Are you thinking of consuming as purely buying? Would be interesting to see how people see and do 'consumption' in order to push your research.

I had some experience with users ethnography, with studies commissioned by public bodies directed towards individual users and organizations. But my bibliography is unfortunately en Italian language.

Ethnography in marketing research is essentially "consumer ethnography". I have some little experience in netnography (ethnography in online contexts/communities). As a starting point, I strongly suggest the book of Robert Kozinets, Netnography

Doing Ethnographic Research Online, that represents a clear step-by-step guidance to illustrate the method. Kozinets is the originator of netnography and has years of experience of academic research in this field.

Alan, I am thinking of consumers using a very broad definition. I know it sounds very superficial but I am thinking of consumers of products but also of students and patients as consumers of educational and health services, drivers as consumers of city infrastructure.

Thank you for letting me know Fabio. Do you know of any major works that you cite that I can translate? Are all of your sources Italian?

Agostino, Thanks for you posting. I agree with you that Kozinets is the big name in Netnography and that his book is seminal. Have you undertaken any netnographies yourself? What is your research upon?

Agostino, also, when you say consumer ethnography is ethnography used with consumers are you talking exclusively about longer-term participant observation or are you including other qualitative research approaches?

Consumer Ethnography has been around since the 1990s and parallels the research at the time on studies of consumerism, consumption and commoditfication and the rise of cultural studies. It seems this 'trend' in social research and theory is over. And despite the critiques of focus groups and other methods used in market research, consumer ethnography as an alternative never really took off in the private sector, despite, I believe, being more methodologically sound.

Daniel Miller, an anthropologist who did a lot of work on consumption, has quite a few books dealing with consumer ethnography. One reference that may be of interest is A Theory of Shopping.

Thank you both

There seem to be a large number of companies that provide consumer ethnographic research. I do not know to what extent the services these organizations offer can be thought of as true ethnography or qualitative consumer research. Whatever the service, these practitioners seem to have increased whilst at the same time academic consumer ethnography, at least in terms of publications, seems to have declined. Does anyone have any thoughts about this?

You are right, there seems to be a double movement here. Companies providing ethnographic research have increased because a) the market is always looking for new ways to increase profit, and b) there are too many people graduating with PhDs in anthropology and not enough tenure track positions. Those with tenure, like consumerism itself, follow trends, fads and fashion. Both my previous areas of study, complexity theory and consumerism, were bright candles that burned too quickly. In a way, your question has highlighted what might be called 'the current crisis in higher education.'

I agree with you Guy about the crisis in higher education. I also agree that it is a current crisis but I wonder if this has not been a perennial feature of higher ed?

Perhaps, but I believe it has been accelerated as with most things in culture... and in North American culture particularly there is little regard for anything except for the present.

Paul, sorry for not replying earlier (I disabled RG notifications). I also see few studies adopting netnography combined with other methods,both qualitative (hermeneutic, in-depht interviews) and quantitative (e.g. social network analysis). And I agree that consumer netnography is essentially medium or long-term observation but it is not limited strictu sensu to "participant observation". As for companies providing ethnographic research, I feel that most of them are using a "trendy label" but they are not doing effectively ethnographic research.

A beautiful blog post by Jennifer Anayo over at CultureMatters looks at plastic and consumption:

http://culturematters.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/plastic-matters-in-sydney/