iari(et Learning - Fuqua School of Businessmoorman/Marketing...most marketing organizations to...

Julien Cayla & Eric Arnould

Ethnographie Stories for i\/iari(etLearning

Although ethnography has become a popular research approach in many organizations, major gaps exist in thefield's understanding of the way it operates in the corporate world, particularly in how ethnography facilitates marketlearning. Drawing from extensive fieldwork in the world of commercial ethnography, the authors describe howethnographic stories give executives a unique means of understanding market realities. By working through the richdetails of ethnographic stories infused with the tensions, contradictions, and emotions of people's everyday lives,executives are better able to grasp the complexity of consumer cultures. Overall, this research should helpmanagers leverage the catalytic effects of ethnographic storytelling in their efforts to learn about and understandmarket contexts.

Keywords: ethnography, market research, market learning, narrative, storytelling

Organizations face rapidly changing and increasinglycomplex market environments. Day (2011, p. 183)notes that "there is a widening gap between the

accelerating complexity of markets and the capacity ofmost marketing organizations to comprehend and cope withthis complexity." To deal with the "deluge of data" (p. 183)that organizations must process. Day highlights the powerof new "analytical and knowledge-sharing technologies" (p.188) such as "deep analytics" that harness technologicaladvances to foster vigilant and adaptive market learning.These efforts to mine market data for customer insights areconsistent with an information-processing perspective, inwhich an organization gains competitive advantage bysourcing and analyzing market information more rapidlyand effectively than its competitors (Kohli and Jaworski1990).

Although we concur with Day's diagnosis that dealingwith market complexity represents a formidable organiza-tional challenge, we believe that the solutions he suggeststake limited advantage of the range of existing techniqueson which firms may draw to make consumers' lives moreintelligible and, consequently, firms more responsive. As we

Julien Cayla is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Nanyang BusinessSchool; Research Fellow at the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight; andVisiting Professor, Euromed Management (e-mail: jcayla§ntu.edu.sg). EricJ. Arnould is Professor of Marketing, University of Bath, and Visiting AdjunctProfessor, Southern Denmark University (e-mail: [email protected]).Theauthors acknowledge the Australian School of Business at the Universityof New South Wales for providing the initial grant for this research as wellas the University of Bath and the Marketing Science Institute for theirfinancial support. They thank Avi Shankar, Patricia Sunderland, RitaDenny, Brigitte Jordan, Robin Beers, Michael Griffiths, Robert Canwell,Fanny Brousse, Andrew Brown, Ko de Ruyter, Adrian Payne, and EdwardMcQuarrie for their feedback and guidance and Bernardo Figueiredo forhis valuable research assistance. The authors also thank members of theEthnographic Praxis in Industry Conference community for sharing theirexperience and for providing a stimulating environment to think aboutethnographic stories. Robert Kozinets served as area editor for this article.

elaborate in this article, the market-learning processes thatDay (1994, 2011; Day and Shoemaker 2006) highlights arefounded on what Jerome Bruner (1986, p. 12) calls a para-digmatic mode of knowing, a mode of ordering experienceand construing reality that is akin to "a formal, mathematicalsystem of description and explanation." With paradigmaticlearning, market realities are summarized into "mentalmodels," that is, market abstractions that help managersimpose "order on ambiguous, multidimensional, and fine-grained market environments" (Day 1994, p. 10).

Although a paradigmatic approach helps develop broadgeneralizations about markets, previous research has sug-gested that this specific mode of knowing is also somewhatineffective in shedding light on the complexity of humanbehavior, which requires attention to the "fine-grained"details of human experience that Day proposes to abstract(J. Bruner 1986, 1991; Polkinghome 1988). The paradig-matic or "logico-scientific" mode of knowing (J. Bruner1986, p. 13) disdains the particulars of human experience,including the contradictions and dilemmas of people'severyday lives, thereby eschewing engagement with thecomplexity that Day highlights as a major challenge forcorporations. Moreover, in using such techniques, firmsmust always contend with both known and unknownsources of bias and selectivity, no matter how large the dataset (Boyd and Crawford 2011; Maxwell 2013). Althoughdata analytics represent compelling advances in the sortingof vast amounts of information, there are lingering ques-tions about the suitability of such techniques for dealingwith the complexity of human emotions and motivations.

Marketing scholars must also contend with increasingfrustrations within the business community that conven-tional market research has failed to inspire executives andstimulate organizational creativity. In a recent keynoteaddress, Coca-Cola's vice president of marketing strategyargued that market research firms and consumer insightdepartments would have to radically change their workpractices to provide "inspiration and provocation to drive

® 2013, American Marketing AssociationiSSN: 0022-2429 (print), 1547-7185 (eiectronic)

Journal of MarketingVoiume 77 (Juiy 2013), 1-16

transformational change" (Sthanunathan 2011). Here again,we must challenge the capacity for paradigmatic modes ofknowing to stir an organization's imagination (Flynn et al.2009). Although we recognize that technological advancesand deep analytics have their place in a portfolio of researchapproaches designed to guide marketing strategy, our articleexamines a complementary mode of knowing, in whichorganizations leverage the potent effects of ethnographicstories.

Prior research has already highlighted how market-oriented ethnography can illuminate the subjective (emic)and cultural (etic) meaning of consumer experience(Amould and Price 2006; Amould and Wallendorf 1994).Yet researchers know little about how firms implementethnographic projects in corporate environments and stillless about how ethnography contributes to market learning.Our research bridges that gap by detailing how ethno-graphic storytelling operates in a variety of organizations asthey address market complexities.

We conducted extensive fieldwork in the world of com-mercial ethnography in a variety of industries, following theactivities of ethnographers as they returned from the fieldwith ethnographic stories about consumers' lives and sharedthese stories with other executives. Building on Ricoeur's(1983) work on narrative, we defme "ethnographic stories"as redescriptions of people's worlds sequenced into plots,suffused with emotion and the granularity of human experi-ence. As we elaborate subsequently, by analyzing the prop-erties of ethnography as a specific type of narrative, we arebetter able to uncover how ethnography works in organiza-tions as a meaning-making process. We have organized ourfindings to detail the crafting of ethnographic stories, thestructure and nature of these stories, and the organizationaloutcomes of ethnographic storytelling, thus providing amore comprehensive understanding of ethnographic projectsas they happen in organizational contexts.

We contribute insights in two domains critical to busi-ness success: market research and market learning. First,our fmdings challenge the description of ethnography as a"fly on the wall" market research technique (Mariampolski2006, p. 103). Instead, we show that ethnographic research isa collaborative sense making process in which ethnographersand their clients reconstruct consumer experiences into sto-ries. The very act of organizing the details of consumer livesinto coherent narratives enables executives to make sense ofmarkets. Second, our work challenges a misconception thatcommercial ethnography is purely exploratory. In contrast,we highlight the explanatory power of ethnography; ethno-graphic stories help firms organize ambiguous or complexhuman behavior into actionable fields.

With regard to market learning, our research demon-strates some ways in which stories can transform a com-pany's market outlook. Marketing scholars recognize thatthe stories consumers recount about their market experi-ences are an important means to understanding them(Foumier 1998; Thompson 1997). Not surprisingly, leadingcompanies such as Procter & Gamble recognize the criticalrole of storytelling as a consumer research instrument (Zatt-man 2003). Previous research has also treated storytellingas a way to communicate more effectively with consumers

(for a review, see Woodside 2002) without embracing it as aprocess of sensemaking that can benefit marketers (excep-tions include Gebhardt, Carpenter, and Sherry 2006). Inshort, previous marketing scholarship has largely ignored therole of narratives in market learning and strategy formula-tion. In contrast, our work demonstrates how ethnographicstorytelling operates as a distinctive mode of market learning.

Theoretical FoundationsOur work is grounded in pioneering scholarship on theunique features of narrative knowing (J. Bruner 1986,1991;Polkinghome 1988) and what scholars describe as the "nar-rative turn" in management, strategy, and other businessdisciplines (Colville, Brown, and Pye 2012; Fenton andLangley 2011; Weick 2012). Building on this work, weargue that corporate ethnography facilitates market learningnot through conformity, with a paradigmatic model privi-leging hypothesis testing and the development of universaltruths (Day and Shoemaker 2006; Rossiter 2001), but ratherthrough a narrative model.

