Market-Oriented Ethnography: Interpretation Building and Marketing Strategy Formulation PDF

Extracts from: Market-Oriented Ethnography: Interpretation Building and Marketing Strategy Formulation ERIC J. ARNOULD and MELANIE WALLENDORF\* **JOURNAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH, NOVEMBER 1994Vol. XXXI (November 1994), 484-504** We address the general question of how ethnographic interpretations o...

Extracts from: Market-Oriented Ethnography: Interpretation Building and Marketing Strategy Formulation ERIC J. ARNOULD and MELANIE WALLENDORF\* **JOURNAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH, NOVEMBER 1994Vol. XXXI (November 1994), 484-504** We address the general question of how ethnographic interpretations of the consumption behavior of market segments can be developed and how they can be useful in formulating marketing strategy. The term *market-oriented ethnography* refers to an ethnographic focus on the behavior of people constituting a market for a product or service. We propose a systematic process for building market-oriented ethnographic interpretation and then describe how these interpretations are useful in formulating marketing strategy. Our premise is that studying and interpreting the subjective experiences of the market segments served by specific marketing programs is a useful step in establishing enduring, effective exchange relationships (Denzin 1989) and an organization-wide market orientation (Kohli and Jaworski 1990). *GOALS OF MARKET-ORIENTED ETHNOGRAPHY* Ethnography is not just a form of data collection; it aims to clarify the ways culture (or microculture) simultaneously constructs and is formulated by people\'s behaviors and experiences. Ethnography aims to explicate patterns of action that are cultural and/or social rather than cognitive (see, e.g., the focus on the sociocultural importance of market animation in Sherry 1990a). Ethnography not only establishes the context and subjective significance *(emic)* of experience for particular groups of persons, but also seeks to convey the comparative and interpreted *(etic)* cultural significance of this experience (Denzin 1989). To give an account of differences between the world of the group being studied and that of an audience (scientific, managerial, or popular) that is grounded in culture, ethnography employs distinctive methods of data collection and interpretation (Tedlock 1983). Four distinctive features guide ethnographers\' research practice, help them accomplish these goals, and distinguish ethnographic research for those reading and evaluating such research: First, ethnography gives primacy to systematic data collection and recording of human action in natural settings, in that the deeply embedded sociocultural patterns of action it aims to study are resistant to transfer to other research settings. In approaching knowledge of behavior in this way, contemporary ethnography reflects its origins in the modernist tradition of empirical, interpretive social science associated with Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel (Gid- dens 1971; Rabinow 1986), rather than the emerging post- modernist perspective (Hirschman and Holbrook 1992). Second, ethnographic research involves extended, experiential participation by the researcher in a specific cultural context, referred to as *participant observation.* Long-term immersion in context increases the likelihood of spontaneously encountering important moments in the ordinary events of consumers\' daily lives and of experiencing revelatory incidents (Fernandez 1986). Revelatory incidents are naturally occurring real-time events witnessed by an ethnographer that stimulate real-time interpretive insights and launch systematic analysis of additional data (e.g., the role of the opening vignettes in Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry 1989). Because ethnographers follow human action as it occurs rather than initiating it, their data collection deploys an evolving sampling plan, takes longer, and is less completely specified by a priori design than does much research in marketing. Third, ethnography produces interpretations of behaviors that the persons studied and the intended audience find credible. In everyday life, culture\'s mechanisms usually remain unarticulated by participants. People seldom make the systematic connections among their behaviors that are woven into ethnographies as the experience-distant, analytically based, and comparatively informed etic interpretations of the researcher. Despite this, ethnographies should be able to convince the people studied of their credibility (Lincoln and Guba 1984) and the intended reading audience of their trust- worthiness (Wallendorf and Belk 1989). Sanjek (1990) suggests three canons for a reading audience to use in assessing an ethnography: theoretical candor, transparent representation of the ethnographer\'s path through data collection, and accounting for the relationship between ethnographic interpretation and field note evidence. Whereas academic credibility can be achieved through narrative virtuosity alone (Crapanzano 1992), ethnographic credibility with the people studied is most likely to be achieved by pluralistic interpretations that embrace and explain cultural variation (Joy 1991; Tedlock 1983). A fourth defining characteristic of ethnography involves incorporating multiple sources of data, a research strategy long advocated in other social science traditions (e.g., Campbell and Fiske 1959). Rather than use multiple data sources to achieve convergence in interpretations, however, ethnography uses them to generate varying perspectives on the behaviors and context of interest. Ethnographic interpretations are expected to account for (or at least acknowledge) the coexistence of divergent perspectives identified in data assembled using different methods within a cultural context. Ethnography does not stipulate a universal sequence of data collection methods. The specific sequence of data collection efforts in an ethnographic project is dictated by the nature of the phenomenon (complexity, ubiquity, frequency, and duration), the researchers\' prior (undocumented) experience and degree of conceptual understanding of