to truly engage clients as partners in strategic research and “unlock insights that inspire!”

For more information about Northstar Research Partners and / or  our Consumer Anthropology practice area, please feel free to reach out to me directly: jgordon@nsresearch-usa.com

Client Ethnography Briefing, Part II

In my last blog, I spoke about the importance of both engaging clients in ethnographic fieldwork as well as the value of a proper brief before entering the field as a member of the team.  I also shared the first half of the Client Ethnography Briefing document we at Northstar share with our clients to prepare them for participating in fieldwork.  The first half talks about the benefits of an ethnographic approach and what to expect from the experience by way of process and analysis.

Below is part two of that same document, whereby we detail out the responsibilities team members have for data capture and generation.  If you would like more information about the Northstar Approach to ethnographic fieldwork or would like a copy of the complete document, please feel free to reach out to me directly: jgordon@nresearch-usa.com

 

II.     OUR SHARED FIELD WORK RESPONSIBILITIES:

As Consumer Anthropologists we are socio-cultural investigators.  We spend time in places with people in order to pick up on clues that contribute to our understanding of those people and those places.  We interview, observe, listen, and participate across a period of time, and we do all of this while documenting our process along the way through video capture, note-taking and digital photography.  It is the role of any participant in the fieldwork to take on an ethnographer’s responsibilities.  This ultimately allows for a more enriching experience for the observer/participant, and generates higher quality and more meaningful data. 

Data Capture

•  Observing & Participating – we are committed to going out and getting close to the activities and every day experiences of other people.  Ethnography enables us to directly experience for ourselves both the ordinary routines and conditions under which people live their lives and how they purchase and use products.  It involves being with other people to see how they respond to events and questions and experiencing for oneself these events.  Observing and engaging in these activities leads to the acquisition of empathy for other people’s ways of acting and feeling.

• Listening - listening builds trust which will bring a level of comfort, honesty and openness to the process, which are all keys to accurate data collection.  We want and need them to be able to describe their lifestyle, behavior, thoughts, feelings, values, and attitudes in as much detail as they possibly can.  We do this most effectively through patient and active listening.

•  Note-taking – we always carry a field journal or note pad and we ask that client participants do the same.  We ask that all ethnography team participants jot down observations of the actions and attitudes of our participants, as well as their own thoughts, questions, and reflections during their “lived experience” in the field.  These notes should be written contemporaneously with the events depicted, and do not have to be consistent in voice or purpose.  These notes will lend immediate value to the initial stages of our analysis.

• Videography & still photography – we always bring both a video and still camera with us into the field to document our experience.  We ask clients to bring a camera and  snap photographs during their “lived experience” in the field.  We, of course, will have a digital camera as well and will be snapping our own photos as well as shooting video.  While we are certainly interested in documenting the behaviors of our participants, we are also very interested in capturing the context – people, items, & physical environment – that surrounds them.  Some examples include prized possessions,  media, tools, dress, favorite foods, pets, vehicles, artwork etc.

Data Analysis

 

•  Post-Interview Debrief: Immediately following each interview we have a brief discussion with client participants to compare notes, retell anecdotes, share discoveries and discuss our top-of-mind impressions from the experience.  Topics for discussion might include:

• Major themes recognized that relate to the guiding question
  Sensory impressions: sights, sounds, textures, smells, and tastes
  Specific words, phrases, summaries of conversations, and insider language

• Personal responses to/feelings about what we observed – “What was it like for you to be doing this research?”  “In what ways did you connect with informants, and in what ways didn’t you?”  While this is extremely important information, we will be especially careful to separate it from the core analysis.
• Questions for future investigation
• Patterned similarities and differences as compared to other interviews we’ve completed

Aside from a “we look forward to having you in field with us” note, that’s the brief, at length.

I look forward to your comments on shared experiences or other best practices.

