If a brand builds its consumer insight on data derived from an endless list of questions, it will help little more than to re-affirm pre-conceived notions. Fortunately today, smart brand executives are becoming increasingly aware of the potential value in a more thorough use of ethnographic research. A meaningful market research today is build on immersive studies combining participant-observations with social behavior analyses to build a holistic understanding of the consumer based on patterns of behavior.

What is Business Ethnography

Ethnography is a social science discipline with roots in anthropology. Literally, ethnography is the study of mankind. Also known as participant-observation, ethnographic methods include entering a subject’s own environment: in the modern world, this includes their living room, school, the supermarket, the beauty parlor, or the streets – settings of their daily existence. Ethnographers observe what people actually do and how they explain their actions. By documenting actual behavior, this research approach offers valuable insight into the meaning people attach to each action and activity. After a period of fieldwork and data-collection, findings are interpreted and analyzed in the context of people’s actual lives – including relations to family, community, local subculture, and the larger society.

When ethnographic research is taken into a business context, it can be used to gain insights into patterns of behavior that help businesses thrive. Unlike a traditional market researcher, who asks specific, highly practical questions, anthropological researchers visit consumers in their own environments to observe and listen, and interview in a non-directed way. Qualitative methods, including focus groups and open-ended survey questionnaires, have proven to be valuable strategies to delve deeper into the relationship between the brand and those who buy or use their products. By listening, observing, and interpreting, we can access many meaningful layers that help clients better understand the true aspirations of their customers.

This observational method may appear inefficient and time consuming; however, it provides a valuable insight about the context in which customers would use a new product and the meaning that product might hold in their lives. These techniques also allow potential customers to express their opinions about a brand using their own words, rather than those of a brand executive. In an increasingly competitive economic landscape, a more hands-on approach involving face-to-face dialogues with consumers is essential for a brand to differentiate itself and succeed in new markets, not least in growth markets such as Brazil, India, and China.

Corporate Ethnography for International Brands

Corporate ethnography is central to gaining a full understanding of customers and the appropriate business strategies. Over the past years, I have been helping international brands to delve deeper into the mindset of their customers, particularly in emerging markets. Each project has been different in terms of respondent’s location, age, income level, but one thing encompass my findings in all these projects: With an open-ended, ethnographic research approach, the client gained valuable insights about their brand that surpassed the expectations of their traditional approach to market research. The best research has been those that were initiated with as few assumptions as possible; it is an approach that allows the consumer to shape the brand.

As noted in previous articles, to sustain and accelerate growth in new markets, companies have to tailor their response to fragmented regional cultures and sub-cultures by constantly launching customized product and service offerings. They also need to understand perhaps, subtlety, the dreams and aspirations of its consumers as these influence their behavior to invest in the product or service. In many ways, success in emerging markets will depend in large part on how quickly companies can understand and respond to differences in attitudes, spending behavior, and preferences among the increasingly affluent consumers.

Within the context of a business partnership, a trained ethnographer will contribute a deep understanding of cultural and social theory to the analysis process of entering new markets. This goes beyond casual observation and rather, will pull together a web of intimate field research and best practices that make visible underlying structures of why people do what they do. For this reason, any analysis should always work within a framework grounded in social sciences. Analysis takes time, but the results will include models of behavior and practice, experience frameworks, design principles, and cultural patterns that enables those involved to build long lasting relationships. Once the data has been analyzed and crafted into something meaningful, the research team will be able to provide a rich story with a clear set of genuine discoveries. In the end, the goal of getting closer to the consumers is to better understand their cultures and behaviors, and in the process develop aspiring and meaningful products and services relevant to their lives.

The New York Times remembers Havel:

A shy yet resilient, unfailingly polite but dogged man who articulated the power of the powerless, Mr. Havel spent five years in and out of Communist prisons, lived for two decades under close secret-police surveillance and endured the suppression of his plays and essays. He served 14 years as president, wrote 19 plays, inspired a film and a rap song and remained one of his generation’s most seductively nonconformist writers.

All the while, he came to personify the soul of the Czech nation. His moral authority and his moving use of the Czech language cast him as the dominant figure during Prague street demonstrations in 1989 and as the chief behind-the-scenes negotiator who brought about the peaceful transfer of power known as the Velvet Revolution, a revolt so smooth that it took just weeks to complete, without a single bullet fired.

He was chosen as democratic Czechoslovakia’s first president — a role he insisted was more duty than aspiration — and after the country split in January 1993, he became president of the Czech Republic. He linked the country firmly to the west, clearing the way for the Czech Republic to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 and the European Union five years later.

