English Ethnography

Introduction

The following work took place in the Puntarenas province, specifically in canton No. 2: Esparza, which has a size of: 216.80 km2 with approximately 25 000 habitants; it was founded: 1851.

A study had to take place, so that we could be able to know the behavior of the population that goes to a specific place during a specific amount of time.
To do this, we had to visit aspecific supermarket, which helped us define the behavior of the population that shops in that place.

To make this ethnographic study, the behavior of a determined group of people needed to be watched carefully, that is why the study was made during the hours which were comfortable to the investigating group.

Justification

Because of the available Schedule and the need to study the issue, itwas necessary to limit the observation time so there would not be any extra information that could be irrelevant to the work. That is why we chose the hours between 6 and 9 PM, of the days Monday to Friday.

We chose the people that carried a shopping basket or a trolley, so we could manage a representative sample of the study group, that is because 80% of costumers used that way of carryingtheir goods, also that the people that use the shopping cart took between an hour and a half and two hours, this was not practicable for the team.







• Who do you go to the supermarket with?

During our study we could observe, most part of the people that goes to the supermarket, do this by themselves, it is also frequent to observe an important number of people that goes withtheir family, very similar to the amount of couples and in a small quantity small groups of people, we can see this in the next graphic.

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When a single person goes to the supermarket he/she usually buys a small amount of products, when a mother carrying a child goes in, she usually picks the cashier with the express lane (10 articles or less).

Another important aspect is when acouple walks in, most of the time they visit the meat, grains and beverages areas.

Groups of young friends walk in together, generally to shop for a reunion or a small party due to the items they buy (chips, sodas)


• Clothes that you wear when you go to the supermarket.

Many of the people that go to the supermarket, goes with their work attire, this shows that they go shopping aftertheir work hours.
There are also those that go with comfortable clothes, snickers, flip flops, shorts, t-shirts.
Costumers also go after gym or after another physical activity.

We monitored and turn into graphics the amount of people and the attire used during a specific amount of time.
The results are presented in the next graphic:

[pic]

Most of the costumers that visit the supermarketthat visit the supermarket during these hours use casual clothing, exactly a 76% of the studied population, next, 12% of people use formal clothes, 9% work clothes and a 3% using sportswear.




• Aisles and the amount people

During the research process we could note how the corridors 3, 5 and also the meat area were the most conglomerated, in contrast with the corridors 7, 8, and 12,where the amount was lesser.
This may be showed in next graphic:

[pic]

Other important facts are:
- The aisles 1 and 2 are repeatedly crossed by the same users.
- The aisle 12 is the least popular, it contains pet products
- The meat area and the basic market basket are the most visited.
- The fruits and vegetables area, in spite of not being so visited, the client takesmore time buying there, this because of the selection that can be done with the product.
- Also is important to say that the meat staff brings an immediately service, trying to get the client satisfaction.


Behavioral General Aspects

• We tested out that there is not a dominant age in the specific population that goes to the supermarket.
• The shopping basket predominates...