Ethnography: Your Guide to Doing it Right

Introduction

Over the past decade, ethnography has been embraced by the business community. But the term "ethnography" has been used fairly loosely and expectations about the work and final outcomes vary as much as the people calling themselves ethnographers. Many researchers who feel at ease interviewing people in a "natural" setting claim to be doing ethnography but this is often not the case. Trained ethnographers do more than talk with people--they rely on a set of analytical tools that take experience and specialized training. Before deciding to use an ethnographic approach to answer your research question, it is imperative to know what to expect from a provider.

Maximize Product Profitability as the Market Matures

An important role for the product manager (or for the product marketing manager, if that function is separate) is to obtain the maximum profit from a product during its lifecycle. There are many standard practices in maintaining a product when it is in the market: pricing adjustments, advertising and promotion, increasing penetration within the existing customer base, finding new customer segments, etc.A common practice is to release a follow-on product, often a feature enhanced/cost reduced "mid-life kicker" to keep the product competitive in the marketplace. These are all good and often necessary activities, but a commonly underexploited opportunity is to enhance the product by bundling complementary products and services in order to create and enhance the complete solution for the customer, not just the product itself.