Where does ethnography and photoethnography fit in market research?
Ethnography is popular as a market research method. It is in a class of research called “observational market research.” Aside from ethnography and ethnographic studies, other observational methods include simulated store tests, split-cell advertising research tests, product laboratory testing environments, home use product tests (reported by diary or follow-up survey), beta test market experiments, slow rollout product introductions, and so on. These observational and ethnographic methods fundamentally “watch what people do” and we make inferences from their observed behavior. Survey research methods, both qualitative and quantitative, instead “ask people about what they do” and what they believe. Ethnography comes from social research and anthropology. Instead of asking people, what they believe or what they have done as we do in survey research, we watch what they do. Ethnography is a popular technique for the study of human-computer interaction (HCI). There are variations in how da