Client Ethnography Participation Briefing: Part 1

As Consumer Anthropologists and Ethnography practitioners, we LOVE it when clients are engaged enough to want to be a part of the ethnography process. It is always a great idea for client teams to help generate data that also helps them to generate empathy for their consumers and develop ownership of the insights that come out of fieldwork.

However, the ethnographic experience is MUCH DIFFERENT from a behind-the-glass focus group experience or even an in-home In-depth interview. That’s why it’s important to engage clients prior to the ethnographic experience to let them know the purpose of this particular phase of a strategic research project, as well as to let them know what their duties are as a part of the ethnography team.

After all, no client should go into field not knowing what to listen and look for. And absolutely no client should go in to field expecting to just be a fly-on-the-wall. In order to get the most out of the experience, being an active participant in the data collection and analysis process is essential.  That is why it’s so important to prepare clients with the context of the approach and a full briefing on the expectations of their role on the team.

At Northstar Research Partners, we like to provide our client teams with an Ethnography briefing document in advance of fieldwork . Below is the first part of that document, where we set up the context of the ethnographic experience:

“We are always pleased to have clients as a part of our field team on ethnographic immersions. This document is meant to help prepare clients for the experience by:
• Defining Consumer Ethnography in our own terms and share our approach to field work
• Defining team roles for data collection while in the field

I. OUR APPROACH TO CONSUMER ETHNOGRAPHY:

Effective contemporary marketing depends upon understanding the consumer in as deep and nuanced a manner as possible. Consumer Ethnography’s core purpose as a research methodology is to gain an insider perspective – a means of identifying significant insights around consumer experience up close and personal. In the field, basic anthropological concepts, data collection methods and techniques, and analysis are the fundamental elements of “doing ethnography.” In this sense, we are both participators and observers: not just interviewers. The following key tenets of our approach should help to explain what to expect from the process

Inductive / unstructured information gathering

• While we enter the field with pre-defined objectives and a comprehensive discussion guide, we should not forget to be inductive and flexible in our approach.
• Fieldwork is not always orderly. We always come well prepared knowing our guiding questions, yet we’re always ready to shift direction and improvise accordingly.
• Sometimes the richest findings come when we’ve gotten “off-task” a bit, allowing the participant / informant to lead us down a path we had not considered previously.

Bringing a Holistic Perspective to Our Investigation

• We understand culture to be an integrated system where everything is connected in some way to everything else. Therefore we aim to understand people within the larger context of their lives and not just in the context of the transaction under study. This means that in our approach to answering a specific set of questions, we must pull back and look for the whole in which the questions are embedded.
•  The ethnographic research process is like piecing together a puzzle to understand the whole. The “pieces” themselves represent ethnographic data which come in many forms, including but not limited to group discussions or homework assignments that may be part of the larger scope of research. While in field doing ethnographic immersions, we should be using photography and notes to capture clues about the participants environment: including the “artifacts” in their homes and the characteristics of their surroundings.

Analysis is a Process That Starts During The Fieldwork

• Whereas in most research analysis follows data collection, in ethnographic research analysis and data collection occur simultaneously.
• As Ethnographers we are charged with the need to figure out what patterns the data reveal and what stories the data tell.
• What’s exciting about Ethnographic analysis is that it is iterative; that is, interpretation begins with the first steps into the field; the first set of notes and experiences; and the first set of guesses, hunches or hypotheses. It continues until a fully developed and well-supported interpretation emerges. Along the way, data is patterned into a story or interpretation that responds to the questions that guided the project in the first place.
• Our understandings of “what is going on” may oscillate wildly at first, but over time they will diminish as we converge toward stable interpretation. This is why it is important not to leave a single ethnographic encounter thinking “we have the answer”, as analysis will continue to evolve over the course of the fieldwork.
• We validate data by reaching the same conclusion through identification of patterns from a number of types of data, and we attempt to collect that data from different sources and through various methods in our tool kit, such as: observation, participation, interviewing, video documentation, digital photography, participant homework assignments and the collection of relevant cultural artifacts”.

