A Social Anthropologist predicted the World Financial Crisis 2 years ago

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  • Laura Barton
  • The Guardian
  
  
  

FT journalist Gillian Tett. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi

A Social Anthropologist predicted the World Financial Crisis 2 years ago

Through a telescope in the boardroom of the Financial Times you can look out over the City of London; beneath this morning's clear blue sky stand the Natwest Tower, the Thames Exchange building and the Gherkin. Boats scud along the river. A man strolls its banks. I count the cranes on the horizon - said to be an indicator of a city's prosperity - and spot more than 20. Despite the news of global financial meltdown, there is, a pervading sense of business as usual.

This is a strange moment for economic correspondents; in the past weeks they have been thrust from relative obscurity on to front pages and prime-time television. Already the financial crisis has made stars of the BBC's Robert Peston and Newsnight's Paul Mason, but for many the collapse's true luminary is Gillian Tett, assistant editor at the Financial Times, and one of the few people who predicted the current state of economic catastrophe, some two years ago. She sits in the boardroom in a smart boxy jacket, Prada sunglasses pushed back into her hair, making light of the sudden burst of attention. "I think," she laughs briskly, "it's the one moment in history when CDOs and CDSs become sexy!"

Collateralised debt obligation and credit default swaps, Tett's specialist subjects, have long been the dowdy end of finance, so there is a lick of satisfaction to their sudden prominence. "On the one hand, it's gratifying that people realise just how significant all this activity is," she says, "on the other hand it's horrific what happened. I mean we were sitting there a few years ago trying to tell people, 'Listen, if you don't take note of what's going on, the way that finance has changed so fundamentally, there is going to be an accident.'" She says it firmly, the way a teacher might scold you for running in the corridor.

To continue reading visit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/31/creditcrunch-gillian-tett-financial-times/print

Tying Emotional End Benefits to Archetypes

Traditionally, unearthing Emotional End Benefits has been done through benefit chain/laddering exercises.  The unfortunate thing is that these exercises tend to be tedious and,  in the hands of a less than master practitioner can leave us somewhere in the middle of the  ladder or jumping to the ultimate end benefit of “I feel good/better/ecstatic/like myself more/higher self worth”, etc.

The problem with these answers is that they leave us in the dark. We’re doing the exercise to find differentiating emotional  hot buttons that help set the mood and tone of our marketing.  

What can a creative do with emotional end benefits of enhanced self esteem?  They need more specific direction in what the communications needs to look like, feel like, sound like for that category and product and more importantly, that particular brand. Unfinished ladders leave us in the dark, having to project our own beliefs onto the branding and advertising instead of designing for our target markets.

After years of conducting 1000’s of benefit chains, as I mentioned in the previous post, we have constructed a model of Emotional End Benefits.  Some lead to Trial and Some Lead to Repeat.  Ideally we want both. Fortunately, there are features and functions that secure both.

More importantly,  through extensive research, we now know that various Brand Archetypes suggest different and specific Emotional End Benefits.  So you no longer have to go through the long, arduous task of pulling teeth from respondents in IDI’s [taking up long portions of it] to identify meaningful emotional benefits.  We’ve done the work for you.

To tempt you to join our  new  www.IconiCards.com club and learn the specific connections of archetypes to emotional benefits so you can more easily empower your clients to leverage brand archetyping, let me give you a few examples.

• If your brand is a Conqueror, like some aggressive antibiotics, the emotional end benefit is Winning the competition and Triumphing over the deadly bugs.

• That’s in contrast to the Angel image, in the same category of antibiotics, which is all about Gentle, Compassionate, Caregiving.

• Another antibiotic might be the Engineer, which is a targeted product that accomplishes its goal by being the Smartest guy/gal on the block.

