corporate & business anthropology

Anthropologists find out why we (don’t) buy organic food

Published on May 11, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, corporate & business anthropology, food and drink

(LINKS UPDAtED 4.1.2021) As part of its ongoing market research efforts, a Seattle-based company employs a dozen anthropologists and sociologists. Every one of them has a Ph.D. The researchers are accompanying consumers on their supermarket trips and peeking in their refrigerators and pantries during home visits, we read in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

As usual, anthropologists come up with surprising results to the marketers. Shopping is no economic but also an social activity. The most decisive factor in organic-food buying is not price.

Laurie Demeritt, the company’s president, sums up some results:

“It’s more about which product, what it means to the consumer and the value they attach. Here’s an example: We will be shopping with a woman and she stops to put organic strawberries in her shopping cart. The strawberries cost $2 more than conventionally grown strawberries. The question is, why?”

The answer in this case was the woman was buying those strawberries for her children, and she had heard and read that strawberries have some of the greatest amounts of pesticide residues. (…) Just a minute later, the same shopper is passing on organic broccoli and putting a conventional bunch in her cart. Why, the researcher queries? The organic broccoli is only 50 cents more per pound. Because the woman said she was only buying the broccoli for her husband and ‘he’s toxic already. She didn’t put the same value on the lack of pesticides.”

Similarly, organic milk has its own buying logic. Demeritt said low-income mothers consistently buy organic milk for their kids even if the price is significantly more, nearing twice as much in some instances.

>> read the whole story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

PS: Nearly at the same time two more articles on corporate anthropology appeared in the news How To Build A Better Product—Study People appeared in PCMag.com. It contains both many well known facts and some newer information, among others about INTELS research on “transnationals”. And in the Toronto Star: Buyer beware: You’re being watched. Anthropologists, sociologists and neurologists are feverishly studying how we shop

Open Access journal “Anthropology of Food”

food and drink – news archive

Ethnography, cross cultural understanding and product design

The emerging field of commercial ethnography

Designing for Couples: Product Anthropology?

(LINKS UPDAtED 4.1.2021) As part of its ongoing market research efforts, a Seattle-based company employs a dozen anthropologists and sociologists. Every one of them has a Ph.D. The researchers are accompanying consumers on their supermarket trips and peeking in their…

Popular IT-anthropologists: Observe families until they go to bed

Published on April 4, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, culture traditions, technology

Intel recently advertised four anthropologist openings and had more than 300 applicants, including top-notch researchers from the best schools according to Union Tribune San Diego. The newspaper portrays several IT-anthropologists, among others Anne Kirah who is heading a team of eight anthropologists at Microsoft:

She focused on immigrants and refugees in her anthropology graduate studies at the University of Oslo, Norway. Today, she takes notes on people’s daily lives, from Japan to France and Australia, in her role as Microsoft’s chief anthropologist. Data from the families she studies led the company to add several features to the Vista operating system, due out next year.

Much of the team’s research is conducted without a link to a specific product:

The anthropologists will typically spend two days with people, or families, who have agreed to let them into their lives. Kirah will knock on the subject’s door at the hour when they wake up and stay with them until they go to bed.

For anthropologists who wonder if they need to be a computer geek in order to work as an IT-anthropologists: When Anne Kirah was ansked if she was interested to work for Microsoft she “thought Microsoft made chips, and I didn’t really know what a chip was.”

INTEL-anthropologist Genevieve Bell compares academic and business life:

One of the biggest differences between her Intel research and university studies is that she doesn’t have to spend a lot of time writing grant proposals, she said. And instead of teaching in a Stanford classroom, she’s introducing social science to engineers in meeting rooms, she said. “I’m doing vibrant, rich, rewarding work that’s intellectually exciting,” Bell said. “I’m giving a voice to people who otherwise wouldn’t be in the conversation.”

Also a former suicide-prevention counselor (Kelly Chessen) were engaged by a computer company – that actually specializes in data-recovery:

While the counseling of computer-crash victims might sound humorous, a hard-drive meltdown can create despair on the same level as the suicide hotline, Chessen said. She has taken calls from people who have just been fired over lost data or who are facing the loss of years of work or the demise of an entire small business.

“We’ve had people talk about taking their lives if their data can’t be restored,” Chessen said. “A lot of my job is really just listening to people, even when they’re angry and yelling. I help give them hope.”

