Observational Methods: Part 2
Slide 1
Part two of this lecture focuses primarily on mechanical observation methods and the basic
underlying philosophy behind naturalistic inquiry.
Slide 2
I’ll now talk briefly about four of these types of mechanical observation methods and spend a bit
more time talking about physiological measures.
Traffic counters provide mechanical observation. To optimize the timing of traffic signals in a
community, city planners sometimes place traffic counters at key spots on roads, such as near
busy intersections. When your vehicle runs over the censor strip in the road, it counts you as
one vehicle. By analyzing the pattern or number of cars that pass a point on a road at certain
times of day or per hour, it’s possible to optimize traffic signals in a way that minimizes the time
drivers spend in traffic and reduces gas consumption, air pollution, and other negative
externalities (i.e., the negative side effects). Retailers also can use traffic counters to analyze
the way customers navigate their stores; by identifying crowded versus sparse spaces, retailers
can rearrange merchandise displays to reduce crowding.
Website owners find it useful to monitor visitors to their sites. For them, mechanical observation
may be as simple as counting visitors or as complex as tracking how visitors navigate the site.
There are many ways to track site visitors’ behaviors, especially on commercial sites. One key
issue for virtual store visitors: they select items to buy, put them in a virtual shopping cart, but
never check out. If they don’t check out, then they can’t generate profits for the site owner or
product maker. Owners and designers or virtual stores would gain from learning how visitors
navigate their stores and what store modifications would increase the probability of a sale.
In-store scanners—those devices at checkout counters that scan universal product codes and
now radio frequency tags on products—provide mechanical observations that ease inventory
control and product assortment management.
Rather than rely on slower and less accurate pantry audits or purchase diaries, home-based
scanners can mechanically track customer purchases. Of course, shoppers must scan the items
they’ve purchased once they return home, and often that’s inconvenient. As a result, some
purchases aren’t recorded.
Television networks need to assess the popularity of their programming, especially with key
demographic groups. If nothing else, that information is useful for pricing advertising time
optimally. People meters are one way, for companies like A.C. Nielsen, to monitor peoples’
television viewing behavior. The traditional Nielsen box could monitor the broadcast channel, if
any, playing on the primary television in a household; it couldn’t determine if anyone was
present and watching that channel. People meters record both what’s playing on a television
and who’s watching it. People meters have infrared sensors, so they can detect body heat and
be calibrated to recognize household members. People meters also have input buttons, so
household members can indicate when they’ve entered or exited the room. Thus, people meters
provide a far more accurate assessment, relative to traditional Nielsen boxes, of ad viewers,
because many people actively avoid commercials by other than channel surfing (for example,
by temporarily leaving the room or muting the audio).
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Slide 3
Although subject to well-known biases, asking people to indicate their thoughts about a thing is
one way to learn those thoughts. Another way is to infer those thoughts with physiological
measures. In that vein, I’ll now discuss tracking eye movement, pupil size, and the electrical
conductivity of skin, as well as conducting voice analyses.
Slide 4
Looker, a very ordinary Hollywood released in 1981, featured eye movement technology (along
with Susan Dey, Albert Finney, and James Coburn). In that movie, a marketing research
company studied how people looked at and processed television commercials by tracking
where test subjects looked as the commercial progressed. A good commercial encouraged
viewers to focus on and around the advertised product. In contrast, a bad commercial failed to
focus viewers’ attention on the advertised product; instead, they focused on the background or
the actors. Eye-movement trackers can record the sequence of points a person focuses on as
he or she reads or views an ad. Psychological evidence suggests that the focus of a person’s
gaze is the thing about which he or she is thinking. People cannot control their eye movements;
hence, they move their eyes subconsciously about an ad in an effort to understand it. As a
result, eye-movement data cannot be tainted by social desirability bias or other ego-enhancing
mechanisms.
Slide 5
Pretend you’re a grocer and you’re trying to understand the way your customers use unit pricing
information. You understand, as a grocer, that if people can be encouraged to buy store brands,
then your profit will increase markedly because the relative margins on store brands are much
higher than on national brands. If you can motivate your customers to consider unit prices and
recognize that store brands offer a strong value for the dollar relative to national brands, then
you’ll encourage the purchase of store brands.
A study, conducted by Russo in the late 1970s, suggests how grocers could modify their unit
pricing information to greatly encourage store brand purchases. In a laboratory setting, he set
up two different unit pricing displays. One display mimicked the displays typically seen in
grocery stores: the unit pricing information for each brand and size of a product type (such a
peanut butter) appeared on a shelf tag positioned below a sample container. Hence, the unit
pricing information was spread across multiple shelves, as in grocery stores. He placed a video
camera behind this display. Study participants walked into the room with this display, stood at a
designated point in the room, examined the display, and then chose an item for purchase.
People were given money to purchase items in this experiment. When they made a selection to
buy a 32 oz. jar of Jif, they could keep that jar, so they were making real purchases with the
research money. A video camera positioned behind the shelving could record—through a gap in
the display—the items people were looking at and the sequence in which they are looking at