Stay tuned for Part 2 to see the instructions on shared fieldwork responsibilities, coming soon…

Context Is Everything

Most of my blogs are devoted to topics rooted in Consumer Anthropology. I recently gave a brief talk as part of the NewMR virtual event on Ethnography. Link below to see the presentation.
In the dialogue, I discuss the CONTEXT of ethnography in the broader 3 C’s framework. As researchers, it is important that we see the bigger picture. I discuss a few case examples here of how understanding Client, Cultural and Consumer Context are all essential part of a well rounded strategic research approach.

http://newmr.org/page/6298711:Page:9314

Better Businiess and a Better World Via Better Strategic Research

I am currently enjoying a refreshing perspective on restructuring capitalist ideals for modern life. It suggests and illustrates philosophies and practices that both adapt to and anticipate the needs and consequences of a modern globalized economy and consumer culture.

In The New Capitalist Manifesto, Umair Haque talks about Constructive Capitalism; a disruptive and productive way for business to create what he calls “thick” value that sustains.

He talks about “socio-productivity”, which means creating markets and industries for those whom orthodox capitalism is unable to serve…creating “impossible” new markets…essentially giving all of “us” humans the power to play the game and improve our collective experience. He uses the example of Tata motors and their creation of the Nano: a super-low cost car for the poor living in ultra-urbanized emerging markets.

What IF we could use the power of human understanding, empathy and consumer insight to help make life more fulfilling for everyone? I have a wide-eyed vision that through practices like Consumer Anthropology, we can do just that.

Consumer Anthropology asserts there are several contextual spheres of influence involved in the creation, dissemination and evolution of consumer culture. Among those, at a minimum, are 3 C’s: Clients (organizations seeking to sell a product or idea), macro Culture (macro forces and people trends) and Consumers (attitudes, values, behaviors, etc.). Breakthrough innovation happens when at least these three spheres find synergy.

Imagine if every brand actively practiced this kind of holistic simultaneous understanding: of themselves, the world they live in, and their consumer. They would consistently be able to deliver not only better products and marketing, but would likely be inspired to do so using increasingly sustainable business practices.

They would find ways to serve the underserved in unique ways that both satisfied unmet consumer needs and shareholder value requirements. And most likely, shareholders and employees (who, as it turns out, are also humans and consumers) will feel a higher sense of purpose, knowing that they have the power, privilege and obligation to address the bigger needs of the world we all live in. And there the “thick” value cycle starts and continues.

Oh, the vision of a Utopian marketplace powered by good intentions. And here’s a secret you may not be party to just yet: I’ve learned it from years of participant observation in this business: it’s totally possible.

The 3 C’s Framework for Successful Consumer Anthropology Projects

When most people think about Consumer Anthropology, I imagine their brains go straight to the ethnographic research space. And yes, this is a core differentiating methodology when comparing this practice area to more traditional qualitative or quantitative research. However, whenever I talk about consumer anthropology to my team at Northstar Research Partners and any other colleagues or clients, I always refer to the “Three C’s”.

In a nutshell, when designing the ideal Consumer Anthropology-based strategic research methodology, there are 3 core areas that are important to a successful project

1. Client Context: considering the audience is the first critical step of any research project design. When coming from a Consumer Anthropology perspective, however, it is especially important. The operating and cultural parameters of the client organization can have a significant impact on project design. This includes everything from accurate assessment of the problem and the project objectives, shaping the core team’s involvement in the research to understanding barriers to socialization of results and designing appropriate deliverables that will generate empathy, facilitate buy-in and speed to application of results.

2. Cultural Context: Understanding what macro forces and trends are at play in the world and how those affect your client’s category, consumer culture in general, and your client’s target consumer will also have an impact on the success of the project. Understanding sociological constraints and cultural responses to those can not only help identify knowledge gaps and potential added-value project objectives, but can also impact HOW the research is conducted. The nature of culture may open up some possibilities with regard to the research methodology itself.

