Brad Bennett is president of B. Bennett Company, a Wheaton, Ill., research firm.

The framed and matted sentiment hung on a wall near the front door of Carol’s home:

“A hundred years from now it will not matter how much I earned, what my job title was, or what type of car I drove, but the world may be different because I touched the life of a child.”

Most people who noticed it would think of it as an endearing memento similar to her grandmother’s teacup on the shelf in the dining room or the clay pot she made that sits on her kitchen windowsill. But to an ethnographer who had spent two hours interviewing her in her home, it embodied the way Carol lives her life. Right now she is focused on giving her kids a solid foundation on which to build their own lives.

The inspirational saying explains the placement of the TV in her kitchen, when it’s allowed to be on and what shows are watched. It explains the automobile in the driveway and the recent addition to her house. It explains her part-time job and the food in the fridge. It explains many things about the choices she makes - choices that we as marketers are keenly interested in.

It is unlikely that Carol would have mentioned the saying if she were participating in a focus group. We wouldn’t have captured it in a telephone survey or an online survey. She wouldn’t have mentioned it in the ethnography if we hadn’t been there to see it and ask about it, but it brought tears to her eyes as she explained how the sentence captures the essence of her life at this point.

Human family

Ethnographic marketing research has anthropological roots in which the study of the human family is used to define and understand individual societies. In marketing research, the term ethnography has been broadened beyond the study of the family to include many aspects of a person’s life including work, home, recreation, shopping and more.

Typically an ethnographic interview lasts anywhere from one hour to an entire day and is focused on one individual. This allows the ethnographer and the respondent to develop a rapport that is open and relaxed, one that makes the respondent comfortable to share freely about various aspects of their life. The ethnographer can then explore issues much more thoroughly to uncover the underlying insight.

The research is typically conducted on the respondent’s own turf - in their home, workplace or other places in which they spend time. Often the interview is augmented with a discussion among family members, friends or coworkers. The way the environment is organized, the flow of activities and the interactions of the people all contribute to a richer and more complete understanding of why the respondent makes the choices they do.

Ethnographic research reports typically contain visual findings in the form of photographs or video. The framed saying hanging on Carol’s wall was certainly part of the data from the study because it was reflective not only of Carol’s life, but the lives of other women in her same target group. This type of visual data helps to quickly convey concepts that are difficult or cumbersome to communicate with words. It is also helpful when communicating with audiences who tend to absorb information more effectively when it is visually presented.

Illuminates other research

Ethnographic research complements other research methodologies by providing a solid understanding of the customer’s motivations. In addition to addressing the specific objectives of the study, ethnographies often shed new light on past or ongoing research and allow you to connect research findings that previously appeared to be unrelated.

For example, concept tests are valuable in telling us if we have a viable product idea, but they don’t help us understand the customers’ reasoning behind their ratings of the concept or how it could be improved. Tracking studies give us a pulse of what is going on with our target but seldom help us understand the real story behind the changes we see in the data. The insights gained from ethnographic research can help us understand what is driving these results.

Maintains unseen connections

Quantitative research is essential but it seldom provides strategic direction beyond the specific objectives of the research. In addition, quantitative research studies generate vast amounts of data that must be collapsed and consolidated. While necessary, this process often conceals some of the richest insight. The relationships between the answers are often lost.

Skilled ethnographers make connections within an interview and across multiple interviews so that much of this richness isn’t lost. Verbal data from the interview is also combined with visual data captured by close observation of respondents and their surroundings. As a result, discoveries are made that are nearly impossible to bring to light with quantitative research.

Ethnographies provide a great reservoir from which to draw a vast array of attitudes, motivations and behavior - many of which would not be self-reported in other research venues. These insights can be helpful when constructing quantitative studies, which, after all, are only as good as the questions they contain.

Humanizes data

Many organizations have libraries filled with marketing research, but the teams of people making decisions on behalf of the customers have almost no human connection with customers. People are complex and we try to define and describe them with data, yet we often come up short of truly understanding our target. Ethnographies provide insight that humanizes data so that your team can powerfully market to individuals, not just faceless groups of customers. When we define customers as “segments,” “user groups” and even “consumers,” something is missing: a connection to real people that comes through our marketing efforts in obvious and not so obvious ways.

We’ve all been in settings in which a speaker was talking to a large audience. The topic should have been of interest to us, but somehow the speaker didn’t capture our attention or imagination. More rarely, we have been in settings where it seemed as if the speaker was speaking directly to us, perhaps so much so that it made our heart race to hear them speak. In some way the speaker understood us on an individual level, even though they were addressing an entire group. They have an insight into us that resonates and commands our attention. Ethnographic research can help marketers find ways to make similar connections with their customers.

Keys to successful ethnographies

The insight gained from ethnographic research will be heightened if you keep three important things in mind.

First, don’t try to turn ethnographic research into a quantitative tool. It takes remarkably few interviews to expose real insight. Themes emerge, common phrases surface, idiosyncrasies come to light and shared behaviors are identified with relatively few interviews. Depending on the issues and objectives of the study, it seldom requires more than six to eight respondents per target group.

Second, take great care in defining the respondent qualifications for the ethnographies. In many research studies it is important that the respondents represent the entire target. When conducting ethnographies, it is far more important to talk to the heart of your target rather than people who broadly represent your target.

Recruit people who represent the core. They may be your heaviest users or the heaviest users of your competitor’s product. They may be people who exhibit a behavior that you want to tap into. Generally, you want to be far more focused in your screening than in other research methodologies.

Third, make sure key team members participate in the ethnographies. A broad cross-section of your team should participate, with one person accompanying the ethnographer on each of the interviews. While unsettling to many team members at first, the impact of getting them to step out of their comfort zone and into the customers’ lives is significant. Most people who are making day-to-day decisions in our businesses live far from the customers and have lifestyles that are vastly different. Giving them the opportunity to interact directly almost always recalibrates their perspective and helps them ground their big and small business decisions in the realm of the customer.