March 2005
OPTIMIZE FOCUS GROUPS WITH
ETHNOGRAPHIC OBSERVATIONS
TO DEEPEN INSIGHTS INTO
CONSUMER BEHAVIORS, NEED STATES,
AND BRAND RELATIONSHIPS
Ava Lindberg, President
SunResearch
I. ORIGIN OF SUNRESEARCH ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
A. Linking Academic Rigor with Qualitative Research Objectives
Known for creative focus groups and brainstorming sessions, Ava Lindberg of SunResearch also specializes in ethnography. Ethnography combines Ava?s experience as an academically trained anthropologist (MA, Columbia University, GSAS, 1995, cultural anthropology) with her expertise in idea generation and creative moderation.
For 20+ years, Ava has been conducting focus groups, depth interviews, brainstorming, vision, new product, and concept ideation sessions for packaged goods and consumer service clients. Fascinated with the real world of consumers in their own environments, she began doing shorter forms of at-home observationals for at least five years prior to mid-career graduate work, always seeking more authentic, satisfying ways to execute the process. Her advanced academic work heightened her resonance with classical anthropology, which she then used to expand into new forms of contemporary consumer research.
Since 1995, SunResearch has been experimenting extensively with many categories of ethnographic inquiry: from fashion, telecommunications, and financial products to food, beverages, and shopping behaviors, to pharmaceuticals and cleaning. Essentially, we have now created and finetuned an ethnographic system that links the benefits and core principles of classical anthropological ethnography to the need for innovation, depth of insight, and efficiency of project enactment in qualitative research. This process brings a unique twist and provocative force to traditional market research.
B. Brief Description of Ethnographic Methodologies
Ethnographic Household Observations (EHOs) and Ethnographic Shopping Experiences (ESEs) are a multiple-week program of in-home or in-store observationals whose methodological cornerstone is the 4+ hour-long personal encounter with respondents and their families inside their households, community, shopping outlets, and day-to-day living experiences. The ethnographic team of client observers led by a trained ethnographer enters into the universe of a respondent for a significant stretch of time, usually once, occasionally for two repeat visits that cover critical time periods or shopping experiences in which the desired observable behavior may occur naturally.
C. SunResearch Ethnography Is Not Staged
EHOs and ESEs use a combination of pure observation, participant observation, and indirect interviewing processes inside the home or store at the time in which the respondent and family are spontaneously involved in the behaviors or experiences that we wish to observe. To the extent possible, this process does not "stage" behaviors nor do we conduct typical Q&A interviews about the key topic when the behavior is not naturally occurring.
Experientially based real-life findings and deep insights emerge over the full course of Ethnographic Household Observations and Shopping Experiences. Such insights when executed correctly can go far beyond findings from focus groups, facility-based depth interviews, or shorter forms of at-home interviews. The benefits from EHOs and ESEs are that we actually see, experience, and comprehend the reality of what respondents do naturally at or around home.
D. Use of Focus Groups vs. Ethnography: Both Useful for Creative Insight
Listening to respondents describe their experience and feelings about brands, products, and concepts in focus groups is an important step toward strategic, creative learning?especially when we conduct archetypal focus groups that tap into deep emotions and imprinted imagery through use of creative projective exercises like drawing, metaphorical excursions, gallery picture walks, fantasy storytelling, and visualization, then followed by creative client debriefs.
Ava continues to conduct many focus groups independent of ethnography, especially to reveal need-gaps and need-states, the emotional, visual, and personality dimensions of brand imagery, or brand archetypes. We can learn enough from four to 12 creative focus groups to move the needle significantly on a client?s creative project or concept inquiry.
However, authentic ethnography can bring additional insight to the conduct of focus groups or is recommended as a separate phase of qualitative research. Physiologically, the part of the brain that does the behavior is different from the part of the brain that remembers the behavior. The two realities?doing naturally (ethnography) vs. remembering, feeling, and describing (focus groups)--are not the same thing, which makes the ethnographic process different from other forms of at-home interviewing.
More difficult to set up and more time-consuming to conduct, the resulting richness of data emerging from ethnographies can exceed findings gleaned from other forms of qualitative research.
E. Ethnographic Findings Should Be Quantified
It must be remembered that all forms of qualitative research, whether focus groups or ethnography, are nonprojectable without quantitative testing of the insights and hypotheses that emerge from study findings. Ethnography is a uniquely qualitative methodology; we observe only a limited number of households on a deep basis. On the other hand, we mirror the philosophy of William Blake who saw the entire "universe in a single grain of sand." True ethnography discovers enormous insights about brand or category by studying 12-20 respondents? actual environments. Less is more with ethnography.
