Ethnographic Research: proposed question

As part of the course activities, the proposed question is:
Give 2 examples of how ethnographic research can be used for international business.

1. An ethnographic research can be very useful to understand how a specific culture could react to a difficult situation such as an economic crisis. This study could help the researcher to forecast cultural and consumer attitudes and behaviors. The Context Based Research Group developed an ethnographic research that focused on how the American culture had to adapt itself to the new circumstances that the crisis led.
Some of the findings were: a considerable number of the participants of this research believe “the recession has had a positive impact on their lives”. This study allows realizing that “the American society and culture are moving into an era where the consumers truly measure the quality of their lives in social terms rather than economic terms”.
Consumers’ affirmations like the following ones confirm this cultural change:

“I believe the American dream has died. We’ve gone from the being land of opportunity to the opportunity to buy. So I am saying good bye to the Homo Economicus”.
“I took the time to move from a Me to a We way of living, seeing that transacting life is not as valuable as building and growing social relationships”.

2. The Asian American Advertising Federation developed an ethnographic Research focused on the Asian Indians communities in the USA, because nowadays these ethnic groups are becoming increasingly attractive to marketer, due to their rising population and purchasing power.

“According to recent US census figures, Asian Indians are now the second most populous  Asian- American group(next to Chinese), and growing rapidly”.
“Indians are number one among US Asians, and far ahead of the nation overall, on college graduation, professional and managerial employment and annual household income”.

All these reasons encourage the marketing teams of the different companies to know more about their cultures in order to conquer their attention and preferences.

For a better insight of this research check the following video: http://www.3af.org/EthnographicStudy.htm
The information sources are:
1. The Grounding American Dream, a cultural study on the future of consumerism in a changing economy.  Contex Based Research Group. http://www.thegroundedconsumer.com/
2. Marketing Research, Ethnographic Research Study. Asian American Advertising Federation.  http://www.3af.org/marketingresearch.htm