Narrative Knowing

When articulating the specificity of narrative knowing,Jerome Bruner (1986, 1991) distinguishes the narrative andparadigmatic modes of knowing. He argues that narrativeknowing is a form of discourse and a way of understandingthe world that "is centered around the broader and moreinclusive question of the meaning of experience," whereasthe paradigmatic mode of knowing focuses on establishinguniversal truth conditions (J. Bruner 1986, p. 11). Narrativeknowing focuses on the specific circumstances in whichactions occur, but paradigmatic knowing "seeks to tran-scend the particular by higher and higher reaching forabstraction" (p. 13). The power of logico-scientific reason-ing "comes from its capacity to abstract events from par-ticular contexts" (Polkinghome 1988, p. 21). Reflecting thisdesire to transcend the particular. Day and Shoemaker(2006, p. 92) emphasize the necessity for organizations todevelop "competing hypotheses about the world," andRossiter (2001, p. 15) describes the market-learning processas the reduction of market information into "strategic prin-ciples." References to hypothesis testing and abstract formsof market knowledge in these studies are consistent withRorty's (1982) remarks that paradigmatic modes of thinkinghave dominated Western intellectual inquiry at the expenseof other modes of knowing.

In contrast, narrative knowing focuses on the richdetails of human experience because the explanatory powerof narratives comes from retroactively plotting sequences ofactions and considering them in specific contexts to revealtheir significance (J. Bruner 1986; Polkinghome 1988).When explaining why a particular consumer bought lifeinsurance, for example, a logico-scientific explanation mayfocus on the specific category of people the consumerbelongs to: 40- to 50-year-old white men are more likely tobuy life insurance than other groups of consumers. Alogico-scientific mode of knowing will treat a consumer'sactions as reflecting the behavioral disposition of a generalcategory or as an instance of a general law. In contrast, a

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narrative mode of explanation will locate the decision ofbuying life insurance within a chain of biographical details,eventually explaining this particular decision "by tracing itsintrinsic relations to other events" (Polkinghorne, p. 21),which are themselves linked to shared cultural templates foraction and interpretation. Narratives elucidate behavior, buttheir mode of explanation is different from logico-scientificmodels.

Narratives' routes to persuasion also differ from thoseof paradigmatic models. Several studies emphasize that theprocess of transportation, defined as the immersion of theaudience in narrative content (Genig 1993), is specific tonarrative persuasion (Escalas 2007; Green and Brock2000). Through transportation, the audience of a story isdrawn into the characters' micro histories, increasing thelikelihood that they will empathize with a character anddraw parallels between his or her world and their own (VanLaer and De Ruyter 2010). Green and Brock (2000) arguethat narrative transportation persuades because conflict-laden,pathos-rich narratives speak to readers' own experiences.Because ethnographic work actively involves professionalethnographers and their clients in the experience of datacollection and provides reports of consumers' experiences,stories produced in commercial ethnography create condi-tions that facilitate reader imagination of consumers' lives.

Narrative and Market Learning

It is widely assumed that a firm's success is based on itsability to acquire heterogeneous market knowledge fromthe outside and to exploit that knowledge internally torespond to customer needs, fend off competitive challenges,enhance entrepreneurial action, and, above all, develop dif-ferentiated products and services (Day and Schoemaker2006). Day (2011, p. 189) notes that "vigilant market learn-ing requires a willingness to be immersed in the lives ofcurrent, prospective, and past customers." Clearly, this ideaof immersion invites the use of narrative as a mode of learn-ing, even if Day leaves this linkage implicit.

Consistent with this imperative for adaptive marketlearning, prior scholarship has focused on trying to improvean organization's capabihty to source and analyze marketinformation, describing the process through which marketinformation is absorbed (Kohli and Jaworski 1990), evalu-ated (Glazer 1991), disseminated (Rindfleisch and Moor-man 2001), and used (De Luca and Atuahene-Gima 2007).Along the same lines, marketing scholars have aimed todetermine the organizational culture and structures that willbest facilitate the circulation of information within organi-zations (Moorman, Deshpandé, and Zaltman 1993; Moor-man, Zaltman, and Deshpandé 1992; Rindfleisch and Moor-man 2001).

However, although prior marketing scholarship hasfocused on increasing the absorption and dissemination ofmarket information within firms, researchers have rarelyanalyzed what form market information takes, how execu-tives make sense of that information, or how organizationscombine different types of information to develop marketunderstanding. We found these concerns pervasive amongour informants in the ethnographic market research world.

In particular, previous research has largely ignored the roleof narrative in facilitating market learning.

This critique extends to organizational scholarship.An overarching theme in the management literature onorganizational storytelling is that narratives are ways fororganizational members to create order, that is, to reduce"the equivocality (complexity, ambiguity, unpredictability)of organizational life" (Brown and Kreps 1993, p. 48). Suchliterature focuses on the stories that circulate within organi-zations and explores how stories help members deal withthe complexity of organizational life, but it ignores story-telling's contribution to market sensemaking (for a review,see Rhodes and Brown 2005). Thus, the field lacks under-standing of how storytelling can help executives understandthe intricacies of market contexts.

In one important study, Gebhardt, Carpenter, and Sherry(2006) suggest that stories improve the process of marketlearning. In their study of cross-functional teams conduct-ing consumer visits, the authors find that "team membersbrought back stories and artifacts, including video record-ings and pictures. This allowed others to experience themarket vicariously and build a shared understanding" (p.45). It may well be that such experiences led to transporta-tion among executives, but the authors offer scant detailregarding how this "shared understanding" was built. Ourwork further analyzes the processes through which ethno-graphic storytelling helps create a common market under-standing, the nature of that understanding, and how itcomes to be.

Ethnography in the Corporate World

For at least 25 years, ethnography has been increasing inpopularity in a diverse set of organizations. Xerox, Intel,Wells Fargo, Procter & Gamble, Steelcase, and Microsoft allemploy ethnographers to help them design better productsor explore new market opportunities (Anderson 2009; Avery2006; Mariampolski 2006; Sunderland and Denny 2007).At E-Lab LLC and Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated,ethnographic insight has been critical to new product design(Bezaitis 2009), and at Intel, ethnographic research has pro-vided a better understanding of new markets. Ethnography,in the words of Intel's executives, alleviated the "steadilycreeping dissonance between the markets that held share ofmind within Intel, as it were, and the growing revenuestream from elsewhere" (Nafus and Anderson 2006, p.247).

However, despite recent efforts to formalize what isknown about ethnographic methods (Cefkin 2009; Malefyt2009; Sunderland and Denny 2007), major gaps exist inunderstanding of this research approach. Researchers knowlittle about the ways companies use ethnographic researchto build market knowledge and how such knowledgeinforms marketing decisions. This may be partly due to anexcessive focus on ethnographic data collection methodsrather than the insights ethnography provides and how itprovides them (Arnould and Wallendorf 1994; Kozinets2002; Mariampolski 2006). Malefyt (2009, p. 202) evenargues that a kind of methodological fetish drives competi-tion among corporate ethnographic firms:

Ethnographic Stories for Market Learning / 3

Technological methodologies, mediated by cell phones,video cameras, and other technical means, are central tothe production of branded ethnographic methods, as theforms of branding and technology, in themselves, legiti-mate consumer-corporate flows of interaction.

This emphasis on ethnography as a cocktail of data collec-tion methods also pervades market research textbooks(Churchill and Iacobucci 2009; Malhotra et al. 2006).

Moving beyond the discussion of methodology, Bezaitis(2009, p. 156) tantalizingly suggests that her firm E-Lab's suc-cess came from crafting compelling ethnographic narratives:

The shift from data to frameworks, central to our researchpractice, was all about relinquishing the constraints of thebit and in their place creating a storyline about what waspossible, a central narrative as organizing principle for theaccumulated data. Geertz was an important referencepoint. As was De Certeau and Roland Barthes. The skillwas essentially a conceptual one, a storytelling skill, andour "practice" gave us a place to work that out.

Despite these insights and the suggestion that corporateethnographic practice is a storytelling craft (E. Bruner1986), our understanding of the way organizations useethnographic approaches is far from comprehensive. Thefield lacks an understanding of the ethnographic process asit unfolds in varied organizational contexts. McQuarrie's(1989) concerns about the lack of academic studies on theway managers use qualitative research, voiced more than 20years ago, still endure, even as corporate qualitativeresearch has become more widespread. Sociologists haverecently advanced understanding of focus groups throughextended fieldwork with researchers and managers (Grand-clement and Gaglio 2011; Lezaun 2007). Our research takesa similar approach to the study of ethnographic practices inthe corporate world, focusing on ethnographic storytellingas a distinctive form of market sensemaking.