Written by: 

Dr. Sharon Livingston, President
The Livingston Group for Marketing, Inc.

www.tlgonline.com

IQ 2.0 Market Research News: From a Global Company to a Research Boutique

A taste of independence for ex-Nestlé researcher 

Former Argentina consumer insights chief Eduardo Sebriano launches sensory-based innovation consulting firm

ARGENTINA-- Nestlé Argentina’s former consumer insights and marketing intelligence manager Eduardo Sebriano has launched sensory-based innovation consulting firm SensPlus. 

Sebriano, an Argentinean chemical researcher with a graduate degree in consumer sciences, joined Nestlé in September 1995 and in January 2001 became consumer intelligence manager. 

At the time of leaving the company he was in charge of consumer-driven research and innovation processes and strategic planning for all brands, including ice cream, coffee and beverages, dairy, culinary and nutrition products.

Verónica Rosales is now responsible for providing relevant consumer knowledge to Nestlé Argentina internal clients, with a new special emphasis on web 2.0 and ‘bottom of the pyramid’ consumer insights – that is, better understanding the buying habits of the poorest sections of society. 

Sebriano, meanwhile, is still helping Nestlé brands as an external provider through his new company.

Discussing the launch of SensPlus, Sebriano said: “I saw interesting opportunities in providing emerging Latin American companies and other global companies strongly interested in this region with world-class sensory-based innovation and consumer insights tools.”

Latin America, he said, is “an excellent market” to test innovations. “It has a very competitive cost structure, growing economies, multicultural societies and talented researchers,” said Sebriano. “Some Latin American countries are used by global companies as their preferred marketplaces labs.”

A website – www.sensplus.com.ar – is under construction.


Author: Pablo Sánchez Kohn

Originally written for: www.research-live.com 

Netnography as a consumer education research tool

Article Abstract:

Netnography as a consumer education research tool

'Netnography' is a research methodology in use since the late 1990s in the fields of consumer behaviour and marketing, but not fully utilized by researchers in the field of consumer education.

This article argues that netnography is a helpful research tool for consumer education researchers who are interested in capturing and critically examining the education and learning occurring in informal sites of consumer education, especially in online communities. This article also presents an example of recent research conducted using netnography to understand how readers of the informal consumer education lifestyle magazine Budget Living created their own interpretations of meaning from the magazine.

Journal:

International Journal of Consumer Studies
Volume 31 Issue 3, Pages 288 - 294
Published Online: 31 Aug 2006
© 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Author:

Jennifer A. Sandlin Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development, College of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

Re-Thinking The Focus Group: Tropicana Design Flops

A while back, I wrote a white paper called "The Collective Is The Focus Group". A version of it was printed in BusinessWeek as well. The general point? Consumers can get feedback to any brand in real time—networks amplify what they have to say and sentiment spreads at light speed. Companies need now have to listen, learn, and adapt at all phases of an initiative.

So today as I'm flipping through the New York Times, I come a across an article describing how a Groundswell began against Tropicana's package re-design. As it turns out, Tropicana consumers not only care about it—their most loyal consumers do.

Continue reading @ David Armado's blog - Logic + Emotion

Social Media - Down to Business

Liz Claman & David Asman from Fox Business News interviewed Mike Howard, COO of Kiwibox.com and Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motor Company about social networking. From advertising to interaction and viral to personal, hear what they say about the social networking space and businesses.

Netnography, virtual ethnography, online ethnography, remote ethnography, digital ethnography?

Originally posted @: http://howyouknowwhatyouknow.blogspot.com/

On a list-server I belong to (anthro-design) I read the following question: Much like word association. . . When you hear the following what are your first thoughts? Netnography, virtual ethnography, online ethnography, remote ethnography, digital ethnography.

I suppose I'm jaded, but mucking about with this exercise gives me gas. We don't need more hyphenated ethnographies. But the idea of doing ethnography in and on and around the Interwebs is interesting. Dr. Wesch's work or Tom Bellanstorff's new book, Coming of Age in Second Life, (SL) come to mind. So I will chill out. For a second.

Jerry Lombardi, an anthropologist who knows what he is about, wrote this in response to the post on the list-serve:

"What a fun idea. Here are mine: Netnography -- meaningless and also terrifically awkward, on a par with "webinar" :-) . We can see how the English language has fallen since someone coined "docudrama" and "Manwich".