Because the process is orchestrated by a) a SunResearch anthropologist with significant field experience and because b) a core client team actively participates in fieldwork to arrive at deep, hidden, authentic insights together, the process of SunResearch ethnography to help inform new strategies and concept/product/positioning work has been found to yield breakthrough insights when confirmed with quantitative measurement techniques.
II. IDENTIFYING RESEARCH ISSUES FOR ETHNOGRAPHY
A. Segments Appropriate for Ethnography
For SunResearch, ethnography started out as an experimental alternative methodology for segments that appeared unfamiliar, niche, or hard to reach through focus groups or facility-based personal interviews, i.e., certain ethnic populations, gen x, gen m, tweens, progressive/gay, patients with particular medical conditions, special target audiences or executives who could only be interviewed at-desk in business settings, entertainment, experts, or certain social strata that would not come to facilities. In the current research climate, however, ethnographies are utilized to gain new insight into frequently researched respondents from which we seek deeper insights, like middle-class suburban households who purchase mainstream packaged goods brands. Actually, it is the interrelationship among family members related to decision making, behavioral dynamics, choice, and brand/product preference that is emphasized as much as the gatekeeper.
B. Make the Research Objectives Broad for Ethnography
The broader we can make the research objectives, the better the application for ethnography. Objectives could include a category exploration, an in-depth attitudes and usage study, a study of branding relationships, or a critical diagnostic issue among varied target segments. Focused observation of a single product, brand, or behavior may be too limited for this process. In each ethnography, all behaviors occurring during the time frame set up for the EHO or ESE are observed. For instance, skin care and makeup rituals are readily observed in ethnographies whose objective might be related to morning breakfast behaviors. Multiple behavioral observation is preferred to a focused inquiry because anything that happens or is done, performed, spoken, and intuited in a household by any member who is there forms the substance of that particular four-hour observational. Nothing is eliminated; all behaviors and attitudes may have bearing upon findings related to the category under investigation.
C. Examples of Ethnographic Projects Conducted Recently by SunResearch
To make ethnography practical, during the planning process we help the client widen the scope of objectives with an eye toward bringing back deep consumer category insights to the specific product or brand as the study evolves. In each of these ethnographic studies conducted for Fortune 500 and l000 companies?but a tiny sampling of our total experience in ethnography--the objectives reflected a broad context but ultimately had practical impact on the specific brand, product, or category in question. Many projects were combined with focus groups at initial stages to sort out issues before proceeding with on-site observation:
- Studying how consumers shop for groceries and experience a variety of supermarket aisles, especially cookies, crackers, salty snacks, and bars
- Studying mornings in America related to breakfast, snacks, cold and hot cereals
- Observing everyday meals among young professionals, families with children, and empty nesters
- Discovering contemporary trends among canned and specialty coffee drinkers
- Better understanding the dimensions of beverage drinking (PSDs vs. CSDs) among moms and kids in Caucasian and African American households
- Studying the fashion needs of petite and large-sized women
- Identifying new opportunities, consumer needs, and behavioral hot-buttons in barbecuing and grilling
- Investigating the lifestyles, behaviors, and attitudes of African Americans and Caucasians related to door-to-door life insurance
- Identifying the emotional-psychological benefits of hard-surface cleaning
- Discerning behavioral, emotional needs in vacuuming and floor cleaning
- Observing trends in music, relationships, and entertainment among young male inner city respondents
- Diagnosing telecommunications issues with call-in clients among brokerage agents
Examples from other ethnographic projects can be discussed during individual planning sessions with a prospective client.
III. TEAM APPROACH INSIDE HOMES AND DEBRIEFING
A. Clients Go on Ethnographic Observations as Part of Team
We use an intensive team approach. Our goal is to bring clients to the same heightened understanding of consumer behaviors, attitudes, and dynamics as our ethnographers experience in the field. Client training in ethnography is part of the process, conducted prior to the beginning of fieldwork. For each EHO and ESE, there is a team of three...the primary ethnographer-researcher who leads the team and two client "guests" from brand or agency. The ethnographer directs the observational process while clients act as note takers who record verbal and visual observations. All three team members represent synergistic eyes, ears, minds, and intuitions about what has been observed.
B. Can Respondents Be Themselves When Observed by a Team?
A frequent question asked about the ethnographic process is whether consumers ever feel relaxed enough while being observed by a team of outsiders to be truly real, to act and behave as if they were not being observed. We take a relative position on this issue. No respondent can feel totally natural in front of observers unless the team is prepared to become part of a family?s life over days and months of living together...the classical methodology of academic anthropology. However, each step of our process has been designed to maximize the possibility of more behavioral authenticity than can be found in focus groups, facility interviews, or structured at-home interviews.
