Correspondence: Donna Kelly, GfK V2, 587 Skippack Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422, USA. Tel: +1 215 283 3200; Fax: +1 215 283 3201; e-mail: dkelly@gfkv2.com

¹is Executive Vice President at GfK V2. She has extensive experience in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies with specific areas of expertise including theory and research in attitude formation and persuasion; theories of personality; jury/argumentation research; research design; and construction of explanatory models based on quantitative survey data. She has clients from among the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and has worked on both US and global product strategies.

²is a consultant at GfK V2, one of the world's foremost healthcare marketing research agencies. He has more than ten years of qualitative and quantitative research experience, including interviews, ethnography, survey design and analysis. Prior to joining GfK V2, Dr Gibbons taught for more than six years at the university level. He has engaged in a broad range of social psychological and sociological research, and has presented and published internationally.

Received 17 July 2008; Revised 17 July 2008; Published online 29 August 2008.

Abstract

Ethnography, as an observational methodology, provides specific benefits in research on medical topics that other qualitative approaches cannot. Medicine is practiced in a broader context and involves multiple players, a fact that cannot be fully captured by surveys and studio or telephone interviews. In the pharmaceutical realm, ethnography has garnered much press over the last few years. Clients are increasingly interested in ethnography and have commissioned ethnographic research studies because many medical products face tougher competition. Therefore, a more thorough understanding of the customer, versus just product features/benefits, is needed, and a review of ethnography is thus timely. Ethnography has particular strengths and weaknesses, and a review of our own ethnographic work suggests several key areas where it excels for us. This paper will outline the history and theoretical underpinnings of ethnography, before discussing how it is useful in medical and medical-related consumer marketing. The authors will follow this discussion with specific examples of how ethnography allows us to better serve our clients in the pharmaceutical marketing industry.