Research ApproachOur research approach combines in-depth investigation oftwo companies with a cross-sectional study of ethnographicprojects in several industries, countries, and strategic con-texts. Our objective was to reach some analytical depth inthe way ethnographic projects live within corporations andto pair this with a broad understanding of diverse contextsand the varied outcomes to which ethnographic projectslead. The two companies we analyzed in depth are anAmerican financial institution (which we call "AmericanBank") and a consumer goods company selling cleaningproducts ("Upstate Care").

Corporate ethnographic projects are collaborative ven-tures involving a variety of actors both within and outside acompany; thus, for each company, we aimed to interviewparticipants involved in various aspects of ethnographicprojects. For example, one of the ethnographic projects westudied at Upstate Care was designed to develop a newglobal marketing strategy. We interviewed (1) an advertis-ing executive who had handled the planning on the UpstateCare account for more than 20 years, (2) an ethnographerwho had conducted numerous studies for the company, (3)an innovation consultant who had begun work advising

Upstate Care, and (4) the client, a research manager atUpstate Care. We used a similar approach at AmericanBank, and together, the interviews we conducted in thesetwo companies garnered a more nuanced understanding ofthe ethnographic process, from study design to diffusion offindings within the firm (for the list of research participants,see Table 1).

In addition to Upstate Care and American Bank, weconducted interviews in several other companies to achievea more comprehensive description of how ethnographyintervenes in the strategic process. We developed our sampleof ethnographers and clients beginning with firms affiliatedwith the Marketing Science Institute and through personalcontacts and snowball sampling. In this sampling, we soughtbalance between vendors (e.g., freelance ethnographers,consultants, market research companies) and their clients toassess a variety of perspectives.

Overall, we conducted semistructured interviews with35 executives over a period of 18 months in seven coun-tries. We built the global nature of our data collection intoour research design because we understood, from informalinteractions with corporate ethnographers, that ethnographywas often used to help companies become less parochial.Our informants work in a variety of industries, includingbanking, consulting, advertising, telecommunications, andfast-moving consumer goods, which highlights that ethnog-raphy is indeed popular in many sectors of the economy.

Ideally, we would have liked to complement interviewswith participant observation to glean more details about thebehavioral processes of knowledge exchange and use.However, organizations are secretive with regard to sharinginsights about proprietary research. Not surprisingly, muchexisting research on market learning and the processes ofknowledge interpretation and utilization within companieshas taken an experience-distant view of the subject due to adependence on survey data and network analysis (e.g.,Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpandé 1992; Rindfleisch andMoorman 2001). Thus, we were able to manage participantobservation through our involvement in the EthnographicPraxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) community. Now inits eighth year, EPIC is the foremost organization bringingcommercial ethnographers together to exchange ideas abouttheir work. We became members of the community by serv-ing on one of its committees, which provided us access tothe EPIC conference itself and to key figures in the commu-nity. We developed some collaborative relationships withEPIC members and followed group e-mail exchanges onethnography. Together, these forms of community participa-tion helped us understand the language and the pressingissues of corporate ethnographic work.

We discussed the following broad themes and questionsduring our interviews with informants: (1) the ways firmsuse ethnography in marketing decisions, (2) the scope ofethnography's application to business problems, (3) thepromises and benefits of ethnography, and (4) the chal-lenges, including the ethical challenges, of carrying outethnographic projects. We conducted interviews in English,except for three that we conducted in French and later trans-lated into English. We finished data collection when webelieved that we had reached theoretical saturation and


TABLE 1Research Participants

Nanne

JanetaElleenaRhondaaLindasGracedCobybPamela''Amyt)PaulbDianaRaySteveKellySabrinaPattiMikeJacquiArtiePaulaRajivAdrianRupertMalcolmFeliciaSteveCarolinePierreJacobDiyaPaulaPascalMatthewJanetRick

Company

Upstate CareAdvertising agency

Upstate research companyUpstate consulting

American BankAmerican BankAmerican BankAmerican Bank

Innovation consulting companySoftware companyOffice automationOffice automationMajor appliances

Telecommunications companyTelecommunications company

Innovation consulting firmConsumer electronicsConsumer electronics

ConsultingAdvertising agency

Innovation consultancyMarket research company

Advertising agencyUpstate research companyUpstate research company

Ethnographic research companyEthnographic research companyEthnographic research companyEthnographic research companyInnovation consulting company

Ethnographic research companyMarket research company

British SpiritsEthnographic research company

Position

Senior research managerGlobal director of planning

EthnographerVice president of research

Consumer insights managerSenior user researcherUser research manager

Vice president of mobile bankingPrincipal

Manager of user experienceUser experience researcherUser experience researcher

Innovation managerUser interaction researcherUser interaction researcher

FounderSenior anthropologistDirector of learning

Educator and consultantRegional planning director

DesignerPrincipal

Vice presidentEthnographerEthnographerEthnographerEthnographerEthnographerEthnographer

Associate strategistVideographerVice president

Consumer plannerEthnographer

Location

American MidwestChicagoChicagoChicago

San FranciscoSan FranciscoSan FranciscoSan FranciscoSan Francisco

BoulderSilicon ValleySilicon Valley

MichiganBoulderBoulderBoulderChicagoChicagoChicagoShanghai

San FranciscoNew YorkNew YorkNew YorkNew York

ParisParisParis

MumbaiTorontoTorontoTorontoSydneySydney

^Research participants working on Upstate Care ethnographic projects.''Research participants working on American Bank ethnographic projects.

were able to offer sufficiently detailed descriptions ofethnographic projects in multiple contexts (Strauss andCorbin 1994).

We managed the transcriptions and field notes (morethan 1,000 pages) using QSR International's NVivo softwareand followed standard practices for qualitative inquiry byconstructing a codebook and developing common themesacross different ethnographic projects. To test the credibil-ity, verisimilitude, and trustworthiness of our interpretationsand to generate further insights into ethnographic marketlearning, we presented early versions of our model to sev-eral of the executives involved in this research and solicitedtheir feedback. As we alternated between the literature andour data, it became clear to us that the mechanics of the nar-rative paradigm were those underlying the organizations'use of ethnography and that analyzing commercial ethno-graphy as skilled storytelling provided insights into thisform of organizational market learning.

FindingsIn presenting our findings, we first discuss how ethno-graphic storytelling in organizational contexts is a process

of ordering reality to render that reality meaningful. Sec-ond, we describe the contours of ethnographic knowledgeas a specific form of market knowledge. Ethnographic sto-ries are (1) temporal, that is, sequenced to establish the pro-gression of consumer lives and to establish meaningfullinks between events; (2) structured around revelatory inci-dents that provide the dramatic heart of the story; (3) granu-lar, in that they re-create the intricate details of consumerlives; and (4) suffused with emotional texture, enablingorganizational members to empathize with consumers.

Third, we highlight the organizational outcomes of thislearning process. Ethnographic stories (1) have the potentialto disrupt organizational paradigms and existing marketunderstanding; (2) are granular, enabling marketers toredescribe consumer lives in space and time and providinga fertile terrain for new marketing strategy ideas; and (3)can enhance the ability of organizational members to under-stand consumers and how they engage with the companyand its products.

Ethnographic Research as a Storyteiiing Craft

Crafting ethnographic stories. Early ethnographersbrought back detailed accounts of people living in exotic

Ethnographic Stories for iVIaricet Learning / 5

locales; in the same way, our informants spent time inpeople's homes, listened to consumers, and collected anec-dotes, snippets of conversation, and glimpses of life. As a rule,our informants consider storytelling pivotal, the aim beingto use these various stories to develop a compelling narra-tive meant to transport organizational audiences and triggerstrategic action. For example, Kelly, one of the managerswe met, has commissioned several ethnographic projectsover the past ten years through her work as an innovationmanager for a manufacturer of major appliances. To under-stand the role of food and meals in Mexican American fam-ilies, she accompanied a professional ethnographer aroundthe Chicago area:

We went to these different homes and we felt part of thefamily by the time we left. We cooked with them, ate withthem. That aspect of it was pretty amazing, because youare used to your own home life, and an almost tunnel-vision of your experiences and then just to see how differ-ent families interact and the impact of the product.... Itwas amazing.... I was taken aback with how welcomingpeople were; it showed me that everybody has a story,...and the exciting part of ethnography is really finding outthat story or what makes them tick, truly understandingwhy they're doing what they're doing. (Kelly, innovationmanager, major appliances company)

This quotation describes Kelly's mind at work as sheprocesses her experience and the data collected. While theinformation is gathered, she observes the flow and listens tothe small talk. She grasps the importance of what she hears.She senses the capacity for leverage that the stories mayhave, and thus data collection becomes a rich, personalprocess of discovery. She is moved, "amazed" at the differ-ences she finds in a world she contrasts with her own. Hersensibility to that world is enriched and amplified in impor-tant ways as she searches for answers to organizationalquestions, and she experiences, however briefly, the trans-formative nature of fieldwork. Here and throughout ourexperience, we view ethnography as a collaborativeprocess, in which clients such as Kelly and professionalethnographers try to find the overarching tale—the deepstructure or schema, what Kelly calls "that story"—thathelps explain consumer behaviors of interest.

