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Mobile Ethnography is a method in marketing research that allows mobile researchers to have and gain access to respondents in real-time. Traditionally, the methods of marketing research involve interactions with respondents in person and most of the time it would seem too tasking, very time consuming and more often than not, seem less effective than when one utilizes mobile ethnography. Mobile ethnography opens the doors of the current technology of smart phones and ordinary mobile phones to marketing research. How does mobile ethnography help in marketing research? To simply put it, for those who do have smart phones, all they need to do basically, is download the application of the research company onto their phones and from there they can upload images, videos, voice recordings necessary for the research of their responses to tasks onto the site without disrupting the flow of the respondent’s regular daily routines. Lets say for instance if someone who has recently purchased a new product, such as an appliance or an electronic gadget, may be tasked to see how it performs in the actual home or office environment by sending a series of images or videos of the given challenges, flaws, the good and the bad sides of the product they have chosen to review. Tasks may also be a bit more extensive and more accurate in a way through the use of smartphones that can enable a video recording and allow respondents to take a video of the entire task that they were asked to accomplish. It is useful and convenient for both the researcher and the participant to communicate seamlessly through this method, allowing for a more open and in-depth detail of the event as compared having them undergo an extensive time consuming interview. However, for those without a smartphone, there are IVR(integrated Voice recording) services that are made available to the respondents, which can record their experiences by following simple instructions that walk them through the buttons guiding them to the entire process of the recording and has proven that it many cases can be almost as effective as the video recordings. Furthermore, in remote areas such as suburbs well outside the metro and can be found to be without internet connection, there are still many ways in which these people can be reached because of the reach of mobile phones and cellular accessibility making those that couldn’t be reached through conventional methodologies now accessible. It also enables the researcher to recruit as many respondents as needed for specific studies. AUTHOR INFORMATION Ron Jacobsen writes about how mobile ethnography and how it is a valuable methodology in marketing research. Civicom is a global leader in supporting the marketing research industry in implementing in-depth interviews, online focus groups, and mobile research studies.
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Mobile Ethnography, Mobile Research, Marketing Research,
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