those items.
Russo discovered that shoppers don’t look across each shelf, examine all options, and then pick
one item for purchase. Such a decision process is too complex and there are simpler ones.
Instead, people normally shop by first looking for their typical brand and the size they usually
purchase. Then they search for an alternative that is comparative to their brand. Rather than
viewing options A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, and then pick option C, they search for their favorite
brand, then compare it to option B, and then decide which one is better. If they prefer their
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favorite brand, then they compare it to option C. In essence, shoppers make a series of paired
comparisons.
Russo’s findings suggest that if you’re a competitor of a leading national brand, then you want
your brand positioned on the shelf as near to the leading brand as possible because that brand
is the one that shoppers are most likely to look at first. To simplify their purchase decision,
shoppers make paired comparisons rather than compare multiple brands simultaneously. As a
result, shoppers don’t use unit pricing information as effectively as they might.
As an alternative way to display unit pricing information, Russo created a list of brands (and
sizes) organized by unit price, with the lowest unit price listed at the top and the highest unit
price listed at the bottom. This list was positioned adjacent to the shelving that contained these
items. People used this list as follows: they searched for their brand and size first—typically a
popular national brand—and once found, assessed its relative position on the list. Then, they
examined the options at the top of the list and realized how much they could save by purchasing
an alternative—typically store—brand.
By displaying unit pricing information in list form rather than under-the-shelf form, Russo could
encourage three times the consumption of the store brand, which would increase grocer’s profit
margin greatly. If stores would change to this form of unit pricing display, then they would earn
far larger profits. Unfortunately, national brand manufacturers recognize that this change would
reduce their sales; as a result, they discourage that way of presenting unit pricing information.
Hence, the reason you don’t see unit pricing lists in supermarkets, despite their increased
efficacy and profit potential, is the politics of keeping national brand manufacturers happy.
Slide 6
In the same way that asking shoppers how they use unit pricing information won’t provide a
researcher with much insight into how they actually use it, pupilometery research is a way to
assess people’s interests in what they are viewing. If you ask someone if an ad is interesting or
if they are enthusiastic about viewing it, they may not be able to respond in a meaningful way. If
you look at a person’s pupils, they will dilate when that person is viewing something that
interests him or her. A pupilometer views and records changes in the diameter of a person’s
pupils, and as a result researchers can determine if what is being viewed is of greater or lesser
interest. This technology can help to assess 30 or 60 second television ads; advertisers can use
it to fine tune their ads by reducing the number of scenes to which viewers don’t respond
enthusiastically and increasing the number of scenes to which they respond enthusiastically.
Slide 7
Galvanic skin response technology works likes a lie detector. It’s the same technology, but the
marketer is uninterested in the truthfulness of respondents’ answers. Rather, skin electrical
conductivity is related to excitement. Someone who is lying is more excited; as a result, their
skin conductivity changes. Similarly, the skin conductivity of people viewing an ad or sales
presentation will change depending on how exciting or unexciting they find it.
Slide 8
Another way to measure consumer’s emotional reactions is through the physiological changes
in their voice. The Israeli’s have developed a voice pitch analyzer that can be used over the
telephone to guess if the person on the other end of the line is lying. Although the Israeli device
is of suspect reliability, changes in the pitch of respondents’ voices can indicate their emotional
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reactions. As people are unable to consciously modify their voice pitch, voice pitch measures
are uninfluenced by ego-enhancing mechanisms like social desirability bias.
Slide 9
Although typically confined to verbal statements, researchers can infer people’s preferences
and attitudes by analyzing the lag in their response times. Researchers assume that people
respond more quickly about something they strongly prefer and less quickly about something
they prefer to avoid.
Slide 10
The next three slides summarize some advantages and disadvantages of observing human
behavior. It’s unnecessary to ask respondents about their behaviors if those behaviors are
observable. Talking to an interviewer and/or considering what they want to communicate
imposes on respondents; obviously, being observed is far less taxing.
Unfortunately, despite researchers’ instructions to the contrary, respondents tend to ‘clean up
their act’, cognitive or otherwise. When asked how they made decisions, respondents don’t
report all the long turns they took or the dead ends they followed; they tend to report only a
clean reconstructed path from problem recognition to problem solution, so they provide no
indication of their true convoluted path. Similarly, if they acted in a way that they believe is
socially questionable, then they typically avoid reporting those behaviors to avoid ‘looking bad’
in another person’s eyes. This self-report bias is due to ego-enhancement needs.
Another advantage of observation: there’s no need to rely on respondents memories, which can
be quite faulty, especially about relatively unimportant long-term behaviors, such as buying
laundry detergent. Respondents may not remember the brand they bought three purchases
ago. Observation means not relying on respondents memories for trivial consumer acts.
Finally, observation allows researchers to track non-verbal behaviors, which may be far more
indicative of people’s true opinions than their verbal statements.
Slide 11
Here are three more advantages of observing people’s behaviors.