3. Consumer Context: this is where the consumer research piece, and ethnographic methodologies in particular, come in to play. The best results come from a robust set of data that considers diversity in data collection as a best practice. In anthropological research with regard to the study of consumption, data doesn’t just come from what consumer’s say, but from the context that shapes their points of view and behaviors. This means that your data set is only limited by the researcher’s “vision”. What can be observed to identify cultural patterns that help shape insights? In the next couple of blogs i will likely talk about some data collection approaches that I find particularly insightful. The goal is: depth and breadth. Allow both consumers and researchers to generate data from many different perspectives in any project and you will find that those perspectives complement one another in ways that unearth insights you might not find if you were only looking at one thing.

I always try to include the “three Cs” in any strategic endeavor with clients. I find that the most impactful projects come out of this framework. I would be interested in hearing from fellow practitioners regarding how they see / apply similar perspectives.

Seeding the Winds of Change

I have spent an adult life thus far doing a good deal of exploring. I have explored the human experience and human culture. I have explored academic approaches to human understanding. I have explored the practice of turning human and cultural insights into extremely valuable business, brand and marketing strategy. I have explored the nuances of sociology and culture within the professional spaces of marketing research and brand / product strategy.

I have also done a lot of reading.  As I know all of these authors (and others I know have unconsciously  left out and will fill in later) have influenced my point of view, I thought i would mention them here in no particular order:  Watts Wacker, Grant McCracken, William Gibson, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Daniel Pink, James P. Carse, Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny  and anyone who has written really good Arthurian Legend.

The result as it stands today has led me to awareness of a guiding principle that drives both my personal and professional ambitions:

Culture  - the force that drives change in humanity – comes from instances whereby time-sustaining traditions are given new relevance and resonance by a such unfamiliar twists  and movements we view as “deviance”.

Deviance is what busts the boundaries enforced by a society and brings new vision and traditions.  By understanding the boundaries of a society, one can know with a good amount of certainty where the next deviance will come from.  And if one understands the traditions associated with the inhabitants of that society, one (or a collection of “ones”)  can begin to simultaneously predict and influence culture.

It is  this awareness of the reality that we (researchers,marketers, innovators and others interested in a blog like this) can have this influence, that drives our passion.  At least I believe it’s what drives mine.

It’s why for my career path  I chose to practice Consumer Anthropology, which studies the sociological constraints of consumer society to enable tactical understanding of human culture.

This pursuit of human and cultural insight not only helps me deliver highly valuable strategic implications and recommendations to my clients, but in doing so to also have the opportunity to influence human culture toward a bigger goal – perpetuation of the game for all fo us to enjoy.

It is why I have chosen to accept a role as VP of Consumer Anthropology at Northstar Research Partners (http://www.nsresearch.com/) beginning in January 2011.  By doing so, I will joining an army of  individuals whom I believe to be truly passionate and innovative researchers and humans.

Northstar Research Partners  is a team that has proven itself time and again to be harnessing its collective power to deliver great work and I am excited by the opportunity  to help lead this team and our clients to even more rewarding opportunities for strategic growth.

- Again - for all of us.

Cheers to change!  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. May we all truly be thankful for our opportunity to be human, and go in to the coming (and every) new year with renewed energy and passion!

“People-Powered Research” in Consumer Insights

I was just reading an article in a back issue of Ode Magazine on “People Powered Research”  http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/71/people-powered-research/.   The concept is simple with regard to applied social research in the public sector:  If you are trying to solve a problem that is going to involve the people you are studying in applying the solution, then get them involved as early on in the research process to help develop the study.  This will help the research team get a firm understanding of the problem from a ground-level, applied human perspective and significantly improve buy-in and efficiency of application of the solution as the very people whose behaviors you are seeking to impact have skin in the game from the beginning.

I find this approach to be particularly applicable in consumer research, although not necessarily always readily adopted.   And it is slightly more involved as well.

