Market research. Those two words can create a sinking feeling in the pit of a marketer’s stomach, yet without it, there is no way of knowing whether a product or service is even needed. Endless digital surveys resulting in reams of data to analyse, teams on foot in the local town centre armed with tablet and incentive Mars Bars – it’s enough to make anyone balk at the prospect. Yet one method of research is rapidly gaining traction, although in certain industries it can be notoriously difficult to execute (think insurance!). However if it can be pulled off, there is a wealth of information that can be gleaned, with the added depth and richness that online surveys simply can’t compete with.
One woman brought ethnography into the public domain – Margaret Mead, with her 1928 study of Samoan teenagers. This famous work was the result of her immersion in Samoan culture, living amongst the people she observed, and answered a question still highly relevant in today’s world – does culture affect the transition to adulthood? From this study, she was able to argue that the difficulties experienced during the teenage years were products of culture rather than biology, which brought her research into the awareness of so many parents in the 1920s and beyond. Now I’m not saying that today’s marketer needs to move in with their consumers, but this depth of study methodology provides data so valuable that it can make or break a product launch.
So where does this leave ethnography as an option in 2025? Digital ethnography is fast becoming a valuable method of observing behaviour – think Reddit forums where people are openly discussing a particular product or service, or the researcher joining online support groups to find out particular pain points around a topic. The anonymity of the online world means that people can express their feelings without fear of shame or reprisals, for instance if you were conducting research into a sensitive topic, such as recreational drug use, the traditional British Crime Survey may not result in accurate figures. People would probably not want to admit to drug use in an official survey, yet online, people express their attitudes and behaviours with far less regard to being tracked or monitored.
This begs the question – is covert digital ethnography ethical? A high profile case in the US (hiQ Labs vs LinkedIn, 2017 – 2022) set the precedent for the use of public online posts for data analysis in the US, stating that posts made online are within the public domain and therefore fair game, but in the UK and Europe, there is caution exercised with the provision of the GDPR and privacy laws. While a whole thesis could be written around this topic, the key variants in the ethics opinion are that posting publicly is implicit consent for the use of the posts for research, or that individuals control who sees their posts and explicit consent should be gained from them. Where you stand on this spectrum is a matter of personal opinion, but there is no debate that the accessibility of online data is a marketer’s dream come true.
So the conclusion? Ethnography is a fascinating area of research, and as more of our lives is displayed online, it is becoming far easier to track opinion and forecast trends. Yet its limitations mean that it needs to be used where that depth of information is genuinely needed for the product or service concerned, for instance digital ethnography is still unlikely to be fully representative of the elderly population. It is one tool in the kit of research techniques and works best when combined with quantitative methods to uncover the human stories beneath them.
Kate Stapleton
www.katestapletonservices.co.uk
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