In some cases, data may be obtained more quickly. Because it requires their effort,
asking people takes time. Completing a hundred or more personal interviews takes time.
Even collecting a few hundred administered questionnaires may take several days, as
interviewers are imposing on respondents and not everyone will want to participate.
Alternatively, observing people’s behaviors, (which does not require their consent and
could pose ethical issues), may be done relatively quickly. For example, a grocery study,
in which researchers observed shoppers’ choice behaviors in front of the peanut butter
shelves, could be done quickly. Perhaps only a day of videotaping would be sufficient.

In addition to observing people’s behaviors, a researcher also can observe the
environment in which they are behaving, which is impossible with traditional survey
approaches.

Finally, observations can supplement surveys, providing researchers a fuller picture of
what people may think and certainly how they behave.
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Slide 12
As there are benefits of observing people’s behaviors, there are also limitations in what can be
learn by observing those behaviors. Here are six limitations:

Cognitive phenomena aren’t observable. A researcher can ask people what they think
and hope those self reports are reflective, but when a researcher observes people’s
behaviors, inferences about their cognitive processes are more indirect. In essence, the
researcher must guess why people acted in certain ways. As there could be an infinite
number of reasons, interpretation may be a problem.

The scheme for coding behaviors may be faulty. Regardless of their observational skills,
observers can’t record or code all behaviors, so they selectively record or code
behaviors in accord with researchers’ theories. If the theories are incomplete or
erroneous, then the coding scheme will be incomplete or erroneous.

Researchers may be unable to infer what caused the behaviors they observed. To some
extent, observation is more subjective. Not all activity can be recorded. For privacy and
ethical reasons, some behaviors shouldn’t be recorded. Observers can’t record all
activity and some of that activity may inform marketing decisions.

Other than reality television, most people won’t agree to being recorded and observed
for long periods; hence, observation typically is limited to short periods. There should be
no problem recording shoppers in a supermarket—when they approach a certain aisle
and select a certain product—because those observations typically are limited to a
minute or so. As a public arena, there shouldn’t be any privacy issues. Most people
would be reluctant to allow a researcher to follow them around for an entire day.

In observing human behavior, it’s possible that the viewer could be bias. Some
observers may focus more on some behaviors and less on other behaviors.

