Open AccessStrangers or Kin? Exploring Marketing's Relationship to Design Ethnography and New Product Development
Author(s) -
WILNER SARAH JS
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
ethnographic praxis in industry conference proceedings
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1559-8918
pISSN - 1559-890X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-8918.2008.tb00113.x
Subject(s) - ethnography , sociology , context (archaeology) , product (mathematics) , marketing , consumption (sociology) , public relations , function (biology) , value (mathematics) , theme (computing) , consumer research , advertising , business , social science , political science , anthropology , paleontology , geometry , mathematics , evolutionary biology , machine learning , computer science , biology , operating system
Marketers represent a particularly significant class of colleagues that corporate ethnographers must engage with, with a central role both in commissioning fieldwork and converting its findings into marketplace offerings. This paper explores the interaction between the two functions, asking, “What is the relationship between marketing and design ethnography and how does each function inform—or inhibit—the other?” A review of the various streams of academic literature related to marketing's role in product development and innovation is presented, with particular emphasis on scholars' growing attention to the cultural context(s) of consumption as well as the use of ethnography in consumer research. Consonant with the 2008 conference theme of (In)Visibility, the paper considers how the divergent perspectives of marketers and corporate ethnographers create mutual tension and can render each discipline “blind” to the value of the other's work.