Pioneered by
anthropologists, observation is a technique for understanding human behaviours,
perceptions and emotions as they occur. In marketing applications researchers
usually observe consumers during shopping trips or at their homes, with the
intent to understand shopping dynamics, in-home product usage and ethnography.
A step beyond plain observation, ethnography involves participating in people’s lives,
such as by living in their community for a period of time (a week or more).
Observation research is still largely conducted
in-person, though this is both expensive as well as intrusive. While it is
feasible to install and maintain video cameras in-store, securing retailer
cooperation is often a challenge, and privacy laws need to be taken into
consideration. The in-home environment is less complicated, and it is usually
convenient to video record participants as they use products or undertake
tasks of interest to the researcher.
With a view to saving costs, researchers, in future,
will increasingly rely on user-generated media for recording observations. This
is facilitated by the proliferation of mobile recording devices that make it
feasible for participants to produce their own video or audio recording of
activities. Alternatively, participants are asked to maintain online journals or
blogs where they write details about the activities and experiences relevant to
the research. Considering that individual preferences do vary, qual platforms
should support a wide range of media types including text, image, video and
audio content.
A key development that is vastly expanding the scope of observation
based qualitative research is the adoption of biometrics. Devices such as EEG (electroencephalogram)
and GSR (galvanic skin response) are increasingly used by analysts to observe consumers’
physiological characteristics, and techniques like eye tracking and facial coding are used
to observe behavioural characteristics.
These technologies that unobtrusively track consumers’ responses are
providing valuable insights in fields such as advertising, packaging and product development.
They are cover in detail in Chapter Biometrics.
