Abstract: By exploring the relationship between cultural studies and branding practices this paper seeks to present ethnographic research participation in construction and disclosure of brands. Recent works seem to agree that, in order to successfully develop their own pattern and their own cultural significance, companies must invest in research that seek in culture the answers for their branding tasks and innovation opportunities. This paper is an attempt to examine work undertaken the past years on the relationship between brand building and brand management with the culture research, provide a view of the complexities of the consumption processes and describe how culture influences in consumer behaviour. It presents the currently discussions about tools and methods for conducting the cultural research and, finally, intends to identify how ethnographic research can be inserted in branding processes as a tool to provide the necessary information in order to help building strong brands.

Keywords: Innovation, Branding, Culture, Ethnographic Research

Autors: TARACHUCKY, Laryssa. GOMEZ, Luiz Salomão Ribas.

Publication: 3rd INT. CONF. ON INTEGRATION OF DESIGN, ENGINEERING & MANAGEMENT FOR INNOVATION
A.A. Fernandes, R.M. Natal Jorge, L. Patrício, A. Medeiros (Eds)
Porto, Portugal, 4-6th September 2013

INTRODUCTION

The increasingly intense competition in global market and the constant changes in customers’ demands have forced companies to re-think some of their business processes in order to survive and remain competitive. The brand management is one of the key business processes for any competitive and global company.

Branding is one of the most important aspects of any business, no matter if it is large or small, retail or business-to-business. Authors seem to agree that an effective brand strategy assures a major edge in increasingly competitive markets, by shaping customer’s expectations about the product or service (CHIARAVALLE & SCHENCK, 2007; GOBÉ, 2009; GOBÉ, 2010; HOLT & CAMERON, 2010; MARIAMPOLSKI, 2006; McCRACKEN, 2010). Being aware of issues related to organizational behavior, operations management, human resources, communication, marketing and finances is no longer enough to build and manage a strong brand. Until brands masters culture, culture will keep making the world needlessly mysterious, multiplying the risks.

Understand culture, keep the necessary contact and work with it appropriately is an important piece of connection between a brand and its audience (McCRACKEN, 2010). It is where they discover the advantages, opportunities and innovations. By investing efforts in the cultural mapping, the team can identify the causes of difficulties and the consequences of any action and be more assertive in seeking solutions.

This article deals with the integration of cultural research in branding processes and, therefore, promotes a survey of the current discussions about the tools and methods used to lead the ethnographic research, considering their usefulness in branding practices.

This article covers areas of knowledge related to design, marketing and anthropology, seeking to understand and co-relate their skills with the strategic management of brands, which allows brands to take competitive advantage in the current economy. Specific topics are sought within each area, which will guide the theoretical research, in order to expose how branding practices can take advantage of the culture skills.

The research method used in this study was the literature research, involving references from graphic design, branding, marketing and anthropology. The proposal was to conduct a descriptive and interpretative bibliographic data study in order to analyze the cultural research methods and their implications for brands. Forward, follows the description of the data collected, data interpretation and their analysis when related to brand management.

BRANDS AND CULTURE

Brands, as defined by Jones (2012), are essentially perceptions and emotions. They are the feelings and associations that come from someone’s interaction with a product or a service. As Wheeler (2013) argues, a strong brand stands out in a densely crowded marketplace. “People fall in love with brands, trust them, and believe in their superiority. How a brand is perceived affects its success, regardless of whether it`s a start-up, nonprofit, or a product” (WHEELER, 2013, p. 2).

If a brand is made by perceptions and emotions, than branding can be defined as “the process of building a positive collection of perceptions in the customer`s minds” (CHIARAVALLE & SCHENCK, 2007, p.21).

And why culture matters? Culture is the lens through which consumers see the products. In other words, human individuals live their lives and have specific ideas and behaviors influenced by wider social contexts of shared ideational systems (such as beliefs, attitudes, values, etc.) and preferred behaviors, that help to meet a range of human needs, and that are influenced by significant historical events and processes. Being in touch with the cultural factors that influence customer`s perception is a means of guiding a disciplined process in order to build awareness about a brand and extend customer loyalty successfully.

