Jennifer McFarland, "The Consumer Anthropologist," HBS Working Knowledge, 24 Sep 2001

When a new product needs testing for consumer reaction, companies traditionally turn to that old market-research mainstay, the focus group. Today, however, alternative techniques offer deeper insights that can inform the product development cycle like never before. Ethnographic market research—somewhat new to marketers but as old as the science of anthropology—is increasingly being used to provide new information about consumers. Using the anthropologist's tool kit of methods and theories, ethnographers are giving corporations an inside look at the cultural trends, attitudes, and lifestyle factors that influence consumer decisions about everything from bathtubs and toothpaste to insurance and batteries.

Such research can give companies an advantage in learning not just what customers want, but what they will want, says Eric Arnould, professor of marketing at the University of Nebraska. "Ethnography is a way to get up close and personal with consumers," he says. "As the cycle time for new product development goes down and its cost goes up, and as competition becomes fiercer, many firms are trying to get closer to the consumer to try to figure out the context of use for new products."

Whereas focus groups often work in artificial settings for short periods, ethnography situates consumers within the larger social and cultural context.... Ethnography looks not for opinions but for a 360-degree understanding of how a product might resonate with the consumer's daily life.