It provides an intimate close-up of the way consumers use and think about products in real life. Consumers are observed and interviewed using products and services in their everyday environments in their bathrooms, kitchens and bedrooms, in their cars, at work, at school, on the playing field, in restaurants, and in stores while they shop. Wherever, whenever, and however they normally relate to the product or service being studied.
Observational researchers use videotape or still cameras and audio tape to record the interviews.
The discipline includes setting objectives, preparing questions, recruitment, analyzing the interviews and organizing the findings issues too detailed to cover here. Watching and interviewing consumers as they use products and services in their everyday environments can be productive in a wide variety of circumstances. The problem may be the product, and not the marketing. Use observational research to uncover a possible glitch in the ways consumers purchase, store or use your product. If the problem really is your marketing program, observational research can turn up a potential dissonance between the way a product is positioned and the way it is used in real life.