Noel (2009, p.16), defines culture as “a shared, learned, symbolic system of values, beliefs and attitudes that shapes and influences perception and behavior – an abstract ‘mental blueprint’ or ‘code’.” Culture leads the consumer to a set of expected behavior. People have certain attitudes, and value certain objects because of the unique system of beliefs that define the group to which they belong, influencing their perception and eventually how they process information. With the objective of understanding the influence of culture in consumer behaviour, Schiffman and Kanuk (2009) define culture as the sum total of learned beliefs, values and customs that serve to direct the consumer behaviour of members of a particular society. Solomon (2011) describes culture as the accumulation of meaning, rituals, norms and traditions shared among the members of an organization or society.

The culture effects on consumer behaviour are so strong that the sensitivity to cultural issues can only be achieved by understanding their underlying dimensions through empathy and accurate observation (McCRACKEN, 2009; SOLOMON, 2011). According to McCracken (2011), successful brands have been able to weave their brands into the cultural fiber by adopting their brand strategies in line with ethnographic research findings.

ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

Ethnography is both a methodological approach to and an analytic perspective on social research. It is first and foremost a social practice concerned with the study and representation of culture. It is an interpretive craft, focused on understanding how the culture or subculture can explain behavior patterns (MAANEM, 2011).

The classical ethnographic methods are those which are administered not only to human residential communities and populations, but also applied to other social settings, such as meetings, organizations, institutions, and any other setting in which human interaction happens. In this case, the research can be done by secondary data analysis, fieldwork, observing activities of interest, recording fieldnotes and observations, participating in activities during observations (participant observation), and carrying out various forms of informal and semi‑structured ethnographic interviewing. Deeper explorations can be done by physical mapping of the study setting, conducting household censuses and genealogies, assessing network ties, and using photography and other audio or visual methods.

Initially, ethnographic research was not aimed at commercial or social intervention; it sought only to understand human nature, social affiliation and conduct of daily life. Over time, these techniques have been adapted for corporate use. According to Mariampolski (2006), the extension of the application of the ethnographic research was also possible due to a change in the understanding of what determines the collectivity of the group studied. Initially, this community was associated with family and nationality or ethnicity. Within the popularization of the technique to study fields other than anthropology, the concept of community came to be understood also as social class, sexual orientation, consumption patterns and other features that can be used to describe groups.

The following paragraphs discuss three of the cultural research methods presented in the literature surveyed. The methods studied – fly on the wall, behavioral mapping and virtual ethnography – are derived from ethnography and cover different perspectives of the consumer behavior, from individual studies to group studies.

Fly on the Wall

Fly on the wall is a research methodology based on observing the user in their natural settings without any form of intervention (MARTIN & HANINGTON, 2012). Compared to other observation methods, such as participant observation, Fly on the wall is a different approach, intentionally avoiding direct involvement and therefore minimizing the biases and influences that such involvement brings. Indicated for an earlier phase of the research, this method consists in monitor the user while performing tasks of day-to-day, noting specially the unconscious actions. It is useful to understand how an activity depends on another, how people react to real situations, how they behave within this context and what kind of solutions they create to their needs. It can help to uncover the reality of what people really do – as opposed to what they say they do. Furthermore, it is an inexpensive method that allows to observe and to analyze issues about the usability of a specific artifact or analysis given task.

According to Zeisel (2006), researchers can fall into one of two categories when conducting it: secret outsiders, which are typically viewing out of sight of the view of participants and are ‘observing at a distance’, or recognized outsiders, made known to participants as is their role as an observer, but still making sure the researcher to be natural and unobtrusive in the environment.

Fly on the wall observation is appropriate for building understanding of public spaces and activities or work activities, where observation is likely to have minimal disruptive or influence effects, avoiding that people will alter their behavior and verbal responses when an observer is present. “However, it may also reduce the researcher`s ability to connect empathically with people and probe further into motivations behind participant behaviors” (Martin & Hanington, 2012, p.90).

Behavioral Mapping

Behavioral mapping is an interesting technique to obtain information about environmental perception and understand people`s interactions with a place. It is used to document readily observable characteristics, movements and activities, including approximate ages and genders, whether people are alone or with others, what they are doing, time spent at fixed locations or in transit, and the details of environmental context (MARTIN & HANINGTON, 2012).

As shown in Figure 1, in this method the researcher monitors positioning and movement of people in a room over time, besides writing paths and traffic patterns of the occupants of a space in order to define areas of different spatial behaviors.