Virtual Ethnography -- too slippery because it's impossible to know, without additional specification, what the modifier "virtual" is modifying -- the means, the setting, or the result.

Online Ethnography -- research on activities and interactions that occur exclusively or almost exclusively on computer channels, like Second Life.

Remote Ethnography -- using computer channels as the main or exclusive way to gather data, with the participants in self-documentation mode at least some of the time.

Digital Ethnography -- meaningless, because unlike a phrase such as 'digital photography' it fails to specify what's digital and why the digitality matters.

Then, I added a few to his list. Inter alia, they were:

Dream Ethnography: in which you do your ethnographic work while sleeping.

... and my personal favorite, Ethanography: in which you go to a fieldsite anywhere in the world, find the nearest bar, and order up plenty of the local ethanol product (in Chile, I'd try the Pisco), and spend your field time drinking and eating whatever bar-food is to be had. Then you go home and write up an ethanography.

I'm kidding (sort of). Here's the pont: People who study the web have a RL (real life) or two. They rely on their RL to generate new understandings (and practices) about SL.

Both domains inform one another, since we all have a foot (or toe or arm or body or avatar) in each one. Keeping it real reminds us that you have to buy the flipping computer first: that's what Dragon is doing, in the photo, after he quit the crappy job he had in Shanghai and bought a laptop to help him design his new business, a real one. He never, ever, answers my email. I'll give him a real phone call (on Skype. . . hmmmm).

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See Robert Kozinets' response to this blog entry: The Netnography Debates

Social Network Advertising Problem

uVizz.com -- A simple explanation of the social network advertising problem

Fieldwork 2.0 - Nuevas formas de preguntar al consumidor

Ponencia en el seminario web 2.0 para investigacion de mercados de Aedemo en la que se exponen novedades en la investigacion mediante comunidades online.

Fieldwork 2.0 - Nuevas formas de preguntar al consumidor

View more presentations from Soluciones Netquest. (tags: cualitativa investigacion)

Autor: Raúl Paramo vía blog de NetQuest

Communities changing the face of qualitative research?

“Market research online communities (MROCs) will shock the qualitative market research world. They provide cheaper, faster and newer types of insights that today’s traditional qualitative research modes, such as focus groups, don’t currently provide.”

- Forrester Research Report, 2008

Continue reading @ http://kumeugirl.com/

Future Of Online Research Slide Share

View more presentations from emielvanwegen. (tags: 2.0 web)

FamCam: virtual ethnography for consumer insights generation

FamCam is virtual ethnography for consumer insights generation, leveraging the latest technology to conduct ethnography remotely, without the introduction of the interviewer intervention effect, or consumer performance bias. By placing webcams into the home to yield "Big Brother" style observations, consumers go about their daily lives and rich insights can be drawn about what they do when they forget that the researcher is watching.

The results are real insights derived from observation, which can then be validated using BrainJuicer's proven insight validation tool, or used to brainstorm new product ideas.

How does it work?

We recruit participants from a large scale quant survey whereby clients can choose optimal consumer profiles, and garner quant data on what constitutes 'typical' behaviour (a valuable yardstick by which to assess the ultimate participants).

Webcams are installed in all areas needed (of the home or other locations) to capture relevant behaviour

Respondents are observed remotely over a period, and our trained ethnographers log and edit film to detail the most poignant observations. From the observations, we derive pertinent insights, and where appropriate, suggest and develop new product ideas

Insights can then be validated with the precise target sample using BrainJuicer's Insights Validator

What makes FamCam different?

Alternative methods have three principal weaknesses, to varying degrees: Cost, research effects and lower than optimum fitness for purpose.

