Market Analysis Marketing Methodologies Ethnography: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Market Analysis
Marketing Methodologies
Ethnography: The good, the bad
and the ugly
Received (in revised form): 17th July, 2008

Donna Kelly
is Executive Vice President at GfK V2. She has extensive experience in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies with
specific areas of expertise including theory and research in attitude formation and persuasion; theories of personality; jury/argumentation research; research design; and construction of explanatory models based on quantitative survey data. She has
clients from among the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies and has worked on both US and global product strategies.

Michael Gibbons
is a consultant at GfK V2, one of the world’s foremost healthcare marketing research agencies. He has more than ten years ofqualitative and quantitative research experience, including interviews, ethnography, survey design and analysis. Prior to joining
GfK V2, Dr Gibbons taught for more than six years at the university level. He has engaged in a broad range of social psychological
and sociological research, and has presented and published internationally.

Keywords ethnographic research, ethnography, healthcare marketing,market
research, observational methodology, pharmaceutical marketing, qualitative research
Abstract Ethnography, as an observational methodology, provides specific benefits in
research on medical topics that other qualitative approaches cannot. Medicine is practiced in a
broader context and involves multiple players, a fact that cannot be fully captured by surveys
and studio or telephoneinterviews. In the pharmaceutical realm, ethnography has garnered
much press over the last few years. Clients are increasingly interested in ethnography and
have commissioned ethnographic research studies because many medical products face
tougher competition. Therefore, a more thorough understanding of the customer, versus just
product features/benefits, is needed, and a review of ethnography isthus timely. Ethnography
has particular strengths and weaknesses, and a review of our own ethnographic work suggests
several key areas where it excels for us. This paper will outline the history and theoretical
underpinnings of ethnography, before discussing how it is useful in medical and medical-related
consumer marketing. The authors will follow this discussion with specific examples of howethnography allows us to better serve our clients in the pharmaceutical marketing industry.
Journal of Medical Marketing (2008) 8, 279–285. doi:10.1057/jmm.2008.18;
published online 29 August 2008

INTRODUCTION
Donna Kelly
GfK V2
587 Skippack Pike
Blue Bell
PA 19422
USA
Tel: + 1 215 283 3200
Fax: + 1 215 283 3201
e-mail: dkelly@gfkv2.com

Ethnography is an observational
methodologythat has become more valued
over the past several years. But even as it has
become more widely used, its weaknesses1
have been criticised by observers.

© 2008 Palgrave Macmillan 1745-7904

Vol. 8, 4 279–285

Like other research methods,
ethnography certainly has its place and
can produce extraordinarily rich results. If
employed improperly, this methodology
can, however, befrustrating and expensive:
it can produce plenty of ‘interesting’

Journal of Medical Marketing

www.palgrave-journals.com/jmm

279

Kelly and Gibbons

findings without producing actionable
research results.
This paper will briefly explore the
history and theory of ethnography. It will
then detail our own experience with
ethnography in the pharmaceutical
marketing research industry and ourrecommendations for those research
questions, for which ethnography is an
ideal methodological choice.

BACKGROUND OF
ETHNOGRAPHY
At its core, ethnography is a method for
learning about human cultures that
originated in anthropology. For many
years, it remained almost exclusively the
field methodology of anthropology. By the
mid-20th century, ethnography was picked
up by other...