Fig. 1: Behavioral mapping of the relationship between food providers and consumers to establish a picture of current grocery store design and shopping patterns. From: Martin & Hanington (2012).

Behavioral maps can be place-centered or person-centered. Place-centered maps refer to how people use a specific space, while person-centered maps are drawn to study people’s tasks, activities, and movement throughout the space. Place-centered maps can be unobtrusive and is good for public spaces. Observers watch the actions in a particular behavior setting and record them on diagrams or plans. People-centered map’s goal is to learn about a group of individuals whose activities are charted throughout the day. It is done on only a few individuals at a time, and can be obtrusive.

Virtual ethnography

Virtual ethnography, or netnography, is a method based on anthropology that aims to build cultural insights based on data gathered through social media. According to Kozinets (2010), netnography considers online interactions as cultural reflexes that provide deeper understanding of humanity, asides than requiring the researcher to investigate the variation of cultural activity that occurs in social spaces online. Similarly to traditional ethnographic methods, virtual etnography is naturalistic, immersive, descriptive, multi-methods, adaptable and focused on context.

The researcher navigates through virtual communities which users attend, observing their dialogues and activities. The research starts with the identification of the virtual communities where target audience can be found and the creation of the researcher’s profile as a member of the community. Then, the researcher starts to use the tools and to participate in activities with the group. These steps provide the necessary information to the analysis of speech registers, perception of behavioral patterns, and to the preparation of the report.

It can be used in situations where resources are scarce and the access to the community being studied is hampered by geographical dispersion or symbolic barriers. The online environment offers to the researcher wide access to relevant, spontaneous and detailed communications from consumer to consumer, and from a context where they naturally occur. However, this kind of research requires the data interpretation to be made with caution. It is important to know that people often take ownership of virtuality to try out different identities. Thus, as Kozinets (2010) recommends, the speeches should not be interpreted as a truthful report of reality, but as a social act aiming purposes.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Culture is a cumulative concept that involves knowledge, beliefs, customs, practices and any other habits acquired by people as members of a society. It operates primarily by setting boundaries for individual behavior, providing, in effect, the framework within which individuals, families and social structures function. As McCracken (2010) says, consumption is a cultural phenomenon. Consumer goods in which the consumer wastes time, attention and money are loaded with cultural significance, and they use this significance on cultural purposes. They use the meaning of consumer goods to express cultural categories and principles, cultivate ideals, create and sustain lifestyles, construct notions of self and create (and survive to) social change. Culture provides an unnoticed knowledge and this invisibly operates to shape people`s understanding of the world. Changes in the cultural directions force transformations in the directions of trade.

Ethnography proves to be very suitable for studies on consumer behavior, providing holistic and detailed explanations focused on the context and assisting in understanding a series of these behaviors that cannot be done in other types of research. However, the use of ethnography in branding practices is still incipient. There is little literature regarding its use in building brand identity. Adjustments in the methodology for application of ethnography in branding are frequent due to a number of factors, including the high cost of its development.

A detailed cultural study can reveal much more about the behaviors, opinions, tastes, impressions and interactions of consumers. It opens a window into the realities of consumer groups, showing how they lead their lives, promoting recognition of the local language, history, participants, practices and rituals, as well as acculturation and education of new members of a culture. More than that, the cultural research promotes the recognition of how consumers congregate, what kind of things they share, and how they communicate. Allows insights about who our customers are and how they are sources of community, who are the most influential voices in these consumer communities, what are the meanings, rituals and traditions of these communities and so on. With analysis and interpretation, the researcher can find a variety of shapes and patterns in relation to how and why they consume, which helps to develop a stronger brand identity and weave the brand essence into the societal fiber.

The insights obtained through the contact with the consumer can be used to inform branding actions from naming to revitalization, including identification of perceptions, brand positioning and brand repositioning, segmentation studies, new product development and innovation, identifying trends, new service models for co-creation of value, use of social media and opportunities for activating marketing campaigns. The learning process provided by these methods, in turn, help branding professionals to make better decisions for brand strategy, creating a unique competitive advantage for the company by focusing on the importance of individual customer experiences and tailor their product accordingly. To maximize the opportunities brands should be sensitive to the cultural subtleties and adopt them accordingly. Cultural differences can be turned from a challenge to an opportunity when brands learn from the best practices and adopt their branding strategies to adequately reflect the consumer preferences.

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