The Jetsons meet the Flintstones
How cultural anthropology can feed actionable research to help new technology find its way to the
market.
Abstract
Qualitative market research is increasingly challenged in providing valuable advice in launching
new products and services in the hi-tech world. Conventional methodologies are showing some
limitations in understanding and predicting consumer reactions in this particular area.
This paper examines how cultural anthropology can help us as researchers in two main directions.
Firstly, cultural anthropology can strengthen our inquiry methods due to its particular focus on
consumers in their actual everyday contexts.
Secondly, this discipline can provide valuable models to interpret our findings when faced with
products or services (as in the case of technology), that are affecting the way we relate to, and that
even shape, our own culture.
A case study about the launch of the new generation of Whirlpool ovens is examined.
Introduction
This work examines how cultural anthropology can help qualitative researchers and manufacturers
explore consumer reactions to new technology and their experiences with it, and feed the NPD
process.
There are two important premises to be taken into consideration prior to reading this paper.
The first is that this is not a paper written by an anthropologist but by two market researchers with
different backgrounds in the fieldwork, and by one marketing professional working on the client
side. In saying this, we are not trying to safeguard ourselves about the possible lack of academic
style or the potential inaccuracy in treating some anthropological concepts, but rather to affirm our
own perspective in approaching this subject. As research and marketing professionals we have
first asked ourselves how cultural anthropology has been useful to our everyday work of
interviewing, analysing and interpreting consumer patterns for technological products over the last
15 years.
Secondly, the overall aim of this paper is to present a set of considerations and suggestions about
the fundamental approach to the work we do everyday, rather than to propose a particular new
research methodology .
Predicting New Technology
How can we predict successful new technology? How can we provide direction and advice to NPD
to effectively launch new products or services in the Hi-tech world?
These are not easy questions to answer.
We are all used to the fact that technology is changing our world at an ever increasing speed.
However, it is becoming more and more difficult for an industry player to be successful in the
glittering world of Hi-tech.
Some technologies seem to take off quite quickly on the marketplace, but others are experiencing
more problems.
Some technologies can be totally rejected. Let’s take for example the mobile fax technology
launched with gsm. All expert analysts saw this as one of the most important new features of the
gsm platform but the mobile fax never really caught on in the real world.
For other technologies, breaking into the market can be a very long and tortuous route. Still
referring to the gsm example, consider the use of the Internet on the mobile: WAP was initially
perceived as a potential web revolution but hardly anything really happened for a long time. Only
now are consumers starting to use the new internet mobile platform available on modern phones.
This is partly because it’s a better technology than the original WAP technology, and partly
because the context and consumer’s needs have changed meanwhile (e.g. consumers have now
more and different things to do on the web than before).
Context may also determine different ways into the market for different cultures: in the US the
mobile phone has received much less interest than in Europe and other areas of the world until
Blackberry was launched; keitai Internet email prevailed over SMS in Japan due to a number of
contextual reasons.
Technological products are also very often underused: how many features do we never actually
use or are not even aware of in our computer, our mobile phone, our microwave oven or digital
camera? Do we really exploit all the available possibilities of our interactive digital TV platform?
Generally speaking, as consumers we seem to manifest contradictory feelings and behaviour
towards technology. On one hand we feel like the Flintstones, living in the past but constantly
striving towards the future, eagerly looking for a better quality of life and leaping upon every sleek
and shiny innovative gadget proffered up by the “Technological New World” gurus.
On the other hand, we live like the Jetsons, struggling to adapt to a looming future that’s careering
along too fast and tearing us away from our traditional cultures and ingrained habits.
Technology from a researcher’s perspective
Our second question is: how qualitative research can help?
Technology is a challenging subject for researchers as well. Despite the number of groups and indepths that a qualitative researcher may have moderated on subjects such as mobile phones, IT,
imaging, home appliances and many others, despite the days he or she may have spent with
respondents to observe their behaviour in real life, in their home, accompanying their shopping or
their social activity, new technology will still remain a sort of ‘bête noire’ in terms of understanding
consumer patterns and reactions.
This feeling is often caused by a sense of the inadequacy of conventional techniques that the
qualitative researcher uses to collect and analyse information when researching technology.
The main assumption underlying most of the techniques we daily use in our work is that for any
question we may have, the “respondent” will have an answer.
We use direct questions when we hypothesize that the respondent is conscious of his or her
specific actions and willing to say what he or she thinks in a given situation.