it, and the research questions that emerge during the research process. *INTERPRETIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF OBSERVATION AND INTERVIEW DATA* Ethnographic interpretation is constructed from two major data sources: observation of behavior and verbal reports. In this section, we discuss the separate contributions to interpretation of each, drawing illustrations from several market-oriented ethnographies. We draw more extended ilustrations from our research on Thanksgiving Day consumption (Wallendorf and Amould 1991) than from other projects because of: (1) the accessibility of the ethnography to readers, (2) its demonstrated usefulness in formulating marketing strategy, and (3) its ability to simplify and provide continuity to our presentation of interpretation building. However, we refer to other market-oriented ethnographies to demonstrate that the interpretive and strategy-building processes we illustrate are more broadly applicable. *Naturally Occurring Behavior Observed by a Researcher* Because of its focus on sociocultural patterns of action, ethnography gives primacy to observing behavior and speech events that naturally occur. Rather than asking people to comment about what they think they usually do or say, recently did or said, and will do or say, as in phenomenological interviews, ethnographers prefer to observe them doing it; instead of observing people doing what they might do or say if real-world complexities did not impose on them, as in laboratory experiments, ethnographers observe actual people\'s behavior in real time; and rather than asking respondents to generalize about their behavior as in survey re- search, ethnographers record the particulars of naturally occurring behaviors and conversations. Ethnographers observe everyday events, settings, interactions, conversations, and uses of objects over time and across specific cases (Jorgensen 1989). These observations are recorded in field notes and other media and thus become a data set(s). Observation focuses on naturally occurring constellations of consumption behaviors (Baudrillard 1968; Boyd and Levy 1963; McCracken 1989; Solomon and Assael 1987) and provides a perspective in action that mani- fests internalized cultural norms, values, and beliefs (Gould et al. 1974; Snow and Anderson 1987). Ethnographers assume a variety of roles, ranging from full participation to nonparticipation, in response to theoretically driven purposes and the dictates of natural events (Adler and Adler 1987). Data from mechanical observation is sometimes used to complement field note data from participant and/or nonparticipant observation. Next we discuss the contributions of each of these three categories of observation to ethnographic interpretation. *Participant observation.* Participant observation is central to data collection in market-oriented ethnography because of the access it provides to the complex behavioral details of consumption. It provides details concerning group decision- making heuristics and disagreements, financial negotiations, patterns of product use and substitution, consumers\' spontaneously expressed evaluative judgments (both positive and pejorative), active socialization and indirect learning, and enactments of culturally patterned consumption norms and values. As participant observers become insiders over time, they are granted access to \"backstage\" areas (Goffman 1959), al- lowing them to learn how consumption behaviors are rehearsed and performances are scripted. These action settings may be protected actively from outsiders; in addition, consumers may have limited reporting capability about them. For example, field notes about extended families\' preparations for Thanksgiving feasts document complex interweavings of behind-the-scenes activity. Their backstage perspectives point to an undercurrent of competition for the role of provider (e.g., purchaser, server, decision maker, host) that coexists uneasily with the publicly performed celebration of shared abundance (Wallendorf and Amould 1991). In conducting participant observation, access to different domains of meaning is fostered by including research team members with varying demographic profiles. Working in bi- gendered teams has compelled us to incorporate the notion of differently gendered worlds of experience in interpreting market behaviors ranging from Thanksgiving preparations to white-water river rafting, the meanings of collections, and preference formation (Amould and Price 1993). Ethnography\'s reliance on participant observation responds to people\'s inabilities to report fully on the complex interweaving of culturally significant behaviors. Even willing and articulate consumers do not formulate accurate statements about many clear-cut sociocultural regularities in their behavior (Harrison, Rathje, and Hughes 1974; Schiffer, Downing, and McCarthy 1981; Whiting and Whiting 1970). For example, the suppression of evidence of manufacturers\' and branded packaging at Thanksgiving feasts and their inclusion at ordinary U.S. evening meals are consumption behaviors with marketing strategy implications that consumers do not typically report. Similarly, guides\' orchestration of satisfaction on commercial white-water river rafting trips is typically not mentioned in customers\' oral reports (Amould and Price 1993). Participant observers, however, can record details about behaviors that illuminate these patterns during subsequent interpretation. From participant observation, ethnographers can also generate information about what consumers do when at- tempts to attain valued consumption outcomes are frustrated (e.g., the Thanksgiving meal is spoiled by forgotten ingredients, overcooking, or failure to provide leftovers; the ex- tended family quarrels). Systematic analysis of consumption failures across sets of field notes elucidates the effectiveness of subsequent attempts at rectification (e.g., fill-in purchases, laughter or reassuring comments, disappointment; changes in consumption group membership). Thus, despite the ethnographic preference for participant observation data, nonparticipant observation is sometimes an appropriate tactic. *Mechanical observation.