>> read the whole story in the Union Tribune

>> Microsoft and the Australian tribe – Interview with Anne Kirah (ABC Radio Australia)

(all links updated 3.1.17)

INTEL and Microsoft conference “a coming-out party” for ethnography

INTEL-ethnographers challenge our assumptions of the digital divide

Office Culture – good overview about corporate anthropology in FinancialTimes

Two more Anthro-blogs and an anthropological consultancy

Published on March 22, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, websites

My so-called anthropology newspaper is getting more and more crowded. The most recent addition is Cultural commentary”, a blog by anthropologist Marcel J. Harmon. He is partner and founding member of the consultancy Human Inquiry, that “applies anthropological/ethnographic methods within an evolutionary framework” to among others “improve human applications of technology, increase profits, and maximize productivity by analyzing how people use technology – from laptop computers to architectural spaces – thus enhancing the enjoyment, comfort, efficiency, satisfaction, and safety of both customers and employees”.

Also added: The life of PhD with the subtitle “Writing a PhD can be fun, but it can also be torture. This is my space for coming to terms with writing my thesis”. Many thoughts about the writing and working process!

>> anthropology newspaper

>> anthropology newsticker

My so-called anthropology newspaper is getting more and more crowded. The most recent addition is Cultural commentary", a blog by anthropologist Marcel J. Harmon. He is partner and founding member of the consultancy Human Inquiry, that "applies anthropological/ethnographic methods within…

INTEL is hiring more than 100 anthropologists

Published on February 23, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, technology

LINKS UPDATED 19.4.2022

(via Gumsagumlao and anthropology.net ) It has become so commonplace to read about INTEL using anthropologists, that I’ve overlooked this news: INTEL in the process of hiring more than 100 anthropologists and other social scientists to work side by side with its engineers according to Technology Review.

The reason is simple: Anthropological research pays off – although Pat Gelsinger, a senior vice president at Intel, was sceptical in the beginning: “It’s much harder to justify and measure the qualitative research.”

Anthropologists had useful insights into a variety of emerging markets:

Intel viewed China and India as countries where people were simply too poor to buy its products — until anthropologists showed them that extended families in Asia will invest in a PC if it’s viewed as helping their children to succeed.

Intel has already released several products shaped by anthropological research:

In February 2005, it worked with a Chinese PC maker to release the China Home-Learning PC; and in October 2005 it launched the iCafe initiative in China, which involves a platform for improving how Internet café owners deploy and manage their technology. Intel has also repeatedly demonstrated early production versions of a Community PC, which is aimed at markets where infrastructure is not as well developed as in the West.

(…)

The rise of the anthropologists may come just in time for Intel. Its traditional Western markets are largely saturated, while many parts of the developing world use cell phones for e-mail and other forms of communication. And Intel’s efforts to gain share in the cell-phone market have not been strong. Thus, developing new approaches to potentially huge markets like India and China may help Intel grow faster in the future.

>> read the whole story at Technology Review

INTEL-ethnographers challenge our assumptions of the digital divide

Anthropologist helps Intel see the world through customers’ eyes

INTEL and Microsoft conference “a coming-out party” for ethnography

When cultures shape technology – Interview with INTEL-anthropologist Genevieve Bell

Research at INTEL

LINKS UPDATED 19.4.2022

(via Gumsagumlao and anthropology.net ) It has become so commonplace to read about INTEL using anthropologists, that I've overlooked this news: INTEL in the process of hiring more than 100 anthropologists and other social scientists to work…

“The White House should hire an anthropologist”

Published on February 7, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, ethics, politics

Anthropologist Fazia Rizvi points to an article by Maureen Dowd where she argues that the White House should hire an anthropologist:

Corporations have begun hiring anthropologists to help them improve product designs and interpret markets. And clearly, the Bush foreign policy team doesn’t understand any of the markets where it is barging around ineptly trying to sell America and democracy.

(…)

It’s stunning that nearly four decades after Vietnam, our government could be even more culturally illiterate and pigheaded. The Bushies are more obsessed with snooping on Americans than fathoming how other cultures think and react.

One smart anthropologist reinforcing the idea that “mirroring” – assuming other cultures think like us – doesn’t work would be a lot more helpful than all of the discredited intelligence agencies that are costing $30 billion a year to miss everything from the breakup of the Soviet Union to 9/11 to no WMD to Osama’s hiding place to the Hamas victory.

>> read the whole story in the SGVTribune

Anthropologist Fazia Rizvi points to an article by Maureen Dowd where she argues that the White House should hire an anthropologist:

Corporations have begun hiring anthropologists to help them improve product designs and interpret markets. And clearly, the Bush foreign…