We use more sophisticated techniques – e.g. enabling or projective – for situations in which we
consider respondents not to be conscious of their specific actions or unwilling to talk about them.
Notwithstanding the technique we use, we still expect that the consumers, in some manifest or
hidden place of their minds, have the answer to our queries.
Also when we research new products or concepts, we frequently use the term “reaction”. Again, we
assume that we will understand the potential of the new product based on how respondents “react”
to it. As researchers we tend to place more importance on the consumer’s immediate and
spontaneous reaction. The fresher their reaction, the higher credit we give to it.
The underlying precept is that we treat consumers as “given data”, individuals resulting from a
combination of their gender, social identity, personal history, psychology, etc. and that our main
task is to understand how these individuals will immediately react to a stimulus or what they will
think about a particular issue.
New technology is so difficult to research due to the fact that the above assumptions are less valid
in this territory, for the following various reasons.
Firstly, new technologies may change the scenarios consumers are faced with in a very complex
manner, hence it’s difficult for them to “project” their behaviour in a realistic way. Consumers’ gut
feeling may be fine to measure their likelihood to grab a new chocolate bar from a supermarket
shelf but can be really fallacious when it comes to predicting the success of a new feature
incorporated in a mobile phone or a new transportation technology..
Secondly, the relationship between the new products and consumers is not mono-directional.
Consumers are not in this case, “given sets of attitudes” in reaction to an external stimulus.
The new technology will impact on their current behaviour and this behaviour will change as a
consequence of the new scenario and opportunities offered. Their attitudes may also change as a
result of this. In addition, consumers may discover uses and benefits that were not actually
foreseen by the inventors or designers.
On the other hand, if consumers are not “given sets of attitudes”, also technological products are
not “dead objects” but, if anything, “objects in action”. This concept has also been developed
through the actor-network theory by the work of Bruno Latour. The issue therefore is not what
consumers think about a new technology but what consumers will actually do with it in their real
life, or, in a broader sense, it is not only important how the consumer will react to a new product but
how the product and the consumer will interact with each other within a specific context.
Finally, and linked to the point above, the response to a new technology is frequently collective
rather than individual. The success or rejection of a new hi-tech product is more and more
dependent upon how people will use this new object or service to interact with each other, to
express their identity to others; in a word, how this product will “participate” as an actor in a given
culture. In a case study about Sony Walkman, du Gay et al. define this product as a “typical
cultural artefact and medium of modern culture”. du Gay et al. go even further, affirming that “Sony
Walkman in not only part of our culture, it possesses a distinctive ‘culture’ of its own”.
The same might be said - nowadays – for iPod.
To consider how conventional techniques may not be of great help when researching new
technologies, let’s carry out a mental experiment: just imagine being a focus group moderator at
the time gsm was going to be launched in the mobile market, and that you had to test the following
concept with participants:
”The new system XX will allow you to write a text message on your mobile phone and send it to
another mobile phone. Sending a message will be easy: you will have to type the text on the
numeric keyboard of your phone. Each key will correspond to three possible letters. You will have
to press once for the first letter, twice for the second letter and three times for the third letter. To
enter punctuation you will have to open a menu and select the character to insert. The text will be
visible on a 3 X 10 character display. Your message cannot not exceed 160 characters including
spaces. You won’t know whether the addressed person has actually received or read your
message. Just wait and see if they’ll answer!”
Now… I think most experienced moderators could easily predict the “reactions” of the 8 people in
the room without even entering into… “why spend all this time typing something when I can easily
call?”; “I would have expected pictures and multimedia, not text!”; “this is far too complicated to
type”; “With a phone call I reach the person immediately, with this I have to wait and see…”; “an
email is free and I can write as much as I want. With this I have to pay just to send 160
characters?”. Can you imagine a more disastrous group to run?
In reality, the concept above is just the pure translation of what constituted sms text when launched
in the early ’90s; in other words, one of the most incredible and durable successes of a new
technology in the TLC business.
It is beyond the scope of this paper to analyse in depth the reasons for the tremendous success of
sms texting and we refer the reader to the numerous studies written about this subject.
However, further reflection concerning this example can help us to understand the issues involved
in researching this area as illustrated in the following points:
1) SMS texting opened a completely new scenario to mobile users: in this case, anticipating future
behaviour would have been a very challenging task even for the most imaginative respondent.