For starters, brand teams often forget that the first audience for adoption and application of strategies that derive from the implications of consumer insight work is their own internal system of functional teams.  It is, therefore, extremely important at the beginning of any project to make sure the time is taken to engage stakeholders from a breadth of functions that touch the business; from research, to marketing, to external execution agencies.

When this time is taken at the beginning, as well as throughout the process (with team members present and active in research fieldwork, strategy and ideation sessions), efficiency of strategic implementation dramatically improves.  And not just from a speed-standpoint, but also with regard to application of all or most points of strategic recommendations…as opposed to the “chinese menu” selection approach that often happens if certain stakeholders weren’t personally invested in the work and feel threatened or challenged by certain insights or results.

I have found that some organizations do this better than others.  Toyota Motor Sales, for example, requires a Nemawashe process before the start of any project.  ( see an explanation here: http://www.gembapantarei.com/2007/03/the_art_of_nemawashi.html )

This process takes a little bit of time at the up front but goes a long way in ensuring a successful project.

I have also found that the more work you can do with consumers or consumer-facing experts (those who engage on a regular basis with the target consumer and have a right-to-a-point of view on culture and behavior patterns) in a hypothesis-formation phase of work before finalizing the scope of a research project, the better.

Most of the time in this business, you receive a one-page RFP that outlines the client’s best estimation of the problem they are trying to solve that asks for a fully baked solution in the form of a pretty tight proposal.

I often find it challenging to define a solution without having had the time to engage with client teams as well as conducting a deeper, more immersive and anthropological  / sociological dive into the sociocultural realities of the “universe” being studied.  It is why I often work with teams to suggest more loosely defined research scopes that include at least some level of exploration at the beginning of a project that will then help tighten up the research and strategy approach moving forward.

It means the pricing and scoping in a proposal are necessarily more of a straw-man approach open to shift once the project is started .  While it may be hard to stomach going in to a large-scale project with uncertainty, in the long run I have found over and over that client teams appreciate the higher quality of result even though the effort may take a little more time and a few more meetings.

I believe the research world is getting to a place where both clients and consultant teams are starting to take a step back from a speed-to-market based mentality to one of seeking first to understand and generally remembering the value of taking one’s time and involving more people in the process as opposed to isolated decision-making.

For me, it is one of the foundational processes of Consumer Anthropology and one I hope to teach and deploy with every client and team I work with.

As always, I am genuinely interested in hearing perspectives from other practitioners.  Do you think we can take notes from a more “People-Powered Research” approach?

 

Prioritizing Practice As A Thought Leader In Consumer Anthropology

When looking at professional practice in any field, it is often the case that as at the junior levels you spend all of your time practicing…”paying your dues” working long hours and learning your trade / craft / profession.  Upon development of significant expertise, you begin to manage others and take a little bit of the “grunt work” off of your plate, so that eventually you can sit pretty at an executive level and spend most of your time “supervising”, “directing” and otherwise dispatching sage wisdom to those who are up and coming.

In research organizations and especially in client organizations, it seems that the more senior you are, the less time you spend in field…actual practice and interaction with consumers becomes secondary to your day-to-day executive management of business strategy.  You develop processes, publish, attend industry events and,for the most part, rely on others with more youthful energy to go out and do the work of data collection, analysis and insight generation.

In Consumer Anthropology, which is only recently (in the past couple of decades) starting to  truly mainstream in research practice for consumer products / brands and other commercial / social enterprise, I wonder if this same pattern will apply to those pioneers who have been shaping the discipline.

Fieldwork is exhausting.  Long hours / days / weeks / months away from home.  Living out of suitcases and spending your days exuding energy and enthusiasm with research participants, strategically working through research objectives laid out in field guides, as well as listening and observing to collect data from several sources simultaneously (language, behavior, environment).

It is also extremely energizing and rewarding.  It connects us with the human energy and sociocultural realities that create the patterns we are identifying and applying to our client’s business.  It helps us truly understand and be able to predict patterns of cultural change in a way that can’t be fully understood through quantitative methodologies alone.  It helps us develop new ways to customize our  approaches data generation and collection based on observed practices in human communication.

