In the home
In-home interviews, in which people show us what they keep and walk us through how they use it.
Visits can be filmed, so colleagues who weren’t there can see the home too.
Ethnographic research in homes, in store and on people’s phones.
See how people live with your category: where they keep it, how they choose it and how they use it from day to day. Your team can see it firsthand.
Where it happens.
Ethnography helps most when the answer depends on something people find hard to tell you: habits, routines and choices made in the moment.
Asked why they did something, people tend to answer from a theory of what plausibly caused it, without direct access to the process itself (Nisbett and Wilson, 1977).
A drawing: a field notebook open on a home sketched from above, where a product is kept ringed and the footsteps of how it’s used, and on a store shelf with a shopper’s path and the pack they picked up; beside it, a participant’s phone with a video diary entry and the days they have recorded.
An illustration, not a client project.
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In the home
Seen by our researchers
Where a product is kept, how it’s used and who else is involved.
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In store
Seen by our researchers
What people notice, pick up, compare and put back.
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On their phones
Recorded by participants
Routines and decisions over days or weeks, recorded as they happen.
Your team, in the field.
Your team can join at every stage: choosing where fieldwork should focus, meeting participants, and turning what they saw into a plan with us. Many programs use two: a digital ethnography first, then visits with some of the same people.
In store
Accompanied shopping, in store and online, with people choosing as they normally would.
Your leaders can walk the aisle with a shopper and listen as they choose.
On their phones
Fully moderated digital ethnography: each participant works one to one with a moderator, on their phone, through video diaries and tasks. We read what they choose to record as their own account, and check it in person where we can.
Participants’ own videos let colleagues see the routine in their words.
Your team gets journeys and personas in participants’ own words, films, and needs a development team can brief against.
How long, how many and who watches depend on the question.
Through a move, on their phones
Recorded by participants
A bank wanted to win more of the people who move between its markets, and to know whether its proposition for them was the right one.
Who took part
Migrants, expatriates and travelers, across three markets.
What they did
Showed us their moves as they happened, mapped their decision journeys, and saw the bank’s proposition beside competitors’.
What came back
A revised proposition, told back across the bank through films, journey maps and a board game.
What happened next
After a further phase of concept development, the bank launched a range of new products and services.
In consumers’ worlds, in person
Seen by the client’s own leaders
A food company wanted leaders from every function to hear consumers talk about one of its brands in person.
Who took part
Leaders from every function, two to each consumer.
What they did
Each pair met a consumer they already knew from a pre-task, went with them in and out of the category and into store, and listened. A structured regroup and a guided reflection followed.
What came back
A shared record of the experience, in consumers’ own words and pictures.
What happened next
Brand leadership took what it heard into the brief for its next creative campaign.
Planning an ethnography.
Should ethnography come before a survey, or after one?
Either. Before a survey, it shows what matters and gives the questionnaire people’s own language. After one, it shows the people and routines behind a segment or a result. Some programs do both, with the survey deciding where the qualitative work should concentrate.
How many people does an ethnography need?
Enough to see the range of situations your question depends on, across the segments and markets involved. We plan the number from the variety you need to see, and leave sizing to a survey.
When is ethnography the wrong choice?
When the question turns on how many people do something more than why; when the behavior is too rare to find by watching; or when your team needs a reaction to a finished proposition, which a test answers more directly.
Who runs the fieldwork?
Our own qualitative researchers design it and moderate it, with local moderators where a market’s language needs them. Every member of our team works at Partner or Director level and has at least 12 years of experience.
Want to see how people live with your category?
Tell us what your team needs to understand. We’ll suggest where we would go, in homes, in store or on people’s phones, and whether a survey should follow.
A partner or director will reply.