C. Training the Client Core Team
A key part of the process is training the client team to become "anthropologists" during the time of the ethnography. No one goes into the field?cold. During ethnographic training, the team gains insight into the complexity of observation. They experience first hand when to be silent and when to probe, when to react and when to be nonreactive, when to participate and when to hang back, how to behave and learn from a family emergency that occurs during the ethnography, how a leading question at a too-early or inappropriate point in the observation may cause inauthentic answers or behavior.
IV. VISUAL DATA COLLECTION
A. Deciding How to Collect Visual Data: Photography or Videotaping?
Depending upon the scope and needs of the project, we make careful upfront decisions about forms of visual data collection. Whether to do photography or videotaping?or no visual data collection at all--will have implications at multiple levels. Generally, we favor photography if the ethnographies are conducted inside the homes. When we conduct Ethnographic Shopping Experiences inside stores, we may do no visual recording since photography or videotaping may not be permissible or could change a respondent?s shopping behavior.
B. Advantages and Disadvantages of Videotaping
Videotaping can be made into a film to show at the end of an ethnographic project. However, it?s expensive to do right, needs weeks of time to review hundreds of hours of film, and requires an experienced, creative editor to put findings together in relevant, evocative sequencing. Videotaping on site may cause consumers to become introverted or unnaturally animated...the show-and-tell "Barbara Walters" effect.
If the client wishes videotaping to be the technique of choice to dramatically illustrate live behavioral and lifestyle trends, we help create a documentary-style record of consumer households. We collaborate with a professional videographer furnished by the client or one of our film contacts who travels and participates with the team throughout the process. We select key sequences together, write the script connected with the key findings, and supervise the editing into a shortened format--entire film or clips--insightful to the final presentation. The ethnographic film becomes a major part of the project, bid and proposed upon separately.
C. In Many Cases, Photography May Have Advantages
Frequently, photography is our preferred technique of data collection, along with client notes and tape recording. If done unobtrusively, photography produces minimal change of behavior by respondents. After a few moments, the quiet photography of behaviors, products, and lifestyle elements is ignored by the respondent. Sometimes consumers are furnished with disposable cameras to take photo diaries a week or two in advance of our arrival in the home. Later during analysis and presentation phases, photos can be studied, winnowed down, sorted, and clustered into behavioral sequences with comparisons between regions and households. Selected photos are used in the final PowerPoint presentation to illustrate trends, findings, and insights.
V. NUMBERS OF ETHNOGRAPHIES, LENGTH OF TIME INSIDE HOME
A. Rule of Thumb for Ethnographies: 12-20 Household Observations
Many observational researchers feel that the rule of thumb for appropriate number of ethnographies runs around 20 individual households. Depending upon objectives, target segments, life stages, and regions to be studied, we have had satisfactory results with less observationals. The truth about study scope lies somewhere in the middle: less than 12 ethnographies seems inconclusive, whereas more than 20 may feel too long or repetitive.
Generally, we find it is wise to conduct between 50-70 hours of observation per project, i.e., 14-18 ethnographies per project.
B. Time Inside Households: At Least Four Hours
To researchers and clients accustomed to two-hour-long focus groups and 60-minute depth interviews...or to those who have conducted structured, staged interviews inside the home of 60-90 minutes each...the idea of much-longer ethnography inside one respondent household may seem like a long time. Our stance is that any less time than four hours is not authentic ethnography nor does it yield dramatically new and provocative insights.
We have experimented with shorter time periods for ethnographies but found them lacking?a minimum of four hours appears essential to go deeply into the behaviors and attitudes of respondent and family. Even though they may seem socially relaxed on the surface, respondents do not let down their guard or show their real personas until enough time passes for the team to become familiar, trusted, and at least temporarily part of their household.
Of course, when respondents work out of the home, they are not naturally at home during the day and four hours at a stretch may be impossible. We then need to accommodate real-life schedules. Our study may have to split the observational hours into several periods of time. For instance, we might visit a full-time working respondent for a short period in the morning, and then return in the evening for a longer stretch of time.
C. Determining Number of Visits Per Household
How we structure the time and number of visits for each household is dependent upon many factors related to study objectives. For product categories in which key behavior occurs on an ongoing basis or several times a day...snacking, personal care, beverage drinking, computer usage, food preparation, etc.--we may divide the total EHO into two or more visits each during the actual time of the behavior we wish to observe or spend up to a half day with each respondent at a single stretch.