2) The way consumers used SMS texting was very different from that envisaged by the inventors:
initially it was designed as a secondary feature of gsm technology to provide users with essentially
functional benefits (a plumber receiving text on his mobile from the office with the address of the
next visit; a caller receiving a short notice while engaged in another call, etc.) but users started to
“play” with this new technology and discovered benefits on the way. For instance the suitability of
SMS texting to express intimate thoughts that otherwise were difficult to speak out, or the
confidentiality granted by this form of media to carry out extramarital affairs;
3) the success of SMS texting was a result of a “collective” reaction: the interaction between
people belonging to a group or a community. If its use as relationship media among a group of
friends is part of our everyday life, more striking examples of collective use can also be mentioned.
Consider, for instance to the famous “coup d’text” that happened in January 2001 in the
Philippines, when more than one million Manila residents mobilised and coordinated by waves of
text messages, making the president Joseph Estrada “become the first head of state in history to
lose power to a smart mob”.
So we can now understand why our mental experiment was a failure. How could you figure out
what would have happened to our XX brand new concept just from a couple of hours of focus
group?
Cultural anthropology in researching technology
Our next question is why anthropology? Why can a discipline that was created and developed to
study habits, social rules and beliefs of primitive populations such as Australian Aboriginals or
Native Americans, be of any help in understanding the way into the market for a new mobile
phone, a new computer interface or a new platform concept for the Web 2.0 world?
Why can a discipline that apparently seems to be dedicated to interpreting our past history and our
traditions provide new perspectives in understanding our future?
The answers to these questions in all likelihood lie both in the practise and the theory of
anthropology.
As researchers we have found anthropology to be most valuable in all three main areas of our
work.
Fieldwork
The use of ethnography is now quite widespread in the market research community as a method
to collect information from the consumer’s real life context.
Although this technique requires substantial investment in time and poses many challenges, it
provided a great added value to our work for a very simple reason: “…ethnography carries the
research product closer to the details of everyday life” (Agar).
Ethnography is of particular importance in researching technology because in this area more than
others it is necessary to clearly observe and interpret consumers behaviour and attitudes, in order
to understand the potential impact of a new hi-tech product. How can we expect to predict the
success of a new communication device on the market if we don’t observe how communication is
undertaken by consumers in everyday life? How can we predict the acceptance of a new user
interface for an appliance if we don’t know how consumers interact with the appliance in their real
life?
As pointed out in the previous section, consumers may have not have the answer to our direct
questions but we can envisage their possible behaviour patterns by observing them in their own
context.
However, even though ethnography is a clear example of a technique borrowed from anthropology
and now a familiar word to all market researchers, it’s had only a weak or partial effect on changing
our working paradigms, for these two main reasons:
Firstly, in a practical context, the way ethnography is carried out by market researchers will never
be as it should be due to the huge constraints on fieldwork time. Proper ethnography would require
anthropological training and longer or reiterated time spent in a specific; market research ethnos
are frequently squeezed into a 3 hour visit in the respondent’s home.
Secondly, there are difficulties in fully understanding the different perspective of the ethnographic
work compared to what we have always done.
As market researchers, we tend to think that anthropology = ethnography and we see this as the
technique with which we just “observe” the consumer in an “untouched” environment: the real-life
context. This leads us to think that this technique can only provide some “background” information
but that we still have to apply our traditional techniques if we want the full picture. This may result
in either using ethnography just as a complementary addition to the research design (“oh, by the
way, let’s also do a couple of ethnos to add a bit of real-life-flavour to our final presentation …”) or
to forcing this technique into a more standard direct questioning interview, which is just longer and
conducted in a different place (how many times we have left a respondent’s home with the feeling
we could have asked the same questions in a more comfortable and easy to access central
location?).
There are a few misconceptions about ethnography and anthropology underlying this:
1) ethnography is not just an interviewing technique but a research method and 2) anthropology is
not only ethnography.
One of the main points we want to make in this paper is that the role of anthropology in qualitative
research is not only about adding another interviewing methodology to our basket. Anthropology
can help us in changing the way we do research.
Research method: what can ethnography teach us?
For an experienced researcher, the encounter with ethnography can be a very interesting and
challenging one.
The first challenge is the exposure to the “real context”. Being in a consumer home or
accompanying him/her driving around the city, or being with his/her friends, are totally different
experiences compared to interacting in the “experimental context “of a focus group room with
clients watching from the one-way-mirror. The difference in experience is intellectual but yet
sensorial as all your senses (smell, touch, hearing, sight) are involved in a different way.
The second and even more important challenge is coping with the different roles of the ‘players’.
