Virtual Ethnography

Ethnography and its applications to marketing and marketing research has been a huge interest of mine since I first found out its meaning. The origin of the word “ethnography” comes from ethnos meaning “people” and graphein meaning “writing”.

My first exposure to ethnography and a great example of it in action is an ethnographic approach to studying the Burning Man Festival. The festival is described as “an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance and takes its name from the ritual of burning a large wooden sculpture of a man on the sixth day” of the festival. Here, an ethnographic researcher would study the festival group through direct contact with the culture; however, the researcher would further describe the festival participants by writing about them while living amongst them.

However, in regards to my paper, I am still not sure if I want to take a broad look at ethnography or a focus on ethnography applied to a more specific area. I am interested in delving into every aspect of ethnography and how each kind applies to learning insights about niche markets or particular groups of people. For example, the different kinds of ethnography I would look at are in broad research or more specific research are: 1) critical ethnography 2) realist ethnography or 3) virtual ethnography.

Critical ethnography addresses the “false consciousness” that can be produced by cultural institutions. I believe marketers, being familiar with these false consciousness thoughts, could better target a given segment in a way that would promote action against these false ideas.

In realist ethnography, the focus is more on the exact writing style. Realist ethnography’s purpose is to put the reader in the story and make them feel as if they are experiencing what the author did in fact experience. This practice is so valuable to marketers and advertisers alike. As a marketer, you gain expertise in directly relating a product or service to the customer by making them feel as if they are experiencing it first hand.

In virtual ethnography aka online ethnography or amusingly also known as netnography is a form of online community research. You might say some companies already do this, but by applying past and current ethnographic research methodologies, current companies might look at online research in a new way.

So, as you can see each of these specific areas are really interesting to me. Right now, I’m not sure if I want to cover all of them broadly or really dig into just one form ethnography. Virtual ethnography however, really interests me (didn’t know it existed), and I would like to explore it more through my paper.

Here is an article which discusses the emergence of virtual ethnography more: http://fmx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/1/3. It discusses some of the questions that come up from doing online fieldwork resarch and ways in which the ethnographers deal with theses issues.

Companies Are People Too

So, I’ve been toying with the current problems the music industry is facing since we initially spoke about this topic in class (i.e. them suing their best customers and using an outdated business model). I am also being daily reminded by everyone to “brand” myself so, that I’m more marketable and eventually someone is won over enough to hire me.

How are these two dilemmas related? Well, companies have been branding themselves forever, but the disconnect happens when people see the company as some workplace that no human could ever inhabit…surely robots are running the place is what I always assume.

Let me start by explaining how I see this current trend of personal branding. It is not simply giving someone a business card with your information on it anymore. It has evolved into a way of life, which is echoed in everything you do from how informally yet trendy you speak and dress to what sites you frequent and how many followers you acquire through this process. This evolution has been powerful.

How could music companies like Sony BMG use this to relate to their customers more after all the drama? Well, first they could start acting and speaking like actual people and not like companies or drones. Going back to this simple principle will slowly win people over, and eventually people will forget that they once saw the Majors as evil empires. The big players in the music industry need to walk and talk like real people, and not just any people – like people that LOVE music. Customers interacting with the companies and realizing that the people at the company are not much different from them. Customers are blogging, discussing news on forums, social media networking, etc. After visiting Sony BMG’s site, I wasn’t too surprised that they offered no interaction other than a simple “contact us” page and the only personnel bios were for two older executives that I didn’t feel related to in any way. From what I can see they are trying to relate to the Gen Y’ers through Apple’s iTunes, but I don’t think giving us $0.99 songs will do it. Then again, it just might be a bitter taste left over.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not bad-mouthing some pretty respectable companies, just providing some well-deserved criticism. My plan of action for all the major music labels are to stop putting up a façade. Embrace the bad press and make drastic changes to remedy the situation. Here’s some helpful advice on embracing bad press.

Well, hopefully the music industry can learn from all of this and make the grand gesture to all of us music enthusiasts…whatever that may be. Until then, I’ll continue ripping my music via torrents.

Paralysis!

To me it seems like customers have, especially within the last few decades, come to expect the greatest possible version(s) of the products out there. As Barry Schwartz has pointed out in his discussion on the paradox of choice, this overload of choices causes paralysis and actually hurts the consumer by giving them an unnecessary amount of choices. A task that once took a few minutes to complete, may now take many hours of agony in order to make the best choice.

After watching Barry speak, I began to think about when consumers do and do not have endless amounts of choices. When I want the utmost in purchasing choices, I might go to Central Market or Whole Foods, where I begin seeing items I never even knew I could choose. I personally get so overwhelmed, even picking a laundry detergent is a difficult task. But say when I’m in a lower end grocery store, I might be left with fewer options, making the shopping experience look less appealing in my eyes.

We consumers want to make the best possible choice for us. Feeling we are different from every other joe-shmo, we want numerous options in our products so, that we can express those differences. To stick with the grocery shopping story – when you go to the store, what you buy or more what people see you buy can say a lot about you. People might not admit this but haven’t you ever looked at what the person in front of you is buying. This makes you wonder about them and what their lifestyle might be, right?

Every trip to the store is almost like a word association game. Flax seed granola = hipster; Cheap beer = college student, preferably male; and the stereotypes go on and on. But getting past the stereotypes, there is some truth to the correlation between the number of choices we as consumers are given, and in the end, how what we choose says something about us. It says something about us to the rest of the world.

So, even though sifting through all these choices can take minutes or hours away from your life, we consumers wouldn’t have it any other way. Because without these choices we couldn’t as adequately say what we want to say about ourselves. That we are unique.

To give you an example of when this happened to me most recently: I needed to purchase a small side item to bring to a dinner party. I wanted options. I wanted to bring the best side item I could and increasing the items meant more time but also more probability of success. In this case, Barry was right. I encountered the paradox of choice and walked through the entire grocery store what had to be 3 times. I was completely overwhelmed with all the possibilities. But in the end, I was successful. With all these choices, I asked for the expertise of the store attendant and made the best choice for me.

Everyone loved the candied jalapeño dip and grape, walnut salad. Success!