For Ethnographic Shopping Experiences emphasizing behaviors inside retail outlets, we need to use a special process to see "true shopping behavior." In this case, sometimes we ask the respondent to shop as he/she would normally shop, then go back and ask questions specific to the inquiry. In other cases when the shopping experience takes longer, we may do a mix of spontaneous observation and careful probing. Also, a quick fill-in shopping trip will be notably different from the weekly major grocery shop; this needs to be planned accordingly.
D. How Many Ethnographies Per Day?
We usually conduct two ethnographies per day. Scheduling is based--not upon the convenience of the research team--but upon when the consumer behavior naturally occurs. If the behavior only occurs at a single point of the day, then only one ethnography per day is conducted, unless we are able to create multiple ethnographic teams when a second ethnographer is available.
E. Scheduling Ethnographies Only When Behavior Naturally Occurs
Our goal is always to observe the actual behavior while and where it is happening, not to listen to respondents talk in retrospect about what they remember happened at a different point in the day than when the behavior occurred.
To take two food-related examples, if we are investigating breakfast behavior, we observe only during morning hours, sometimes getting to the respondent?s house at 5 a.m. if this is when the family arises. To investigate dinner behaviors, we schedule the ethnography between 4-5 p.m. to 10 p.m., to cover all facets of dinnertime dynamics. If we are conducting shopping ethnographies, we go to the stores at the time the respondent typically shops for groceries, and at her preferred or usual stores, not ours.
F. Each Day Consists of 12 Hours of Observation and Debriefings with Team
Each ethnographic day is actually a 12+ hour experience by the ethnographer and client team, which includes: one hour of team preparation including travel to the respondent?s home location, 4+ hours per two sets of ethnography, followed immediately by up to two hours of debrief and brainstorming between team members to capture hidden nuances, interesting hypotheses, and deeper insights.
VI. ETHNOGRAPHIC DESIGN, RECRUITMENT: TWO PHASES
A. Use of Strategic Client Briefings and Focus Groups Precede Ethnography
One of the factors that distinguishes Ethnographic Household Observations or Ethnographic Shopping Experiences is careful phasing. We don?t rush into ethnography, nor do we recommend the recruitment of "cold" respondents for ethnographic observations. Qualified respondents are reluctant to agree to 4-plus hours of observation at home unless they feel comfortable with us and what might happen. Hence, each ethnographic observational project is really two phases. Phase I usually begins with focus groups. Phase II are ethnographies of respondents chosen from the groups, scheduled immediately after or later in the project. In other cases, we will double-recruit ethnographies to eliminate no-shows and to have a choice of correct respondent. Using this technique: to complete a scope of 16 ethnographies, we would double-recruit 32 respondents, then pre-interview to make the final choice of 16.
B. Consider Multiple Focus Groups in Several Locations
When we use focus groups as the pre-phase of ethnography, this initial group phase is typically 6 or more groups in at least three regions of the country to reflect the segments to be studied in the EHOs or ESEs. These groups are designed to be intensely creative. We use a diverse assortment of projective exercises like photo/picture gallery walks, collage creation, benefits laddering, analogies and metaphors, storytelling, and guided visualization to elucidate understanding of the subject/brand/behavior/category under study.
C. Handpick Respondents from Focus Groups
Conducting focus groups in advance of ethnography allows us successfully to meet three important objectives. First, we gain a thorough preliminary understanding of the category. Second, the client team has a chance to identify and evolve subtle behavioral/attitudinal hypotheses and needs-to-know for further investigation in ethnographies. Third, we hand-pick interested, qualified panelists from the groups who have already become comfortable with the idea of in-home observationals because they have met the moderator and enjoyed the free-flowing research process. One focus group yields 1-3 respondents who later participate as ethnographic subjects.
VII. INTERNAL PROCESS WITHIN THE ETHNOGRAPHY
A. What Is Pure Observation?
As much as possible, the ethnographic rule of thumb is: more observation and less interviewing. Pure observation sounds deceptively simple. Actually, it is the most difficult part of the process, rarely attempted except by the experienced ethnographer and a trained client team, because it runs against one?s grain to hold back and not ask questions about what is being seen. Yet, pure observation yields provocative insights because the respondent and family are not self-consciously show-and-telling what they do. They are spontaneously doing what they do without explanation and editorializing.
Sometimes pure observation can be exciting and immediately groundbreaking in insight. More often, it feels uncomfortable, confusing, and hard to comprehend until team brainstorming unlocks the secrets of that household later in the day or until several ethnographies begin to show internal consistencies. One reason for the upfront fuzziness of ethnography is temperament: the client team may take a while to adjust to consumers? slower, less intense pacing and lifestyles.
