Ethnographic research takes the concept of culture as the principal analytical tool for classifying and explaining consumer and user dynamics. Culture encompasses the world view and value system that gives meaning to people’s concept of self and their roles in daily life. Culture frames our consciousness, ideals, and aspirations as members of society.

A cultural perspective focuses on the extra-individual. A psychological perspective emphasizes the individual motives, drives, needs, and impulses that shape behaviour in the marketplace. To explain consumer behaviour and choices comprehensively, we should move beyond a psychological framework that assumes individual motivation and make-up are the key to understanding consumption practices to an analysis of the lived context of people and brands/products/services.

The point of ethnographic research is to reveal reality from the consumer's or user's perspective through the process of induction. Induction is a form of reasoning that makes generalizations based on the observation of individual instances. This approach offers a unique opportunity to generate strategic insights. It is achieved through a mix of asking and observing.

Differentiating features of ethnography:

• Reality-based – takes place within the context of consumers’ and users’ lives as they are engaged in product usage, purchase, and other everyday activities and involves a mix of asking people what they do and seeing exactly what happens in reality.
• Use of observation – looking is a central data collection technique in addition to discussion and question-and-answer tactics.
• Improvisational – engagements are less structured and the ethnographer relies on inductive strategies to gain insights versus seeking confirmation of preconceived hypotheses.
• Comprehensive – ethnographers explore an entire product usage, consumption, "itinerary" or purchase cycle or "a day in the life". In this way, they are able to capture details and nuances seemingly unrelated to the specific behaviour of interest that may be overlooked or unanticipated but offer insight.
• Contextual – ethnographers try to account for the entire context and environment associated with product/service usage. The sites where product/ service usage takes place (e.g. home, workplace) are the focus of analysis as well as the consumer.
• Engagement – getting as close to the consumer as possible by spending enough time so rapport is developed and natural behaviour that is not self-conscious reveals itself.
• Spontaneity – being less directive in approach (letting things unfold) permits a more unfiltered view of the consumer.
• Behavioural – ethnography provides behavioural as well as attitudinal data (i.e. ethnographers pay attention to what consumers actually do as opposed to what they say they do or wish they had done). This helps the ethnographer move away from an idealized or socially approved reporting of behaviour.

Sources:
Mariampolski, Hy. Ethnography for Marketers. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2006.
Sunderland, Patricia L., and Rita M. Denny. Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press Inc., 2007.
Desjeux Dominique, La consommation, PUF, 2006