We are used to defining ourselves as “moderators” or “interviewers” on one hand and the
“respondent” on the other hand. In ethnography roles are usually defined in a different way:
“participant observer” on one hand and “informant” – or more recently “interlocutor” - on the other
hand. The difference is not just about jargon; it really implies a change in the way we act and think
as researchers.
Michael H. Agar describes the ethnographer as a professional stranger: a man or a woman with his
or her own cultural background, who goes to “visit” another culture with the aim to understand how
this culture works.
For Agar, the role of the ethnographer is even affecting the definition of culture. Ethnography is
defined as an encounter between two ‘languacultures’: the one of the ethnographer and the one of
the people being studied. In this sense “culture is a construction, a translation between source and
target… the translation we build is the culture we describe… ”
Agar goes beyond just a description of the researcher’s role, introducing some important concepts
about the way the researcher is approaching and then analysing the information collected through
ethnography.
One of the most important concepts is that of rich points. During his or her experience as
“professional stranger” the researcher will find a number of things that will look and sound perfectly
familiar and understandable because they fit into the overall frame he or she has already outlined
about the way things go, about how the observed people should behave or react to a certain event.
More striking however are the findings that are neither familiar or understandable: “something
happened I didn’t understand”. These situations are called rich points. “When a rich point occurs,
an ethnographer learns that his or her assumptions about how the world works, usually implicit and
out of awareness, are inadequate to understand something that had happened”.
Agar also analyses the way ethnographers use the rich points to modify their knowledge structures
(frames) in an iterative process to finally formulate the emergent understanding of group life under
examination. This learning and theory building process, is defined as abductive, a term introduced
by the American pragmatist and linguist Charles Pierce. “Abduction is about the imaginative
construction of a p that implies an observed q, or, put it in our terms, about the modification or
development of frames that explain rich points”.
Can all this teach us anything as qualitative market researchers you might ask? Our answer is yes,
and this goes beyond ethnography itself, involving the way we use the information we are faced
with throughout our work.
As qualitative researchers we should learn not just to report the obvious but rather to explain the
odd. We should not fall into the trap of assimilating fieldwork findings to our pre-existing framework
but rather build or modify our initial understanding based on what we could not explain, in order to
come to a more powerful and comprehensive understanding. Otherwise, there seems little point in
doing fieldwork!
This process is even more valid when researching technology. Let’s return to the sms texting
example and review the following anecdote from one of the authors of this paper.
When I was researching this topic in the early ’90s, my initial cultural frame in regard to the sms culture
resembled that of many other male adults similar to myself. I thought sms was something for
teenagers, mainly to exchange feelings in a very concise and superficial way. I remember many articles
and media news stories covering the issue of this new sms generation, rejecting deep feelings and
formal language for a “plastic”, cheap, and easy-to-go way of social interaction.
As I was in fieldwork, many of my initial thoughts were actually confirmed but rich points also began to
come out. These rich points were challenging my concept, or my theory, of sms. I remember a 17 year
old girl commenting about a messages she had sent to her boyfriend the day before and explaining how
she would have never been able to say to him verbally what she actually wrote about her love for him.
But what I remember as a most striking rich point for me, was a participant observation with a 20 year
old man who apparently fitted all my stereotypes of the sms heavy user: clearly a show-off type,
spending most of his nights clubbing, driving a very sporty car and engaged in many sexual
relationships. Who else could be the best candidate for me to prove my prejudice about how the sms
culture was working? But when - after half an hour spent in listening about how effective sms’ were to
date girls - I asked him to tell me which of the messages he had in his mobile log was the most
important for him, he did not selected a message from a girl, as I would have expected and he told me
a very interesting story. In his childhood he had grown up with a bosom friend living in the same block.
This friend was deaf-and-dumb since birth. When they were teenagers their lives started to split. My
“informant” started to play soccer, to date girls, to ride a scooter and inevitably the two friends started to
see each other less and less frequently. Sometimes he went to see him in the block nearby but their
friendship was fading away. When sms was invented and both bought a mobile, their relationship
suddenly changed. It began with just some hello messages but then they started to text each other
many times a day; they started to update each other on what was happening in their life and the
feelings they were experiencing. The friend became even a sort of counsellor and consultant for the
informant’s affairs. Sms had definitely put life back into their friendship.
After these and other rich points collected through the research, I had to modify quite substantially my
initial views about the sms use. The new frame had to include concepts like “intimate communication”,
“friendship building”, etc.