Adrian, an innovation consultant, discusses patching upthe various data collected, what he calls the "downloading"process, as the first step of story crafting, which is followedby data analysis. He explains.

We come back, we download our pictures, we print them.We do what we call storytelling. It's the first activity. Story-telling is capturing up in posters, quotes, observations,interesting things, tensions, things that are contradictory,anything that we capture. And we all sit there with ournotebooks and we go through a conversation where wego, "Did you catch this—it was interesting when shedid this, wasn't it?" (Adrian, senior designer, innovationconsultancy)

Note that the storytelling activities Adrian talks aboutare similar to what Weick (1995) refers to as organizationalsensemaking, that is, a type of learning in which organiza-tional members focus on equivocal events and behavior ("itwas interesting when she did this, wasn't it?") and attempt

to ascribe meaning to these occurrences. In this case, theinitial narrative crafting takes place among members of theresearch team, whereas in the incident Kelly recounts,ethnographers and clients begin crafting the narrativetogether while in the fleld.

After fieldwork and data analysis, ethnographers even-tually must present their work in front of clients, anotherprocess that requires well-honed storytelling skills. Mal-colm, an ethnographer working for a large advertisingagency on Madison Avenue in New York, explains that oneof the most important tasks in a persuasive ethnographicproject is presenting an underlying narrative arc that bringstogether various types of data and insights:

In putting together the film, there's always the discussionof how we put it together—what kind of story do we tell?It has to fit with the insights that I find, but there's somesort of a narrative that we want to fmd.... So it typicallyhas this narrative structure of beginning and end, and wehave to create that if it's not naturally there. (Malcolm,vice president, advertising agency, emphasis added)

Rick, an ethnographer working in Sydney, takes a similarapproach to the video footage he collects, taking care not toundermine its narrative power:

I am very careful with my clients never to show the rawfootage that I record, because it doesn't say anything,because it's just a clip of people doing stuff, and it's like,Where's the insight here? Where's the connection here?The connection only comes when you edit it down into astory or sequence, which summarizes in some way thephenomena. (Rick, ethnographer)

Commercial ethnographers such as Adrian and Rickaccumulate snippets from the ebb and flow of consumervisits and interviews and organize them into a cohesivestory, a sequence that synthesizes the observed phenomenainto an order, one that they have to create "if it's not natu-rally there." As others have noted (Johar, Holbrook, andStem 2001), incidents from the fleld are transformed intonarrative to serve subsequent purposes.

Crafting a captivating storyline is especially importantbecause executives are innundated with market information.Steve, an experienced ethnographer working in New York,grapples with conveying the complexity of people's lives tomarketing executives:

The Director of Marketing is already looking at her Black-Berry three minutes into the presentation, so there is thatelement of "how do you tell the story?" And so much of thatdepends on the context that it is put in. You don't alwaysknow that till you get into the room. (Steve, ethnographer)

Some of this storytelling involves an ethnographer work-ing on his or her own and pausing to reflect on the narrativehe or she wants to tell. But the process of organizationalstorytelling is also eminently collaborative, with clientshelping collect data in the fleld and sitting together withethnographers to ascribe meaning to data. Malcolm talkedabout the way clients who participate in ethnographic workeventually develop a sense of attachment with the peoplethey encounter first in the field and are persuaded by ("buyinto") the research narratives:


When we show the film, the client says [lowered voice]"Oh, I went to that ethnography, that's my person. That'smy person, and I was there." So there's a real strong senseof identification—they are excited, and they buy into it,and they believe it even more. So, somehow, the truth,they have experienced it, they have seen it again and thenthey have the power—the client—to tell their other peopleabout it, and validate it. (Malcolm, vice president, adver-tising agency)

Here, executive participation in the ethnography facili-tates their buy-in through an affinity with the consumersthey have encountered in the flesh, a process with which weas ethnographers are ourselves familiar. Clients are excitedand become attached to the consumers they have met. Inturn, consumers become important characters in the storiesthat executives share with others to express their under-standing, contributing to the fluid circulation of ethno-graphic stories in the organizations we studied.

Fluid circulation of ethnographic stories. Consistentwith previous literature on organizational stories (Geiger andAntonacopoulou 2009), we find that ethnographic storiesseem to take on a life of their own and add to the polyphonicnarrative flux in firms. Unlike written reports and othervehicles of paradigmatic knowledge transfer, they resonatewith clients, as Pascal explains:

They love the video. I have been told many times that thebest thing that came out of the study was the video. That'ssomething I keep hearing. There is a longer shelf usagealso. It makes them laugh, it makes them cry, it makes themgo "wow." Not the written report. Because [with video]they can see their clients, they see their consumers and theway their consumers talk to them, specifically in a goodedit and if you've captured it well, it's super powerful.(Pascal, videographer, ethnographic research company,emphasis added)

For Pascal, effectively edited video stories are "the best."They are compelling, have staying power, and induce narra-tive transportation ("it makes them laugh ... cry ... go'wow'") and emotional engagement with otherwise imper-sonal customers.

As evidence of the staying power of ethnographic storieswithin firms, we find that they are valued as effective sociali-zation tools. Thus, video narratives are transformative.

If you bring somebody new into the team, if they have thetime and inclination, they can watch the [ethnographic]tapes. If they have the time to do that, they're almostimmediately acclimated to the team or at least the con-sumer insight part of the team. (Janet, senior researchmanager. Upstate Care)

Another emergent finding from our research is thatdeveloping narrative personas to create a common glossaryor shorthand that executives can use to think about con-sumers is a pervasive aspect of ethnographic storytelling. Apersona is a character, a stand-in for some segment of thefirm's customer base, a composite drawn from research andcrafted to create what ethnographers hope is a holistic andempathetic portrait. Stemming from user research and prod-uct design (Pruitt and Adlin 2006), the use of personas hasbecome widespread in ethnographic approaches to marketsegmentation. Unlike the segmentation maps produced

from large databases and embedded in universalizingclaims, this ethnographic approach to segmentation recog-nizes that consumers may adopt multiple personas depend-ing on their corporate exchange partner or the purchase sit-uation in which they find themselves (Flynn et al. 2009).Coby, a user researcher we met at American Bank, sharedwith us the challenges of working in an environment whereconsumers are usually described quantitatively, throughnumbers and transactions. She talked about crafting per-sonas as a way to humanize American Bank and create ashareable world of characters and stories that executivescan draw on in discussions:

I feel like the personas are just kind of a way for us toground everybody in the room so that we're ... looking atand talking about the same person. And they all have ...their own little narrative. So you kind of get to know a littlebit about them and who they are, kind of what their goals[are] and they would be likely or not likely to be inter-ested in. (Coby, senior user researcher, American Bank)

It should be noted that personas have been controversialin corporate ethnographic quarters for reducing the com-plexity of consumers' lives and creating a false sense ofcustomer-centricity (Portigal 2008). Some informantsargued that the reductionism personas represent is at oddswith ethnographic principles privileging thick descriptionand the preservation of complexity. Without delving intothe controversy, our data suggest that personas are popular(see Pruitt and Adlin 2006) and reflect a deep-seated affm-ity for stories and characters to help executives make senseof the world. Like brand mascots or even organizationalleaders (Cunliffe and Coupland 2012), personas becomepart of an organization's folklore.

Our data also suggest tbat personas are not merelysensemaking tools but sensegiving tools enabling action(Press and Amould 2012)—a symbolic device that helpsmarketing strategists connect with their customers moreeffectively.

We use them when we're talking about things. Our busi-ness partners and people outside of the groups know"Philippe" and "Jane" and "Harry" and "Sue."... They'rethe experience anchors. Basically, the designers sit downwith the personas and the lines of business and us. And wekind of walk through what they're thinking about andlook at it from the perspective of the different personas.(Coby, senior user researcher, American Bank)

In talks between the divisions of American Bank, per-sonas such as Philippe and Jane become narrative boundaryobjects, enabling organizational members to develop theirunderstanding the market for financial services. As withpersonas, boundary objects such as reports, frameworks, andconcepts foster coordination even if different organizationalactors disagree, because they can enable local or specificforms of knowledge to be reframed in the context of widerstrategic activity (Bechky 2003). By bridging different cul-tural worlds and epistemic communities, personas and othernarrative elements seem to build the shared understandingto which Gebhardt, Carpenter, and Sherry (2006) refer.