Traditional focus groups principally fall down on research effects - exploring claimed behaviour rather than observing what actually happens, which can be very different. Whilst a powerful evaluative tool, the group dynamics can make focus groups a difficult place to formulate or uncover ground-breaking consumer insights

Traditional ethnography falls down in all three areas. Cost frequently prohibits anything but the most 'quick dips' of ethnography (the FamCam standard is a presence in the home for four weeks). The presence of an ethnographer in the home has significant effects on the natural behaviour of the subjects. Finally, the outputs are far less fit for purpose than BrainJuicer's observation clips - ready and primed for internal corporate advocacy.

Virtual ethnography eliminates the effect of the interviewer bias that exists in traditional approaches. Respondents forget the camera is there after just a few weeks, providing the ability for observation of uncensored, unrehearsed and candid behaviour. Furthermore, it focuses on drawing insights from the observations, vital to allowing the work to have direct relevance to corporate goals and priorities

Source: http://www.brainjuicer.com/

El aporte cualitativo de ZMET y Means-end Chains

Escrito por PABLO ESCÁRATE SÁNCHEZ

ZMET

Una de las más innovadoras y exitosas de estas herramientas es la técnica de provocación de metáforas de ZMET, desarrollada a inicios de los 90´s por Gerald Zaltman, académico de Harvard, quien plantea que a través de unas 15 a 20 entrevistas en profundidad basadas en una serie de actividades realizadas con imágenes y fotografías, es posible "sacar a flote" los pensamientos profundos y muchas veces inconscientes respecto a un producto, servicio, marca o tema en particular de un segmento de mercado específico, los cuales son expresados a través de metáforas.

A juicio de su creador, esta técnica permite obtener información no factible de identificar utilizando herramientas más tradicionales (focus-groups, encuestas y análisis estadísticos en general), ya que en las entrevistas ZMET se expresan aspectos no considerados a priori por los investigadores o incluso sentimientos que los propios entrevistados desconocían poseer respecto al tema estudiado. Esta técnica se convirtió en la primera herramienta de su tipo en ser patentada para uso comercial, perteneciendo los derechos a la consultora Olson Zaltman Associates, quienes han realizado cientos de estos estudios en todo el mundo, gozando de gran prestigio con clientes de la talla de Coca Cola y General Motors, entre otros.

Means-end Chains

Casi una década antes de la creación de la metodología ZMET, Jonathan Gutman de la Universidad de New Hampshire, planteó un modelo que si bien no logra un nivel de profundidad como ZMET, constituye un gran avance en la tarea de comprender las motivaciones de la conducta de las personas.

La técnica de Means-end Chains propone una cadena de jerarquía de objetivos del consumidor, vinculando un atributo de un producto con las consecuencias funcionales y psicosociales que son satisfechas, relacionando éstas con el logro de un objetivo vital para cada consumidor; en otras palabras, permite determinar qué medios utilizan los consumidores para alcanzar un fin propuesto, o bien, permite explicar las verdaderas motivaciones del consumo de un producto, servicio o marca determinados.

Pesquisas etnográficas na área de Marketing

Dominique Desjeux, professor de etnografia da Sorbonne, conta como iniciou suas pesquisas etnográficas na área de Marketing.

ETNOticias: Paceth aterriza en Latinoamérica

Ken Erickson, PhD. en Cultural Anthropology y CEO de Paceth, agencia boutique de ethno-research & design con base en Los Angeles (USA) y oficinas en India y China, entra a Latinoamérica. Chile es el primer mercado en el que inicia operaciones, trabajando con clientes del sector retail, productos de valor agregado y de consumer packaged goods.

Ken Erickson, quien además es Profesor Visitante desde hace cuatro años en el Msc. en Comportamiento del Consumidor en la Universidad Adolfo Ibañez y de la U. Missouri-Kansas City International Executive Masters Program, manifiesta que:

"Latinoamérica es un mercado que continúa creciendo pese a la crisis financiera global y los vinculos entre Asia y Latinoamérica requieren de investigación de mercados desde un punto de vista antropológico para promover una comprensión profunda de los aspectos culturales que influyen en la generación de negocios exitosos."