The above anecdote not only tells us how important rich points can be in building theory but also
re-iterates one of the peculiar characteristics of new technology: as consumers are not “given sets
of attitudes” and technology is an “object in action”, it’s not really important what consumers think
about a new product or service; what is really important is what they will actually do with it in their
real life. Success will be determined by how consumers interact with the new concept and how
they interact with each other as a consequence of its introduction.
Hypothesis generation: the use of interpretative models
Anthropology is not just about ethnography. The studies of cultures can provide us a conceptual
framework on which to base our assumptions and a wide range of models that can help us in
generating hypotheses to answer the new questions emerging from rich points.
Some examples of concepts that can help in interpreting research on technology is that of adoption
and adaptation.
In cultural anthropology, the term adoption is generally intended to identify different patterns of
kinship and family relations and it pertains to those strategies that allow “continuity” in unilinear
descent. It is therefore a concept that has to do with retention of what is important to the social
group. Extending this concept to other domains, other than kinship, we can say that adoption is the
incorporation of what is new, in order to pursue continuity.
Adoption is a kind of relationship that is called “fictive” because it refers to the social and cultural
need of a human group to incorporate what is “new” or “strange” or “external” into what is old, for
future development.
However, adoption is not the only response to the “new”: a more innovative type of relationship is
adaptation.
This concept is widely described and used in biology and refers to a structure or physiological
process or behaviour that allows an organism to survive and reproduce itself in the wider
environment. In cultural anthropology this concept is used to describe the relationship between
cultures and environment and can also be seen as relating to culture changes. In particular,
phenomena such as acculturation, assimilation and diffusion happen when culture change comes
as a dynamic force from outside.
Both adoption and adaptation are common patterns observed in researching consumer response
to technology and they are frequently present at the same time. When facing a new concept or
product, consumers are frequently struggling between two opposite forces: on one hand they try to
fit the ‘stranger’ into their habits and cultural frame ( continuity); on the other hand they try to
envisage what the ‘newcomer’ can bring and how their lives could be changed by this (
innovation). Aren’t we back to our Jetsons and Flintstones allegory?
The result is frequently not static: innovation will occur in the consumers’ culture but also in the
way the product is used compared to it’s original intended use. Innovation is a process containing
an unexpected instant happening, full of magic and surprise.
A good example to explain this point is represented by the transition from traditional to digital
imaging. When digital photography was introduced, consumers just started with ‘adopting’ this
technology doing the same things they were doing before with traditional cameras: taking pictures
on holidays, children birthdays, weddings, etc.: in other words, taking ‘memories’. However, digital
imaging did not simply replace the old silver-halides technology. With time, consumers gradually
started to change their use and to ‘adapt’ to the new media. The new way of storing and sharing
pictures modified the role of imaging in our life: we experienced a shift from the iconic and
‘objectual’ value of the printed image that helps store our memories over time to a more direct and
virtual use of pictures that are increasingly “consumed” in a short lapse of time; either shared
through our mobile phone with our friends, sent via email or posted on a blog.
Motion pictures followed the almost the same patterns: how culturally different are the old super8
movies shot by our grandfathers documenting the family events compared to the modern use of
the video on mobile phones among the you-tube generation?
The adoption and adaptation model can be applied to most new technologies. However, other
models may have a more contextual value according to the researched topic. There is not one
single model to embrace the explanation of how human society works, but rather the presence of
different models that can help us in each context.
In the following case study we illustrate both the use of the adoption-adaptation concepts, and a
more context-specific model borrowed from anthropology, to frame and explain findings that
emerged from a study on new technology in cooking.
Case study: the development of the new generation of Whirlpool ovens
This case study describes the contribution given by market research, and by cultural anthropology
in particular, to the development of the new generation of Whirlpool ovens in Europe.
The new Whirlpool platform for new generation ovens
In 2006 Whirlpool Europe started developing a new technological platform for producing built-in
ovens..
The new generation oven was aimed at incorporating the technological know-how of Whirlpool to
provide a product that could fulfil the needs of increasingly demanding consumers and build a
substantial competitive advantage vs. other products on the market.
Despite the wide range of new technologies available (ranging from the improvement of cooking
performance to the development of new cooking methods or to the introduction of automation), the
main question was how to apply and combine these new features to create a superior and
appealing product, able to provide real help in the everyday cooking of European consumers.
Consumer research was called into action in order to bring valuable insights to the NPD process.
Context and problem
Cooking is probably one of the most difficult challenges to address for new technology as it
frequently represents an area where needs for improvement are entering in conflict with culturally
dense belief and behaviour.