Although they enable communication and action, ethno-graphic stories, like other boundary objects, can also be the


object of debate and contestation as well as fruitful collabo-ration. For example, they apparently serve as ammunitionin power struggles regarding the strategic directions firmsmay take:

In the last four or five years, I've seen a real battlebetween R&D [research and development] and marketing.It's about usage on the one hand and about image andadvertising on the other. It's a bit of a caricature, but theycan't seem to agree on things.... The R&D guys are allengineers and we really amuse them. What we bring backto them is really funny for them. The team is made up oftechnical guys, chemists, biologists, [mechanics]. And wetell them stories about families and refrigerators. That'squite amusing for them. And now they have some kind ofproof. So when marketing tells them, "No, it should belike this," they can say, "Well, hang on, we have thisreport that shows that...." So we have a stake in the inter-nal power relationships of a company. (Pierre, ethnogra-pher, ethnographic research company)

As boundary objects, ethnographic stories operatebetween the world of firms and the world of consumers,helping bridge the distance between these different spheres.At the same time, ethnographic stories may also become thevehicle for debates between different communities of prac-tice within a firm (e.g., the aforementioned argumentsbetween R&D engineers and the marketing department), apoint not emphasized in Gebhardt, Carpenter, and Sherry's(2006) work.

Ethnographic Stories as i\âarket LearningAs generally practiced, commercial ethnographic story-telling operates as a specific form of market learning. It is away of analyzing consumer experience that is distinct fromthe logico-scientific types of investigation conducted infirms, the kind of hypothesis testing that other marketingscholars have documented (Day and Shoemaker 2006) andto which Jerome Bruner refers as paradigmatic knowledge(J. Bruner 1991).

Temporality. Although consumers often relate theirexperience to market researchers in story form (Zaltman2003), the corpus of ethnographic data collected in the fieldis typically unstructured because it is made up of disparatelife stories, circumstances, and contexts. Ethnographersimpose narrative structure on these experiences, such aswhen Adrian reconstructed in video form the deep structureor overarching narrative of a consumption experience. Inthe creation of sequence—that is, in establishing temporalconnections between several events—the ethnographer cre-ates a meaningful structure to help evoke a consumer'sexperience. For example, the ethnographic team workingfor American Bank followed people as they went throughtheir daily tasks, complementing these observations withconsumer diaries to contextualize people's experiences offinancial services in time and space. The overarching themeon which the ethnographic team focused was the ubiquityof mobile phones in people's daily routines, a fmding thatsurprised bank executives at the time of this work, in 2008.Amy elaborates.

Some of the consumers we interviewed, the first thingwhen they wake up is they go through a series of things

on their phone. They check what their calendar looks like,they check to see if they have received any text messages,and they may check their financial statements, to check tosee what their balance is at the start of the day. (Amy, vicepresident of mobile banking, American Bank)

Researchers found that checking bank balances was butone part of a more complex set of activities. In sequencingthese different activities, the ethnographic team was able toconvey how busy people's lives are and how the checkingof bank balances is part of a morning routine of electronicreconnection with the world through the use of their mobilephones. In reconstructing these activities as elements of alarger ritual, ethnographers working on the project wereable to convey a new cultural insight: in this case, a novelway of observing people's relationship with technology,money, and the organization of their everyday life.

Structured around revelatory incidents. Ethnographicstories are often structured around "revelatory incidents," thatis, moments pregnant with significance (Fernandez 1986,p. xi) that provide the dramatic heart of the story. In thefollowing quotation, Paul recounts an ethnographic projectfor an electronics manufacturer, which involved assessingthe role of portable music devices in the everyday lives ofAmerican consumers:

I remember my "aha" moment in this project was, we weresitting at a guy's house and my colleague Dan actuallywas the one running the interview, and he asked [the guy]to recreate for us coming home from school. So he put onhis backpack, he put on his iPod, came outside and hecame walking up the stairs. And before he opened thedoor he took his ear buds out and opened the door. It wasreally one of those classic ethnographic stories. It was oneof those tiny little details. When I asked him about it hestarted talking about being outside and being in his ownspace with his music and coming into his house where hisroommates were and not wanting to be rude. (Paul, inno-vation consultant)

Drawing from this "classic ethnographic story," Paul andhis client analyzed how consumers' transition from onesocial space to another throughout the day engages theirrelationship with the iPod. Thus, another characteristic ofthe market knowledge specific to ethnographic stories is therevelatory incident pregnant with colloquial significance.Ethnographic stories like this are revelatory of consumers'particular social (roommates) and material (iPod, co-housing)lives and the spatial dimension of consumption reflected inbehavioral routines. A similar incident of storytelling one ofthe authors conducted for a major electronic componentsmaker rendered salient the reasons East African informantsconspicuously fondle their preferred Nokia and Samsungcell phones: it has to do with "the [all-important] social net-works in there." In addition, the ethnographic team workingfor British Spirits recounted how ethnographic fieldworkbrought to light an occasion in which a group of target con-sumers used the company's brand mascot as a voodoo doll,thereby revealing their disrespect for the brand. In short,commercial ethnographies can foreground the materialprops—the "substantive staging" of consumer lives(Arnould, Price, and Tiemey 1998)—which are often thebranded products of central concern to strategy.


Granularity. In our interviews with managers andethnographers, many described how ethnography helpedthem unpack and comprehend more abstract forms of mar-ket knowledge. For example, they often talked about thelimitations of segmentation grids in facilitating a deepunderstanding of their consumers:

I think that's really ironic. Because they have them [seg-mentation grids], and they're not helpful [laughter]. Sothen they go to the ethnographer or the anthropologist tosay, "Help me understand these better. Because I can't getmy head around them." (Rhonda, ethnographer, upstateresearch company)

We also have clients who come to us and say, "You know,we just spent millions of dollars on a quantitative globalsegmentation, but we don't understand who these peopleare." (Linda, vice president of research, upstate consultingfirm)

We take all that quantitative data and make it come alive.And then we build really detailed publications that will beused to educate everyone and we'll create booklets orvideos. (Diana, senior manager of user experience, soft-ware company)

Thus, one of the valuable contributions of ethnographicmarket knowledge is that narrative knowledge animatesparadigmatic knowledge. Diana speaks of the vivifyingpotential of ethnographic work; detailed description of con-sumer lives makes data "come alive." Similarly, Linda, indescribing her work for an American mobile phone manu-facturer, talks about how the value of segmentation gridssuffers in the absence of intimate knowledge about con-sumers. Our informants stressed the contrast betweenabstract forms of market knowledge and ethnographic sto-ries in helping them flesh out the multidimensionality ofconsumer lives.

By developing thick descriptions of consumers (Geertz1973), ethnographies also enable firms to fine-tune theirmarketing mix. In the following example, ethnographyhelped in redesigning an iconic sports car in the face ofdeclining sales:

The problem is, we are making these cars with a s—loadof power and they [customers] are not getting it, they arenot getting that the car has more power than in 1963....And then we did some field work, we started taking thatengineering team on rides with consumers and by the timewe started taking them out, we started to have this ideathat what consumers meant by power was very differentfrom what engineers understand.... So they learnt that youhad to be able to see power, you had to be able to hear it,you had to feel it and you had to have a language to talkabout it, right. So they eventually redesigned the car, andadded some of features that make the car look powerful,feel powerful, even though mechanically these do notmake a difference. (Mike, founder, innovation consultingfirm)

This anecdote exemplifies ethnography's capacity to openwindows into the materiality of consumption—the embodied,experiential relationship between customers' lives, cultur-ally particular principles of power, and uses of commercialproducts—insight that led directly to product reformula-

tions aligned with these cultural understandings. Thus, thegranularity of ethnographic stories helps managers betterunderstand and act on consumer experiences.