Actualmente están en la búsqueda de un Director Regional para el área Andina-Amazónica, ofreciendo servicios a Colombia, Bolivia y Brasil, mercados donde ya tiene alianzas con investigadores etnográficos senior.

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Si te interesa postular como Regional Manager de Paceth, envía tus datos a iq-2.0@insights-qualitativos.com

Word-Clouds - Insights Qualitativos 2.0 Blog - Keyword Analisys using Wordle

Click the image to enlarge

Using Wordle to create IQ 2.0 Keywords Data Visualization

Robert Kozinets comment about bringing Word Clouds into our qualitative research toolkit:

"Now, word clouds are becoming popular modes of representation, and I can’t see why we wouldn’t start to think about them as content analysis tool to bring into our qualitative research toolkit. They allow and facilitate a certain kind of graphical representation of verbal, qualitative data that make more straightforward particular kinds of comparison (like this one).
So, we could compare interviews with matching culture members.
We could compare different blog pages or newsgroup postings.
We could compare archival data from the same organization over time.
We could compare related articles by scholars with different methodological. approaches or from different paradigms... Or the same scholar over time."

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Take the Wordle survey http://tinyurl.com/c37wak

If you use a screen-capture or other image representation of the Wordle on this page, you must attribute the image to http://www.wordle.net/.

La Netnografía - Un aporte de Osbaldo Washington Turpo

Encontré este post en español sobre la Netnografía revisando los dominios desde los cuales los lectores de este blog llegan aquí. Les dejo la introducción-resumen de lo escrito por Osbaldo Washington Turpo (*) en: http://netnografia.blogspot.com/ (donde podrán continuar leyendo).

"La netnografía se presenta como un nuevo método investigativo para indagar sobre lo que sucede en las comunidades virtuales, mas propiamente de lo que acontece en Internet. El método deviene de la aplicación de la etnografía al estudio del ciberespacio. Su pretensión transita por erigirse como ciencia de lo que ocurre en la red de redes, esta pretensión, reclamada por toda disciplina emergente, aún es difusa; se presenta más como una técnica de investigación de las vivencias en los espacios virtuales.

Sus orígenes se sitúan en los Estados Unidos, su aplicación actual mas evidente es la expresada por el Marketing, en los estudios de mercado. Considerando para ello, unas determinadas fases que reúnen lo artificial, proporcionado por los ordenadores con el trabajo natural, de los seres humanos, a fin de determinar las decisiones mas apropiadas para brindar óptimamente el consumo de un producto o servicio."

(*) Realizando un Doctorado en Procesos de Formación en Espacios Virtuales en la Universidad de Salamanca.

Diseñando Realidades desde la Etnografía

En el momento que los diseñadores entiendan la relación entre lo que se diseña/produce, y la realidad que se obtiene en el momento que el publico comienza a interactuar, utilizar, adaptándoles a las “cosas” un significado propio.

La tarea no comienza y termina en la mesa de dibujo, sino en el momento que entendemos la convivencia y la interacción con el entorno que nos entrega en una manera clara el estudio etnográfico.

En muchas ocasiones, nos limitamos a “vivir” las cosas a través de nuestros ojos, o de nuestros semejantes. Pero siempre existirán formas de uso e interpretación muy diferentes a las que nosotros percibimos.

Cuando en los procesos de diseño le comenzamos a dar importancia al ¿como interpreta el mundo mi cliente? Y nos salimos de lo común para llegar hacia lo mas desconocido; es ahí donde se genera el desafío. Entendiendo que las personas procesan la información y le dan uso a lo que el diseño desarrolla, a través de SU realidad; desde ahí es donde se debe emprender el camino a la innovación.

Los invito a ver este videoetnografía, realizado por Pacific Ethnography… con un hermoso ejemplo de cómo se viven los espacios desde la realidad.

