ABSTRACT
U.S. business became enamored with ethnography beginning in the 1980s, when corporations began “tapping into a heretofore unheralded discipline: anthropology”. Despite the widespread use of focus groups, many marketing and advertising professionals express ambivalence about their merits. Elevation of ethnography as a methodology focus groups has practical consequences for business anthropology. In essence, it has frozen many practicing anthropologists in the ethnographer role and prevented them from engaging in additional marketing research functions. Ethnographic fieldwork is approached with a purposeful naiveté that enables the ethnographer to clearly perceive and fully deconstruct everyday behaviors. Ethnography often entails observation of individuals interacting with those who influence their behavior. Anthropologists’ skills in linguistic analysis and their ability to elicit classification systems can expand marketing executives’ understanding of how their customers think. The anthropologist as consumer ethnographer is an observer and analyst but is rarely a full participant in the marketing and advertising strategic planning process.