Emotionality. Finally, our informants describe narrativeknowledge as being more suffused with emotion than otherforms of market knowledge. This was especially evidentamong corporate ethnographers working in health care;detailing patients' interactions with physicians or trackingillness narratives (Wong and King 2008) is something thatother techniques do not sufficiently address. For example,Caroline, an ethnographer we met in Paris, described cap-turing, through observation, the tense moments when doc-tors deliver news about the progress of a disease to apatient:

What struck me was the kind of mismatch, the kind of badexchange, between patients and the doctors. This was fora pulmonary disease and patients panicked very quicklywhen getting the news. You could see that in the way thatthe information was delivered, it provoked anxiety morethan anything else.... For health care, you have to take intoaccount emotions, in the way that the emotions triggeredby pain for example, are going to affect people's lives.(Caroline, ethnographer, market research company)

Ethnography shows that understanding the way emo-tions are triggered, the relationships between emotions andinformation provision, and the varying emotional stances ofservice providers and customers is central in health careservice delivery. For a project commissioned by a pharma-ceutical company to understand people affected with psori-asis, the ethnographer related the anxieties triggered by theirskin condition to issues of social identity and self-worth:

It was a very profound study. I had respondents breakdown and cry and that was, as a researcher, that was very,very difficult because, I wouldn't say I wasn't necessarilyready for it. I knew skin was an important issue, howpeople look, it is one of the basics of self-perceptionright? And self-worth. And my role in that study was notjust to do ethnography ... but to use an anthropologicallens to try and talk about skin symbolism and what thatsays in terms of a person's perceived social worth, per-ceived purity. And what that armed the client with was notso much recommendations about what to do and what notdo. It was more providing them with the portrait of theirconsumer, their potential consumer. So they can speak totheir consumer respectfully in a way that acknowledgesthe severity of their skin condition. This isn't a simpleskin condition issue—this is an identity issue. (Matthew,vice president, market research company)

Ethnographic knowledge is suffused with emotionaltexture, providing executives with newly imagined ways ofbeing in the world, in the way the psoriasis ethnographyalerted the client to the intensity of people's anxieties, even-tually guiding their communication efforts to be sensitive tosuch feelings. Thus, working primarily in a realist mode ofrepresentation (Adler and Adler 2008; Nafus and Anderson2006; Van Maanen 2011), ethnographic stories are uniquelyable to convey to managers the complexity of customers'lives and the stress and challenges they have to face in waysthat are not only actionable but transformative.


Learning Outcomes

Revising market understanding. The following extendedexcerpt shows how ethnography led American Bank torediscover its consumers ("slept with their phone") andreframe how company executives thought about them,eventually leading to a new value proposition for mobilebanking:

When we started working on mobile banking, we reallythought that people would use their mobiles in case ofemergency, for example, to check if there were frauds ontheir account. But the ethnography completely changedthis. It was completely different. We realized that mobilebanking was really much more an on-the-go kind of activ-ity, that people had integrated mobile banking into theirlife. Some of the people we interviewed slept with theirphone. When they wake up they check their texts, maybethey check their bank balance at the start of the day. Inthat way the ethnography was completely foundational, ithelped us completely rethink how we think about our cus-tomers but also our value proposition, the way we designthe user interface and the whole strategy for mobile bank-ing. (Amy, vice president for mobile banking, AmericanBank)

In other words, after assimilating stories of customer cellphone use and recognizing that mobile banking had becomeintegrated into consumers' life worlds, American Bankaimed to reformulate its "whole strategy" for marketingmobile banking.

In the following quotation, the vice president of userresearch at American Bank discusses ethnography's abilityto help her firm question prevalent assumptions about babyboomers, thus driving new ways to rethink and ultimatelyreenvision a previously undifferentiated, taken-for-granteddemographic category:

With the retirement ethnography, the core thing that cameout of it is the necessity to understand these customers at amore granular level. You've seen stories reported in themedia such as "all the baby boomers, they are just not pre-pared for retirement." There is this representation of babyboomers as [a] homogeneous population. And we wantedto develop a better understanding of their diversitybecause there is something more complex here. (Pamela,vice president of user research, American Bank)

Informants talk about ethnography making organizationsmore reflexive, prompting them to question dominantassumptions within the firm about the lives of customers orabout the way they do business. In this way, ethnographycombats organizational inertia. A senior manager at UpstateCare explains.

Because what you are really trying to do with all of this is,you go into a project with assumptions, and for the creativeprocess to occur, you need to see the worid in a differentway. So, all of this is stimulus for the people who aregoing to be doing the creating or the inventing. (Janet,senior research manager. Upstate Care)

She describes a process through which, by challengingassumptions, ethnography opens new possibilities for cre-ativity and innovation. This potential to challenge assump-tions and paradigms has been one of the main reasonsethnographic methods have become popular in innovation

consulting firms such as IDEO (Kelley and Littman 2001),but we show that this contribution to organizational develop-ment is equally at home in banking and consumer productsfirms. Foregrounding catalytic organizational reflexivitydeparts significantly from representations of ethnography asmerely an exploratory technique in market research texts.

Developing and refining marketing strategies. Weencountered a variety of examples illustrating the strategicimpact of ethnographic stories, from prototype design work,to definition of a positioning, to each of the elements of themarketing mix, to the design of global strategy. Table 2 pre-sents summary illustrations of these outcomes, tracing howvarious ethnographic stories have led to new marketingstrategies and to the firm's organizational development.

At American Bank, ethnographic stories helped lay anew strategic foundation for product development and com-munication that favored convenience. When the companystarted designing a mobile interface for people to accesstheir accounts on their phones, the assumption was thatpeople would use it chiefiy in cases of emergency. Ethno-graphic work detailing the intimate, constant interactionsbetween people and their phones eventually led to aredesign of this interface and communication within thefirm that framed mobile banking as an on-the-go, 24-hourexperience. The vividness of mini-stories such as "peoplesleeping with their phones" was central in helping seniormanagers at American Bank develop a new strategy formobile banking.

At Upstate Care, a better understanding of the way fur-niture is used in Russia helped develop a more realisticassessment of that market's potential in the wood polishcategory. In addition, at a multinational firm selling a varietyof alcoholic beverage brands that we call "British Spirits,"ethnography in midsize Australian towns revealed that itsbrand of rum was perceived as an outsider, leading the com-pany to alter its promotional strategy and eventually sponsorlocal rugby league teams to gain greater emotional proxim-ity to customers' everyday lives. Stories about consumerstreating the British Spirits mascot as a profane object oper-ated as revelatory incidents, helping the brand's managersunderstand the deep challenge to brand acceptance. Overall,our research demonstrates the role of ethnographic storiesin helping shape a range of strategic processes.

Developing organizational empathy. Because they areanchored in transformative revelatory incidents, integratedwith consumer narratives, peopled with dramatic personas,and suffused with emotional texture, ethnographic storiescan humanize organizational practice. We refer morespecifically to the way ethnographic stories help organiza-tional members even at the highest levels ("the chairman"in the following excerpt) become attuned to consumervoices, stories, and experiences, as also indicated by refer-ences to managers speaking of "their consumers" in Pas-cal's previous quotation. One innovation consulting firmdiscussed producing a quasi-fictional film for a hospitalnetwork we call "California Hospital." The film dramati-cally documented patients' emergency room experiencesand triggered more empathy with patients' service needs.Adrian expands on the process:


TABLE 2Ethnographic Stories and their Organizationai Outcomes

Sector Plot Narrative Properties Marketing Outcomes Organizational Outcomes

Banking Consumers are sleeping withtheir mobile phones, some-times tucked into their pillows.They begin their day check-ing their work e-mails on theirphone and end their day withtheir phone. [American Bank]

Furniture Russian homes are often one-bedroom flats where woodenfurniture is covered ratherthan exposed. [Upstate Care]

Spirits Rugby league fans in NewSouth Wales use the BritishSpirits brand icon as a kind ofvoodoo doll, a profane objectsymbolizing an outsider.[British Spirits]

Health Patients who are pushedcare around an emergency room

feel anxious and powerless.[California hospital]

Temporal: a detailedaccount of the way peopleuse their phones through-out the day

Granular: a better under-standing of the way furni-ture is used in RussianhomesGranular: a detaileddescription of tribalmemberships and the roleof brands in sustainingtribal identitiesRevelatory incident: rugbyleague fans using BritishSpirits' mascot as avoodoo doll

Emotional: evokes thevarious emotions a personexperiences when admittedto an emergency room

New value propositionfor mobile bankingaround convenience

Revised assessment ofmarket potential

New sponsorship strat-egy focusing on localrugby league teams

New hospital designto provide patientinformation; new protocolfor admission andinformation delivery

Revised marketunderstanding: a newunderstanding of mobilephone usage

Revised understanding ofpeople's relationships towooden furniture in variouscultures

Revised marketunderstanding: a betterunderstanding of the lackof sales uptake in specificAustralian areas where thebrand is perceived as anoutsider

