Ethnography

Ethnography is the study of human behavior. Researchers and scientists who want to understand other cultures have long used ethnographic methods. It really isn't possible to ask people details about their culture and how it is different to other cultures because culture is such an ingrained construct. Sometimes the best way to understand a culture is to experience it by living in it, much the way researchers have done in the past by living with remote tribes in Africa or the Amazon.

As the need to understand customers at a deeper level grows, it becomes more and more apparent that at times, the traditional customer research methods are incomplete in creating breakthrough innovations. To help deal with this shortcoming, many practitioners are resorting to methods based on anthropology, and their approach to VoC is commonly referred to as ethnography. You may also know of these methods as immersion or observational research.

In the past, surveys have been one of the primary tools...