Friday, October 12, 2007
Customer Anthropology: Study Customers Through Their Behaviors
byQuantitative or qualitative research studies that seek to shed light on what people think have been important marketing tools for ages. The problem is, and we all know this intuitively, people don’t necessarily do what they say they will do. In other words, thoughts don’t predict actual behaviors. So even if 24 percent of people in a statistically sound phone survey say they would buy your new product or service at a certain price, why did only four percent actually do so?
These kind of disconnects between thoughts and actions, can have huge implications for corporations, so anything that helps companies better predict the behavior of their customers is welcome news. David Pollard discusses a new methodology for doing just that with the intriguing name: Customer Anthropology.
According to Pollard, Customer Anthropology is the study of your customer behaviors in their “natural habitat.” Marketers have used anthropological observation of customers for years, but it appears the sophistication and usage of these techniques are growing, and Pollard cites some big companies that are deep into this type of marketing research.
Another term used for this approach is ethnography. In an interesting article on the basic tenets of this “science,” author Karen Kroll states: “A growing number of companies are finding that ethnography can provide deeper insight into customers’ needs, preferences, and attitudes than other research approaches.” She also distinguishes a couple of important criteria for this type of research:
1. The observation has to take place in the actual contextual setting. This isn’t done with an interview on a phone or in a focus group room; you need to be where the action is happening.
2. You have to start with an assumption that you don’t know the answers. In other words, there is no beginning hypothesis that you are either trying to prove or disprove.
Part of the challenge with customer anthropology or ethnography is that the “study” of anything takes careful preparation, a considerable amount of time, and a thorough extraction of bias from the final interpretations. That can be a big challenge for companies who are looking to make decisions quickly. However, it appears a growing number of large companies are willing to make that sacrifice to give them the insights they need to succeed in an increasingly competitive environment.