Organizational empathy:understanding thehospital from the patient'sperspective

My colleague went through ... admissions at CaliforniaHospital with a camera. It was about a 45-minute tape andmost of it was ceiling tiles and being taken along in a gur-ney, having things coming into your mouth, hearingvoices, not knowing where you are going. The wholething lasted 45 minutes, but I think at one point theyshowed like a ten-minute section with long parts of it justbeing the ceiling tile. And the chairman of the hospitalnetwork was in the audience and he was like, "Time-out, Ican't hear the voices, I am only looking at the ceiling tile,I think I get your point but I am not sure what this is allabout," and we tried to ... use this as a kind of learningmoment to say that "this is what is happening: a lot ofthings are popped into you, you are left alone, you don'tknow what's happening to you." (Adrian, designer, inno-vation consultancy)

Like classic ethnography, commercial storytelling isespecially helpful in inducing empathy among organizationalstakeholders by portraying lives that are different from theirown. Adrian describes a project for the American mihtary thatwas designed to help plan homes for disabled army veterans:

The project was being delivered in part to governmentarchitects and partners, and ... there was a whole elementof "Can people really understand what this experienceis?" So empathy became ... what we wanted to deliver.(Adrian, designer, innovation consultancy)

Grace at American Bank also talked about empathy as oneof the key outcomes of ethnographic learning:

One of our goals with using ethnography is to create acompetency around empathy, walking in the customer'sshoes. (Grace, vice president of consumer insights,American Bank)

These insights about ethnography facilitating organiza-tional empathy are broadly consistent with previous researchhighhghting the power of narrative transportation, in which alistener understands the experience of a character by knowingand feeling the world in the same way (Escalas 2007; Greenand Brock 2000). Organizational members achieve similarunderstanding by "walking in the customer's shoes."

Our findings also suggest that integrating ethnographicknowledge into the organization is far from a consistentlysmooth operation. The previous example in which an exec-utive reacts dismissively to an ethnographic story ("I amnot sure what this is all about") illustrates the difficultiesethnographers face. Yet this particular story of seeing anemergency room from the perspective of a patient becameorganizational folklore both within the hospital and at theinnovation consulting firm we interviewed. This exampleand others demonstrate the lasting, transformational impactof ethnographic storytelling for organizations, extendingfindings about the effects of narrative persuasion to ethno-graphic research (Appel and Richter 2008).

ImplicationsIn establishing the implications of our research, we stressthat ethnography operates differently from many of theaccounts found in popular market research textbooks.Specifically, ethnographic storytelling is about orderingreality and constructing meaning. We know that stories areeasy to remember (Scholes and Kellogg 2006) and facilitatepersuasion through narrative transportation (Gerrig 1993).Our work demonstrates that ethnographic storytelling is aunique mode of market sensemaking and sensegiving.

Ethnographic Stories for iVIaricet Learning /11

Market Research: Revising CommonAssumptions About Ethnography

Explanatory versus exploratory. Our fmdings are con-sistent with social science research conducted in natural sci-ence laboratories (Latour and Woolgar 1979) illustratingdiscrepancies between official accounts of scientific prac-tice and the actual practices scientists carried out. Ethnogra-phy is not solely an exploratory tool that helps generatehypotheses, which is the way leading marketing researchtextbooks typically describe qualitative data gathering (seeChurchill and Iacobucci 2009, p. 60; Parasuraman, Grewal,and Krishnan 2006, p. 62). In contrast, our analysis high-lights ethnography's explanatory power, underscoring theneed to significantly modify the way ethnographic researchis represented in marketing scholarship.

By establishing connections between the details ofethnographic stories and the sociocultural dynamics thatgenerate them, ethnographers provide clients with newways of explaining consumer actions that complement otherresearch approaches. In the alternation between the surface-level details of ethnographic stories and the larger context,executives can access powerful explanations for consumerbehavior. For example, the story of American Bank con-sumers sleeping with their mobile phones to check theirwork e-mails is connected to blurring boundaries betweenpublic and private life and how "busyness" is redefining theAmerican family (Darrah, Freeman, and English-Lueck2007). For British Spirits, ethnographers emphasized thetribal rituals surrounding the consumption of alcohol andunearthed the role of brands as symbolic resources for sus-taining urban tribes, relating such rituals to the retribaliza-tion of consumer culture (Cova and Cova 2002).

Importantly, we note that many ethnographic projectsare commissioned to make sense of puzzling research data.British Spirits executives, for example, could not under-stand its rum's lack of popularity in parts of Australia wherethey were heavily promoting their star brand. Ethnographicdetails about the symbolic dimension of alcohol brandsdelivered a convincing explanation and helped design anew sponsorship strategy. At its best, our informants believethat ethnography provides holistic, granular, and multi-dimensional knowledge that equips firms with a powerfulset of strategic tools.

Fly on the wall versus redescription. An important cor-rective implication of our work is that ethnographicresearch, when effective, does not represent the world in aclinical, experience-distant fashion that marketers thendeploy strategically. Ethnography is not a "fly on the wall"technique representing a foundational reality (Mariampol-ski 2006, p. 103), though the criteria of "the real" are oftenrhetorically powerful in legitimizing ethnographic results(Nafus and Anderson 2006). First, ethnographers do nottreat their practice as detached observation but as collabora-tive storytelling. They even increasingly treat consumers asco-productive agents by, for example, giving them the toolsto produce video of their consumption experiences(Faulkner and Zafiroglu 2010; Malefyt 2009). Second,rather than trying to reach an objective truth, which is theaim of paradigmatic knowledge, ethnographic stories are

always told from a specific point of view and for a specificaudience. Ethnographic stories are conceived and receivedin the interaction between a client, a research team, and aspecific set of informants, who bring their own particularexpectations and perspectives to framing and telling stories.Third, the usefulness of ethnographic stories does not pro-ceed from isomorphic representation of an objective realitybut rather from the transformative ordering of heterogeneousobservations into a cohesive story to bring to light hiddenpatterns and unexplored meanings in consumer behavior.

Ethnographic Stories and the Development ofMarket Knowledge

Marketing scholars agree that the successful gathering, use,and transformation of knowledge requires intensive knowl-edge sharing and integration between firm members (Day2011; De Luca and Atuahene-Gima 2007). Curiously, story-telling that has figured prominently in recent discussions ofstrategy development and other managerial concerns hasnot figured into the research agendas of those concernedwith questions of market knowledge integration and shar-ing. Researchers have framed stories as a way of communi-cating for greater impact (McKee 2003), and yet our find-ings show that relegating storytelling to a communicationstyle shortchanges its potentially catalytic effects as a modeof reasoning about markets.

Ethnographic storytelling as market sensemaking.Organizational theorists have advanced our understanding ofstorytelling as a specific type of organizational sensemaking(Garud, Dunbar, and Bartel 2011) and of storytelling's roleas a socialization and integration mechanism (Boje 1995). Inmarketing, scholars have hinted at the role consumer storiesplay in driving market understanding and market orientation(Gebhardt, Carpenter, and Sherry 2006), but the processthrough which market stories make and give sense hasremained largely unexplored. For example, although Geb-hardt, Carpenter, and Sherry (2006) stress how consumerstories create shared schémas about the market, they do notexplain why stories rather than other knowledge forms areso useful to managers in developing market understanding.

In contrast, our research demonstrates how ethno-graphic storytelling facilitates market sensemaking. Clientsand ethnographers together reconstruct detailed consumerexperiences and search for particular connections betweenevents (e.g., consumers sleep with their phones, drivearound with their phones, live with their phones) to developa contextually embedded explanation for consumer behav-ior (e.g., phones have become a ubiquitous part of people'slives, an extension of their selves). Such ordering of experi-ences into a causal nexus is a more nuanced method of rea-soning compared with logico-scientific modes of knowing.By placing people's actions in their social and historicalcontexts and reconstructing these actions into crediblechains of events, ethnography powerfully renders consumerbehavior intelligible and highlights points of entry formanagerial action. It gives sense to potential managerialaction (Press and Amould 2011).

These insights indicate that marketers should use ethno-graphic storytelling to navigate increasingly complex mar-


kets. Many of the research approaches marketers currentlyuse clearly have their role in dealing with this complexity.Big data analytics, for example, are essential for sievingthrough massive amounts of data to identify unexpecteddiagnostics, predictors, and covariates of variables of inter-est. Well-tuned surveys maintain their place in assessing theimpact of commercial interventions on consumer behavior.In contrast, ethnography plays an important role in helpingexecutives decipher the contradictions, dilemmas, and mys-teries that underlie abstract models and patterns. Here, it isuseful to invoke the difference between the experience of anew terrain that a person gets by reading a map and byexperiencing the same terrain on the ground. The map, asBourdieu (1977) insightfully notes, is an abstract represen-tation of space that neglects many of the difficulties that thetraveler might face in making a journey. Similarly, the sta-tistical measures that surveys provide or the abstract repre-sentation of groups found in segmentation studies smoothover the complexities and intricacies of human experience.Thus, an awareness of the dilemmas and contradictionslurking in consumers' stories about juggling competingcareer demands with the normative expectations of femalecaregiving through breakfast or dinnertime meal provisionprovides richer material for marketers in brainstormingpotential market solutions (e.g., expanding prepared mealsections in supermarkets, offering home meal preparationservices) than merely identifying a segment of "jugglingmothers" or estimating the size of this segment among vari-ous ethnic groups.