It is why practice is necessarily an essential part of any thought leader’s day-to-day in this space.  I know it is why it will always be a part of mine.

As I have been simultaneously treading and charting my path as The Brand Sherpa, this has been a dilemma I have wrestled with.  For about a decade now I have spend the majority of time in field. When I was working full time I would often get frustrated by the rigorious pace of work that kept me from furthering my pursuit of knowledge (from the academic sphere, from peers, from the industry) as well as being able to document process and educate / inspire other researchers who were just beginning to learn the practice.

After spending over a year on my own, I have learned to truly appreciate the freedom I have had to learn, read, write, share, interact, network and truly inspire others while taking on a less exhausting schedule of fieldwork.

I have also had the opportunity to spend time analyzing years of data generated from client-side experience on how to most efficiently customize work depending onthe culture of a client organization.  In addition to that, I have been learning a great deal from my peers (thanks to active dialogs on social networking sites liked LinkedIn) about the path to understanding we all take in brand strategy / innovation / consumer research spaces.

It has been nothing short of invigorating.  I look forward to next steps where I can actually make the time to spend at Industry conferences learning from others and sharing my point of view. I also look forward to the opportunity to help this practice grow, whether on my own or at a respected research organization with the talent, resources and desire to innovate.

That being said, there is one thing I know for certain.  I will NEVER give up fieldwork.  Given the empathetic nature of this profession, it would be a grave misstep to think that evolution can come from spending all my time learning, writing, speaking and managing.  In order to INSPIRE, which is a core priority for my journey, It is critical to stay grounded in practice.

I am hoping that the pioneers who have preceded and inspired my journey and those who will follow chose the same path.  I am interested to hear from others who have a point of view on our continually emerging field of consumer research via Consumer Anthropology.

The Era of Accountability: Consumers Taking On Responsibility for Turning Around The Economy

Was just listening to a talking head on CNN telling us all that the recession is over! Wonderful!  But is it true? All the same, it reminded me of this POV i wrote about a year ago that is still relevant…and New to the WordPress readers:
Times are tough, and while many-a-consumer will agree that our government and the increasingly-entitled American corporate and industrial complex played no small part in getting us there, the average citizen seems to be putting a humbling lens of onus on themselves as well.
Consumers have not been short on their opinions and desire for a verbal hash-out on the topic of the economy . I have been in field on a couple of different projects related to polar opposite topics where my ethnography and qualitative research subjects have waxed pissed-off. They are not so much mad at “the man” any more than they are mad at themselves. Upon being forced to rethink their ways and means in these tight economic circumstances, the process of personal accountability and lifestyle adjustment has taken shape.
Consumers are giving themselves gentle reminders not to become accustomed to a life they can’t sustain. This is as evident in how they shop for cars as it is how they shop for fast food, clothes and groceries. It is also becoming more present in their work ethic and their deflating sense of entitlement.
Gen Y in particular is facing the harsh reality that the world isn’t just waiting for them to show up so they can get an inflated paycheck. A Master’s degree doesn’t guarantee you a high paying salary and being ready and willing to work doesn’t guarantee you a job. This generation in particular grew up watching America prosper financially, even after 9-11 rocked their world view. It’s a kick in the pants to say the least, and it’s giving generations with a little more experience the right to say “I told you so”. One participant in a recent group dialogue, a career bus driver, opines, “I’m just gonna be the one to say it…the problem is that you people never learned how to live like a poor person. This economy didn’t affect me one bit because I’ve always been poor and learned how to be okay with it”.
Now the onus is being put back on the ingenuity of the American worker to get themselves out of their own mess. Consumers are reminding themselves and American companies that we need to focus on making a better products that we all can be proud of buying. I think this is both a personal and projective idea. Fingers are being pointed toward the mirror and the call for change is forcing us all to get our hands a little dirty. And from within this rising sense of accountability will come a better quality America, and that necessary rise in consumer confidence and purchasing power.