B. Each Hour of Ethnography Is Silently Choreographed, Balanced, Observed
The 4-plus hours of each ethnographic encounter are used judiciously. On the surface, it seems relaxed and spontaneous. However, the underpinning of the process is carefully choreographed and includes a continual series of anthropological decisions by the ethnographer as to what, when, and how to observe or probe. There are no typical ethnographies, but the general flow may go something like this if we are conducting household interviews. If the emphasis in on shopping, we emphasize shopping behavior in terms of timing.
B. The First Hour
For the first hour or two, we hang with the respondent, silently observe the family?s activities, take a walkabout inside and outside, chat informally with him or her, watch or follow around other family members who happen to be at home, notice--without much probing--spontaneous detail in and around the home, lifestyle, personal self, brands, behaviors, and ongoing events. In these beginning hours, we simply sit and observe without undue speaking, letting life unfold as it happens naturally in the family.
C. The Second Hour
Sometime in the second hour, again depending upon the length of time of pure observation, we may transition into intermittent observation combined with indirect interviewing, gradually introducing more direct forms of interviewing about the key subject as the hours progress. At certain moments, we may return to pure observation.
D. Third and Fourth Hours: Participant Observation Allows Us to Share Experiences with Respondent
When the client team and respondent become sufficiently relaxed during the ethnography, we let ourselves "throw away the agenda" and spontaneously participate alongside the respondent in whatever activity happens to be occurring at home or out. Sometimes we go on an unscheduled grocery shopping trip with the respondent, pick up children at school, attend a local event in the neighborhood, chat with neighbors or friends who drop by, meet and interview visiting family members, watch TV or computer behavior for stretches of time, go for walks and to the gym, play games with the kids...all the while keeping the main objective in mind as we listen, watch, and absorb this consumer?s universe. Each ethnography has its own pacing.
E. Initially Fuzzy Findings Become Clearer after First Week of Ethnography
Although no two households are alike on the surface, we find that by the second week of intensive fieldwork, observations begin to feel more consistent, behaviors that were confusing make sense, and a new understanding of consumer behavior emerges. Intuition, revelation, and a-ha?s become part of the developing mind-set of the observation team.
F. Assimilating/Synergizing Observations with Creative Team Brainstorming
Because so much data is gathered during the weeks of ethnographic fieldwork, we also use idea generation and brainstorming techniques to assimilate new insights among the client team. Within a week of the last ethnography, we schedule a full day of brainstorming and debriefing with the core ethnographic team. A final presentation of results by the ethnographer is scheduled about four weeks later.
Overall, the process from start to finish may take several weeks, occasionally up to a month.
VIII. RESULTS OF ETHNOGRAPHIC OBSERVATIONALS
A. Benefits of Ethnography
The ethnography practiced by SunResearch helps our clients identify deep consumer insights, make new connections among multiple layers in a category, formulate hypotheses that challenge old thinking, and--in many cases--revolutionize brands, categories, positionings, new product development, and management points of view. Team members shift and evolve in their personal perspectives. Ethnography is a transformative process.
B. Types of Projects that Gain from Ethnography
Companies who gain most value from Ethnographic Household Observations and Ethnographic Shopping Experiences are innovative, experienced in both qualitative and quantitative research, and have a critical question, issue, or area for which traditional forms of research seem inadequate or fail to yield truly insightful data. Importantly, the client team must have time to plan, create, enact, and digest the ethnographic process. Without time and planning, authentic ethnography can fall through the cracks. The more successful ethnographic projects have been spearheaded by that uniquely visionary researcher, marketer, creative planner, executive vice president, or CEO who is fascinated by a hands-on team-intensive observational process, encourages the mental stretch inspired by ethnographic findings, and provides enough lead time to do the process right.
D. Prices and Timing
To do ethnography right, assume a longer lead-time generally and upfront attention to details that exceeds the usual qualitative process. Expect more extensive planning, a presentation of the details of ethnography to the core client team before go-ahead, at least two to four weeks of 12-hour fieldwork and travel efforts, multiple debriefings during the study, and greater expense. Creative focus groups, depth interviews, and brainstorming with Ava can be set up within two weeks on a year-round, anytime basis. However, authentic ethnography is conducted only at certain times of the year.
For further information, please feel free to call or write Ava Lindberg, President, SunResearch, at 203-454-9939 or sunresearchcorp@earthlink.net. Check the Presentation on her website www.suninsights.com, which contains a full presentation of ethnography given as client training or keynote addresses for market research associations.
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