Ethnographic stories and the sharing of market knowl-edge. Our research highlights how ethnography helps con-stitute a vibrant organizational folklore of stories and char-acters. For example, at American Bank, personas such asJane and Philippe have become an integral part of discus-sions about consumer experience. Likewise, stories ofunexpected consumer behavior (e.g., shifts in MP3 playeruse punctuating daily routines, disorientation in the emer-gency room) help guide discussions and reflections on thebest way to serve a market. Our work suggests that ethno-graphic stories seem to circulate more freely than otherforms of more abstract market knowledge, as evidenced byour informants' descriptions of the popularity of ethno-graphic videos in various organizational divisions. Finally,as boundiu'y objects, narratives enable organizational mem-bers from different organizational subcultures to negotiatemarket understanding.

Our research suggests that ethnography can play a keyrole in the construction of an institutional memory of narra-tives about consumers and markets. Prior work has shownthat people can store and recall information more effec-tively when it is in narrative form than in propositionalform (Fiske and Taylor 1991) and that narratives are effec-tive ways to build organizational knowledge (Orr 1996).Our work extends these insights to the world of marketresearch, demonstrating how ethnographic research lever-ages the specific powers of narrative to circulate withinorganizations. From these findings, managers should useethnographic stories proactively as boundary objects to

share different perspectives and develop organizationalknowledge about consumers to make sense of markets.

Ethnography and the disruption of organizational para-digms. Much of the market learning literature has empha-sized the need for organizations to regularly update theways they view and approach markets (Day 2011; Day andShoemaker 2006; Gebhardt, Carpenter, and Sherry 2006).Day and Shoemaker (2006, p. 201) stress the need for "con-structive conflict" to limit "groupthink" (p. 93). Gebhardt,Carpenter, and Sherry (2006) highlight stories' importancein helping organizations update their understanding of themarket and in facilitating market reorientation.

Our work extends prior research by detailing the processthrough which ethnographic stories enable such reorienta-tion. Transformation stems from the empathetic understand-ing ethnography evokes through site visits, the well-toldtale, and the dramatic persona that brings a faceless marketsegment to life or generalizes a common task or life situa-tion. Not only does it complement conventional marketknowledge gathering (Day and Shoemaker 2006) but it alsochanges their sense-making apparatus, decentering the con-ventional understanding, familiarizing the culturally unfa-miliar, and linking customer and client experience.

Managerial RecommendationsFor managers, we provide several guidelines for implicatingethnographic stories in a firm's strategic process. First,managers should appreciate that a narrative mode of know-ing is a powerful way of understanding human experiencethat operates differently from logico-scientific forms ofmarket learning (e.g.. Day and Shoemaker 2006; Glazer1991). Building from our findings, managers should strive tocraft ethnographic stories that re-create the granular, multi-dimensional nature of consumer lives so that organizationalmembers are better able to comprehend the dilemmas andtensions that are inherent to experience and, by extension,people's experience of the market.

Second, managers should use ethnographic storytellingto provoke, inspire, and increase organizational innovation.Building on foundational work by Jerome Bruner (1986)and Green and Brock (2000), we argue that, through narra-tive transportation, ethnographic stories produce researchthat stimulates organizational creativity in part becauseethnographic stories give access to other worlds, facilitatingthe process of transportation and the work of imagination.

Third, managers should use ethnographic stories asboundary objects to guide strategic discussions. Ethno-graphic stories are strategizing tools (Jarzabkowski 2005).By elaborating the temporal, multidimensional aspects ofhuman experience, ethnographic stories can help managersrefine product and service strategies and also gather ideasabout market opportunities in different spheres of cus-tomers' lives.

Finally, because they are well suited to disrupt organiza-tional paradigms, ethnographic stories can help organiza-tions develop new strategic foundations. Schoenberger(1997, p. 152) writes that strategy is "not so much aboutdecisions as about knowledge—what the firm knows....

Ethnographic Stories for Marl(et Learning /13

Strategy is the way firms envision a social order and theirposition in it." This idea of ethnography as a method ofstimulating new strategic foundations resonates with theconceptualization of strategy as a way of arranging theworld. Ethnographic sensemaking challenges prevailingassumptions and stimulates the type of provocation forwhich managers have clamored (Sthanunathan 2011).

Organizations will need to design processes and incen-tives that facilitate narrative methods of learning anddevelop storytelling as a component of the strategicprocess. Previous research has highlighted the prevalenceof storytelling within organizations (Fenton and Langley2011) and the use of stories to develop new strategic plans(Shaw, Brown, and Bromiley 1998). Indeed, storytelling isalready well established as a key managerial skill (McKee2003). Yet we must do more to leverage storytelling that isgrounded in ethnographic market research to inspire, pro-voke, and innovate. For example, innovation consultingfirms such as IDEO already incorporate storytelling into thefirm's architecture itself. IDEO rooms are constructed withwalls of stories from the field, with consumer voicesrecorded on adhesive notes and consumers' pictures pinnedto the boards. Some firms we visited use similar boundary-spanning artifacts to share stories, spark conversations, andreinforce new understanding. We propose that marketersthus reflect on what the storytelling organization shouldlook like, for example, in terms of the information systemsthat could better accommodate the granularity and emo-tional content of ethnographic stories.

Limitations and Further ResearchAlthough there are rewards to be reaped from cultivating thestorytelling capacities of organizations, the social nature offirms means that storytelling is never a value-free, apoliticalphenomenon that will automatically bring enlightenment(Van Maanen 2011). Stories are ways of telling truths, butthey do not constitute "the truth" any more than any otherproduct of market research. A telling example is a story wegathered about a French cosmetics company whose R&Ddepartment used ethnographic stories to advance its depart-mental agenda over other departments. The cultural andfunctional diversity inherent in firms means that there arecompeting stories in play, as at Microsoft, in which differ-ent departments deploy conflicting characterizations of"their customers" (Flynn et al. 2009). Further researchshould address how such internai politics affect the con-struction, interpretation, and circulation of market research,and especially how power dynamics affect the construction

of specific market understandings. Building from existingwork on the relationships between market researchproviders and clients (Grandclement and Gaglio 2011;Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpandé 1992), researchersshould examine the social life of market research as itunfolds within corporations.

In addition, further research should examine the diffi-culties ethnographers face in promoting ethnographic story-telling in corporate contexts. The use of ethnographic sto-ries focusing on a few consumers often conflicts withknowledge regimes that privilege scale and numbers. More-over, deliberately and explicitly positioning ethnographicresearch as a form of storytelling may devalue ethnographyin the eyes of organizational members who ascribe to the"logico-scientific mode of thought" (Bruner 1991, p. 4).Some executives are bound to treat ethnographic stories asquaint anecdotes. Further research should pay close atten-tion to cases of failure and resistance, in which ethnographyconflicts with other ways of understanding consumers, suchas the mind share model. Executives could play an impor-tant role in ensuring the successful implementation ofethnographic projects by acting as organizational champi-ons for ethnographic work within firms or emphasizing theimpact of client participation in data collection. However,these factors should be assessed in more detail.

Further research might also investigate how ethno-graphic storytelling can complement other researchapproaches, such as the "big data" techniques that Day(2011) extols. Various organizations are already engaged indetermining how data sets can inform one another—forexample, by combining the passive data collected onlinewith the contextual understanding of consumers' decisionsand projects that ethnography provides (Cherkasky et al.2010). Maxwell (2013, p. 176) calls the blend of analyticsand ethnography "ethnographic analytics" to highlight thecomplementarity of ethnographic approaches and paradig-matic knowledge. He underscores how the massiveamounts of data that organizations collect and processrequire contextualization and, in turn, how ethnographicresearch can benefit from advances in digital pattern recog-nition to facilitate new ways of sorting and analyzing data.Marketing scholars have never really examined howethnography can complement other research approaches, inpart because ethnography has been ghettoized as an"exploratory" technique rather than another way of under-standing markets. There are opportunities ahead for cross-disciplinary scholarship to investigate how organizationscan combine different modes of knowing to navigate anincreasingly complex marketplace.

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