Consumer Ethnography, An Introduction

Consumer Ethnography, observing customers in their natural habitat

Consumers are fascinating, the options people face and the decisions they choose. With often the choices they do not choose being more telling than the ones they do go with. One of the easiest ways to see how consumers behave and measure that behaviour is through consumer ethnography. Where you go somewhere to observe how consumers are behaving, the easiest place to do this is in a shop.

What products are they looking at, what is being picked up and then being put back on the shelves? Are they going straight to expensive items or to a particular region of the goods origin (wine). You can count how many of an item is being bought in an hour and maybe add observations on their gender, age, particular clothing (maybe as a class indicator). Because of the insights gained and the additional factors that can be picked up with nuances that a survey may miss, consumer ethnography can yield great insights into customers.

Does the item stand out on the shelf? Are we capturing the mental availability of customers? — without seeing the brand in direct competition with competitor brands this can be a difficult question to answer.

When I first started freelance projects, I had a great conversation with a brand manager I worked with in a DIY store. He gave me the following advice, to always when starting somewhere new to “walk the shop floor”. In a literal sense to walk the shop floor you would pick up on various things that would be missed in an office or on the spreadsheet summary of the store in question. With things jumping out that may have otherwise been missed (maybe because there is not a spreadsheet for it) or were not thought to be important (how do you pick up store cleanliness, up to date point of sales or uniform policy for example without looking at the situation on the ground?). This lesson would help me greatly when doing ethnography, what other things are affecting the customer and their purchasing experience that might not be in the spreadsheet/questionnaire? Observing the customers will dispel any corporate myths and ground the marketing strategy in reality.

These corporate myths could be about how the customer shops for the product “our customer is loyal to our brand” or is it that it’s cheaper or on a deal unlike the competition (do the experiment again post-promotion to see what the results of the promotion could be).

In addition, you are able to gain context from the shopper. You could ask them the ‘why’ behind the purchase. This context is difficult if not impossible to get from a survey when the customer is outside of the shopping environment.

To get started

Next time you are in a store, look at what people are buying, particularly of a set item (a brand of beer or a specific chocolate bar) and ask the following questions to yourself to get started.

• How many (over an hour or half hour) is being bought?
• What item did they (if at all) pickup before that item?
• How long did they look for it?

What was the result of your little consumer ethnograph experiment? Comment below to share with others.