Escrito por: Mónica Bursztyn

Visual Ethnography: Tribute to Peter Menzel's book, Hungry Planet

Tribute to Peter Menzel's book, Hungry Planet

A history of marketing, advertising and brands (a video)

There are lots of people talking about the “power of conversations” (and suchlike) in social media and online communities at the moment. Very few of them are made as eloquently as in this video. We move from limited choice and impactful advertising to a rejection of advertising and then to a powerful final question for their Brand X: “Don’t you have something interesting to say”.

Originally posted @ http://blog.freshnetworks.com/

Simbolismo y consumo: Comprando ideales en las tiendas

Compramos por múltiples razones, una de ellas es para satisfacer el deseo de acercarnos a nuestro “yo ideal”. Por ello, es fundamental que las estrategias de venta de las empresas den respuestas a lo que realmente el cliente quiere y desea.

El tiempo en que comprábamos sólo aquello que necesitábamos para satisfacer nuestras necesidades básicas quedó definitivamente en el olvido. Mayor acceso a los bienes y servicios, en conjunto con mejores condiciones de crédito, han incidido en un alza sostenida en el consumo en la sociedad, sin embargo no son las únicas explicaciones para este fenómeno. En esta clase veremos cómo el desarrollo de disciplinas que estudian el comportamiento de los consumidores y su simbolismo más profundo, tienen mucho que decir al respecto.

En este sentido, es clave que las empresas se desprendan de la clásica visión del consumo que sólo se centra en la funcionalidad de los productos, para poner atención a los símbolos y las significancias de cada acto. El objetivo es acercarse al consumidor y así lograr un vínculo más profundo con él.

Para continuar leyendo, visita en el web de Formulisa el post original.

Do You Know Who You're Talking To?

Imagine someone comes up to you at a cocktail party. And they're wearing a mask—while everyone else isn't. You don't know much about that person because they're not really telling you a great deal about themselves. How much would you tell them about yourself in return? How much would you trust them? How much do you really know about them?

Yet online, we can be anyone we want to be. A fictional character, a caricature or invented identity. We can be anonymous—say whatever we want about virtually anyone. We're empowered to be whoever we want whenever we want to. The digital pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

The question is—(and it's not a question I hear asked often enough), do you really know who you're talking to? On any network—take your pick, what do you really know about them? How big is their digital footprint? Can you Google them easily? Do their lifestreams sync up? Are they really who they say they are? Do you take the same precautions on the Web that you tell your children?

Do you really know who you're talking to?

It's not their responsibility to be transparent—that's the beauty of the Web and part of it's power. Anyone can have a say. It's up to you to do the digging—to know who's on the other end of the screen. Are they the real thing or something else—are they who they say they are? Is it clear that it's a character or person? Where is that line and how much should it blur?

One thing that I've often said about the increasingly social Web, is that not unlike society—it's a representation of humanity at it's best and worst. That's just how it is. It's a full contact sport. And if you are a business, brand or individual who wants to play in this space—don't play the game if you're not willing to take a hit.

That said, as you wade into the waters of conversation. You should really ask yourself this simple question. Do you know who you're talking to?

Originally published by David Armano at: Logic + Emotion

The Collective is the Focus Group

Originally posted at Experience Matters

We've been thinking about the current economic climate and the pressure, not to mention scrutiny digital (if not all) initiatives are currently under. Digital by definition is highly measurable, which can increase the focus of ROI (return on investment) for project before it ever gets off the ground.

The challenge however is that there is so much to learn from initiatives that launch—insights can be applied directly to that project, or indirectly to something else. In addition to launching our own initiatives as organizations, we realize that companies may not see the advantages they can have simply by listening and potentially participating in what we like to think of as "The Collective". Every day, millions of people are talking about what they care about, and your products and services are most likely part of that story.

Download our POV on "The Collective Is The Focus Group" and let us know what you think about what we have to say about tapping the collective for insights. Is this something that can yield a real return? You can also see a version of this article on BusinessWeek.

The Collective Is The Focus Group

The Collective Is The Focus Group

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Business Research Business-Marketing marketing community

Ethnography & Shopper Insights - IBM Research

What consumers think about technology in the store.