The Economist published a personal memoriam:

Mr Havel was (in my eyes) a superb president. He rollerskated through the corridors of Prague castle, exorcising the ghosts of the communist usurpers with his humanity and humour. In what would be a hallmark of his political approach, he made a point of lending support to beleaguered but likeminded figures abroad. He invited the Lithuanian leader Vytautas Landsbergis to Prague, as that country struggled to turn its declaration of independence from Soviet occupation into reality. It was in Mr Havel’s company that I first met the Dalai Lama—also an honoured guest in Prague.

The Washington Post writes:

After being unanimously elected president of Czechoslovakia by the newly free country’s parliament in December 1989, Mr. Havel set the tone of the new era in a speech on Jan. 1, 1990, his first day in office. Communism, he said, was “a monstrous, ramshackle, stinking machine” whose worst legacy was not economic failure but a “spoiled moral environment.”

“We have become morally ill because we are used to saying one thing and thinking another,” he said. “We have learned not to believe in anything, not to care about each other. . . . Love, friendship, mercy, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depths and dimension. . . . They represent some sort of psychological curiosity, or they appear as long-lost wanderers from faraway times.”

Rest in Peace.

In her address, Mrs. Sirleaf said:

In its selection this year, the Nobel Committee has brought here three women linked by their commitment to change, and by their efforts to promote the rule of law and democracy in societies torn apart by conflict. The fact that we — two women from Liberia — are here today to share a stage with a sister from Yemen speaks to the universality of our struggle.

I urge my sisters, and my brothers, not to be afraid. Be not afraid to denounce injustice, though you may be outnumbered. Be not afraid to seek peace, even if your voice may be small. Be not afraid to demand peace.

Russia is often singled out as the Bric country that doesn’t belong in the Brics. Critics say that with its aging population, dependence on oil and gas and widespread corruption, it’s not in the same league as its dynamic rivals – Brazil, India and China

Jim O’Neill, the Brics’ inventor, disagrees. In The Growth Map, a book marking the 10th anniversary of his coining of the acronym, he rejects suggestions that Russia should be dropped from the team. He argues, in his characteristically forthright way, that in terms of GDP her head, Russia has the potential to beat not just the other Brics but “all other European countries” – and join the European Union.

Over the past decade six of the world’s ten fastest-growing countries were African. In eight of the past ten years, Africa has grown faster than East Asia, including Japan. Even allowing for the knock-on effect of the northern hemisphere’s slowdown, the IMF expects Africa to grow by 6% this year and nearly 6% in 2012, about the same as Asia.

Africa now has a fast-growing middle class: according to the World Bank, around 60m Africans have an income of $3,000 a year, and 100m will in 2015. The rate of foreign investment has soared around tenfold in the past decade.

China, on about $7,500 and growing fast, is approaching the income level when democratic change often begins. There are powerful arguments about why both countries might be permanent exceptions to the democracy rule.

A quick look at the MSCI indices for the four Brics since 2001 shows that they have comfortably outperformed the S&P 500. If you invested $100 at the time of O’Neill’s report in November 2001 in each of the four Brics, you would now have $674 from Brazil, $451 from China, $459 from India and $414 from Russia. Your 100 S&P bucks? Worth $112.

In recent years China and India have led the way in becoming the new hubs for growth, innovation and talent. They produce close to 700,000 engineers every year. The availability of such a large pool of talent is the much needed fuel to power the growth of industries across sectors in these countries. This has been complemented by the presence of a large middle-class population (160m in India and 230m in China) with rising disposable incomes. China and India are also challenging Western domination as the global innovation and R&D hub, rubbing shoulders with historic giants in global innovation indices. The road ahead for the Bric countries looks extremely promising.

[...] the biggest challenge that faces the Bric countries is quite unique in that they are countries of contradiction. Countries like India and China in particular, despite leading the Bric growth story, are no different. Take a look at India. It has had average growth of 8 to 8.5 per cent in recent years – but over 300m people still live below the poverty line. It produces over 3m graduates every year from its pool of 480 universities and 22,000 colleges. Despite this, 35 per cent of the world’s illiterate people are in India. Furthermore, over 8m children are still out of school and 240m children are not a part of the schooling system. There are 100m internet users in a country where only 12.5m have broadband. There are also over 600m mobile phone subscribers in India. Despite this level of technology penetration, India ranks 50th in financial inclusion globally.