* Ethnographers may also employ mechanical devices in observation to obtain complementary data for interpretation building: for example, making photographs, audiotapes, or videotape/film of action during consumption events. Because interview dialogue is a non- naturalistic form of data collection, mechanical recording of it is discussed as part of verbal report data and is not included in the category of mechanical observation. Many of the over 2500 photographs from the Thanksgiving project illustrate mechanical observation\'s complementarity with participant observation. For example, a photo grounds the previously mentioned participant observer\'s claim for competition between family members. The photolog excerpt includes the fieldworker\'s caption in quotes as well as senior researchers\' detailed descriptions of the photo\'s contents. *Limitations of and correctives for ethnographic observation.* As with all forms of data, observational data taken alone have limitations. Observational data do not provide direct access to the perceptions, values, and beliefs of informants and reveal little about informants\' internal states. Only speech-in-action (Richards 1939), unstructured interviews, or questioning during participant observation provides such information. Because market-oriented ethnography aims to explain emic meanings and accounts of behavior (as in ethnomethodology; Garfinkel 1967), as well as etically derived regularities, ethnographers prefer to expand their data sources beyond what can be obtained through observation alone. Ethnographers may privilege observational data in building interpretations but can be expected to com- bine them with verbal report data to account for the phenomenon of interest more thoroughly. Within observational data, membership roles available along the nonparticipant-participant continuum all constrain the interpretive process. If researchers become too much participant insiders, they assume the relative lack of insight into cultural processes that natives may have and therefore are less able to attend to actions and explanations that natives take for granted (Wirth 1964). The resulting ethno- graphic work is likely to lack critical or insightful conclusions. This is a particular challenge for North American marketing researchers studying their native culture (e.g., Prus 1989). However, certain data collection techniques can minimize subsequent interpretive problems: sampling methods that randomize the selection of times and places for observation, deliberate attention to marginal persons and aspects of events, regular debriefing by informed colleagues, and use of holistic topical checklists to remind the field- worker to detail events seen, overheard, or experienced during fieldwork (Denzin 1989; Johnson and Johnson 1990; Lincoln and Guba 1984). By contrast, ethnographers who restrict themselves to nonparticipant observation risk interpretive problems associated with this membership role. They may not access native experiences that are actively or politely hidden from outsiders and may be drawn to describing surface similarities rather than accounting for cultural variation; interpretations may tend toward ethnocentrism and stereotyping. This is a particular concern in studies of consumers who are demographically or culturally distinct from researchers. Correctives include long-term fieldwork, procedures to ensure extensive field note detail, and member checks to access divergent emic perspectives (Lincoln and Guba 1984; e.g., contrasting perspectives of buyers and sellers on the wholesomeness versus illegal activity of a swap meet in Belk, Sherry, and Wallendorf 1988). Participant observation is time-consuming; its costs derive from the requirement of long-term researcher immersion in cultural context. *Verbal Reports Elicited in Ethnographic Interviews* Verbal reports are the second major form of data employed by ethnographers. Verbal report data elicited in ethnographic interviews constitute selective memories and prospections, based on informants\' emotions, experiences, and expectations. In building an interpretation, ethnographers do not necessarily use people\'s words about their behaviors as accurate accounts of behavior. Instead, verbal reports from interviews are relied on to provide emic *perspec- tives of action:* people\'s value-laden stories and accounts of their own and others\' behaviors (Agar 1986; Gould et al. 1974; Moerman 1988; Snow and Anderson 1987; Tedlock 1983). Through their stories and accounts of their behavior, participants recall, interpret, script, and give meaning to consumption events. Verbal reports elicited in response to researcher-initiated questions and probes do not chronicle naturally occurring behavior. Whether recorded mechanically or not, ethno- graphic interviews are not naturalistic (unless, of course, the behavior being studied is how people behave in interviews). Verbal report data serve a different purpose in constructing ethnographic interpretation than do observational data. The two types are not interchangeable or roughly approximate measures of the same phenomena, because each measures different phenomena. Verbal reports typically supplement observational data in ethnographic interpretation, providing emic, culturally particular understandings to interpretation. * Eric J. Amould is an Associate Professor of Marketing, College of Busi- ness Administration, University of South Florida. Melanie Wallendorf is a Professor of Marketing, College of Business and Public Administration, University of Arizona. Authors\' names are listed alphabetically to reflect equal contribution to the article. The authors thank the following people for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article: Merrie Bnicks, Peter Dickson, Deb Heisley, Sue Keaveny, Jakki Mohr, Linda Price, and Wendy Scheier. Professor Wallendorf appreciates the helpful comments of- fered by the faculty and doctoral students who attended presentations on this topic that she made at Ohio State University, the University of Califor- nia at Irvine, Edith Cowan University, and the University of Westem Aus- tralia. She also appreciates the support and collegiality she found during her sabbatical at UWA when work on this article was completed.*