Observing people’s behaviors is an invasion of their privacy if they’re unaware that
they’re being observed. Researchers must be careful in designing observational studies
to minimize this possibility.
Slide 13
When observations of people’s behaviors are not contrived, naturalistic inquiry is possible. The
goal with such inquiry is to avoid laboratory bias. In a contrived or survey-based study, there will
be research artifacts. People who know they’re being studied will modify their behaviors or
expressed attitudes. Naturalistic inquiry can avoid this problem.
The distinctive characteristics of naturalistic inquiry are as follows:

People’s behaviors are studied in the environment in which the behavior occurs; hence,
they’re studied ‘in situ’. A researcher can observe people’s television viewing behaviors
by bringing them into a laboratory room, asking them to sit in a hard-back chair and view
a 30-minute television program with embedded commercials, and then questioning them
about that program. In such an artificial environment, people may respond atypically.
Alternatively, a researcher can observe those behaviors in people’s living rooms, late at
night, while they munch on a bowl of popcorn. It’s often easier to understand people’s
behaviors in the environment in which those behaviors occur.
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
A fellow human being is the measurement instrument. Mechanical observation isn’t
naturalistic inquiry; it’s humans observing other humans. The human observer tries to be
as un-predisposed as possible when viewing behaviors or inferring reasons for those
behaviors. Observers immerse themselves into the environment as a blank slate, try to
observe others’ behaviors uncritically, and gradually infer the causes of those behaviors.

Most marketing research is conducted on a small but representative sample of people.
Researchers then extrapolate from such samples to the much larger population from
which they were drawn. In essence, most marketing research requires representative
samplings of people or objects. In naturalistic inquiry, sample representativeness is
unimportant; instead, researchers try to understand the range of people’s behaviors and
attitudes. Naturalistic inquiry relies on maximum variation sampling, which can reveal the
broadest range of people’s behaviors. There’s no effort to find representative samples of
people and behaviors.

Naturalistic inquiry requires inductive rather than deductive data analysis. For most
marketing research, researchers first identify a research problem, then they develop a
set of research questions, and then they develop a theory that they test by collecting
data related to that set of questions. Hence, theory drives the analysis and conclusionmaking process. For example, a manager might believe his patrons would be more
amenable to buying higher-priced items if located at the end of an aisle. His theory can
be tested by moving these items to different parts of an aisle and comparing sales at
each location. In contrast, naturalistic inquiry doesn’t start with theory; as a result, this
data-driven rather than theory-driven approach is the reverse of these other approaches.
Because it starts with data rather than theory, it’s inductive rather than deductive.
Researchers examine their data for patterns, and through induction develop a theory
consistent with their data. Ethnography—the study of cultures—is a type of naturalistic
inquiry. In such studies, a researcher visits a culture, becomes part of that culture, and
observes the rituals/behaviors/lives of people in that culture. For example, to understand
the behaviors and interests of people who joined a motorcycle group, a few marketing
scholars conducted an ethnographic study that required them to ride around the U.S.
with such a group during one summer.
Slide 14
This flow diagram discloses what I’ve just discussed. For naturalistic inquiry, researchers start
with a natural setting because mechanical observation is impossible. A human being is the
measurement instrument. Then that human being, based on tacit knowledge about the way
people interact with one another in that environment plus other qualitative research methods,
engages in purposive sampling—in this case, maximum variation sampling—rather than
representative sampling, of people in that natural setting. Such sampling will expose the range,
rather than the central tendencies, of attitudes and behaviors. After extensive observation, the
researcher will induce a theory that explains the underlying process that produced the observed
behaviors. Finally, the researcher writes up his or her theory and interpretations.
Slide 15
Although unrelated to the direct or indirect observation of people and their behaviors, content
analysis is considered an observational method. In content analysis, researchers observe the
contents of things like ads, letters, journal articles, newspaper articles, and television programs.
What they’re examining are the messages themselves; the extent of emphasis or omissions
within messages. The best way for me to explain content analysis is to point you to two
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examples of content-analysis-based ad studies that I conducted. If you’re interested in learning
more about content analysis, I recommend you skim one of these two examples.
Slide 16
In summary, I’ve covered the following issues in this lecture on observational methods and
marketing research. I briefly indicated the many aspects of consumer behaviors that may be
observed and that humans or machines can make those observations. Those observations may
either be known or unknown to study participants, and there are ethical implications about the
latter. Most of what I’ve discussed is observations of people; observations about the objects that
people have handled also may provide valuable information. When machines are used to
observe people, those machines may make physiologically or non-physiologically based
recordings. Finally, the underlying philosophies of naturalistic inquiry and conventional
marketing research differ markedly.
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