What is Ethnography ?

Ethnography...

    

     The ethnography can be easy understood by  "represent ways of studying cultures through methods that involves to becoming highly active within that cultures". which means that, the researcher have deeply involved in his/her research study within cultures by drawing the data from the observations and own predictions. For examples, in my research study which need myself to immerse with counter quality service and what the factor or cause that effect the performance of the representative by government organization and non-government organization that make them differently with each other and by doing the comparison and do the observation within 4 independent variable that have been constructed at proposal to see the result this four independent towards customer satisfactions. So, the actual result will helps me to gain understanding about what the thing really are affected this customer satisfaction and what are they really need from counter service provided by this two kind of organization.

     At the other side, Ethnography also can be understood where the researcher spend their long time/periods within a culture to study about it or the research related. Means they spend time,days or weeks to do an observation or interacting with participants of their everyday lives and this method may helps research gain an valid data or needed data to run this research information. This contrast with interview-based research, which it interaction with respondents is limited to a conventional interview or group discussion format, which is more limited time and often takes place outside the participant's own environment.

Ethnography in marketing research...

      Ethnographic is actually to study the human behavior at the context of marketing research, which it is as a wide window to interact between customer and firm product/services in the environments where usage behavior occurs. This research will helps pattern and attitudes of the behavior by the customer in the situations they unaware of what have they done and why they do it. It means if this ethnographic been apply in my proposal research study, it will be study about the customer satisfaction towards the counter quality service which the main point to be study is "customer satisfaction" and the object that I need to compared or measures is the satisfaction towards counter service which is more to the services that become a services in the environments. This research can take place in anywhere such as stores, home, on beaches and so on and there is given four type method to gain a data research which it is :-

•  In-home ethnographic market research interviews
•  On-Site ethnographic market research
•  In-store/shopalong Ethnographic interviews
•  Online ethnographic market research

The advantaged of Ethnography in market research

There are some advantages of ethnography in market research which are :-

   
    Quantitative measurement tools such survey are really used in the ethnography in market research. It is because through the survey, we can distributed our own questionnaire to determined and understand our customer satisfaction level with particular product or services. By doing this, we can easily find the focus group to determines this kind of customer satisfaction about their perception about something such product brand or services experienced before. In a metal-analysis of survey results, Ovans concluded, "People are generally not reliable predictors of their own-term purchasing behavior for any type of good"-Elliott and Jankel, 1998.  The another side benefit or advantages of ethnography in the market research is it usually often entails both observation in the culture's activities. Other than that, the ethnographic research is due to the first-hand observation involved where it is usually doing during extended period time, and from this the researcher will provided a extensive and in-depth finding about human behavior.

  Challenges of Ethnography

    
    What is the challenges of Ethnography at the side of marketing research context? Actually, the ethnography in marketing research will be faced by marketing-oriented companies, which in the planned to build up or to create the an infrastructure of the marketing strategies and sale messages will be well-aligned and this kind of thing will helps to ensures this two key point in marketing research. This circumstances, required both marketing and sales teams used internal and external process to changed or interpreted the strategy become or into tactics. The challenges if ethnography also will exist in the communication itself means in the messages itself that company given to the consumers. 

References :  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology
                  2. http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/EthnographyVid

                  3. http://www.scribd.com/doc/61507025/Hammersley

                  4. http://www.scribd.com/doc/33443122/New-Perspectives-in-Political-Ethnography

                  5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ethnography

                  6. http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Ethnography

                  7. http://thesixteenproject.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/what-is-ethnography-section-a/