New needs are emerging as a consequence of change in people’s values and lifestyle, and
improvements in cooking are needed both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Consumers are demanding reduction of the complexity of the cooking activities and less time spent
in household chores, but at the same time, cooking is making a come-back as a social value and a
self-esteem and identity construction process. There is increased interest in improving individual
cooking skills, creativity and exploration of new recipes, but also in the impact of the way we eat on
our health. Healthy living (and eating) has been a dominant trend in our society.
Although technology could provide a lot of plausible answers to these emerging needs, consumers
are frequently proving sceptical and resistant to change.
The first reason for this attitude is linked to the relevance of food to us as biological beings. The
relationship between the human being and the transformative power of the machine, in this case
cooking appliances, or the new process, has an impact on what we eat, i.e. on our body, on our
health, on what we think is healthy or dangerous, what we think of as pro or con with reference to
more natural/traditional processes of cooking.
The second, very important reason is linked to the cultural meanings of food, to our sense of
belonging and identity on the one hand, and curiosity towards other cultures on the other.
Molecular gastronomy is probably a very good example of conflict between culture and science in
cooking.
The term was coined in 1988 by an Hungarian physicist and a French chemist, Nicholas Kurti and
Hervé This respectively. These two scientists studied the physical and chemical processes of
cooking with the aim of dispelling existing culinary myths, providing scientifically accurate
information and creating completely new cooking methods to maximise the performance in terms
of taste, visual appeal and health values.
In other words, molecular gastronomy has tried to subtract all cultural influences from the cooking
process leaving to science the decision on how to “do things best”.
Cooking an egg putting it into alcohol instead of using heat, melting chocolate with water, how to
obtain 24 litres of mayonnaise from one egg, are some examples of new method s introduced by
this discipline.
Despite the great media interest created by this very rich contribution of science to cuisine, the
actual impact on consumer behaviour has been almost negligible and the time is still probably fardistant when an English housewife will stop frying eggs in the pan for breakfast or a French chef
will change the way he or she makes mayonnaise.
If we are looking for a less extreme and more everyday example of cultural resistance in cooking,
the microwave oven is probably a case in point.
This appliance was introduced in the ‘60s and since then, continuous technological improvements
have enhanced its cooking functions and features. With a modest investment of time in reading
manuals and experimenting, we could now learn how use a good quality microwave oven and cook
most of our favourite recipes in less time, with excellent results and in an healthier way due to the
reduced need for fat and a better nutrients preservation.
Despite this, most people still tend to use their microwave just for reheating, defrosting or cooking
ready meals, sticking to more traditional methods for the rest of their cooking.
The reason for resistance to change in both of the above cases it’s not the lack of trust in science
but the fact that in cooking, culturally speaking, process is as important as end result: we are “what
we eat” but also “how we cook”.
Cooking is about submission of nature to culture. This concept has been deeply analysed by the
famous anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
In anthropological terms the concept of "the raw" verses "the cooked" has long been linked with the
opposition between the natural world and the world of human culture. Claude Lévi-Strauss
proposes a structural and thematic association between the dichotomy of the raw and the cooked
in mythological thought and man's attempt to establish a balanced relationship between natural
and cultural forces.
In mythological thought, the cooking of food is, in effect, a form of mediation between nature and
society, between life and death, and between heaven and earth;
the operation of "making sure the natural is at once cooked and
socialized…”
Levi-Strauss also analyses the different ways of cooking (boiling,
roasting and smoking) and the different symbolical meanings of
these in the human society and visually represents this in the
cooking triangle.
Cooking has been a subject covered by many other
anthropologists and in particular, the concept of the cooking
ritual has been analysed as a very important structure
characterising human cultures.
The cultural value of cooking also contributes to the extreme
Figure 1: the culinary triangle
variability of acceptance and reactions across the different
countries, especially in a region like Europe where food and cooking habits can change a lot even
over a few hundred kilometres.
Research methodology
The Research scope was both exploratory and evaluative.
Exploration of current cooking practises, habits and expectations with regard to appliances (and
ovens in particular) was needed to collect and interpret a broad range of information to stimulate
creativity and inspire new ideas.
However, research also aimed to assess new scenarios where new technologies and new features
had been implemented in order to provide direction to the NPD process.
An integrated approach was designed implementing different research tools to meet the objectives.
4D-focus panel
In 4D-focus online panels, respondents are recruited online and asked to participate in a survey
program that spread across a period of time and focuses on a specific subject.
In this case, 75 people from each or the two countries involved (Italy and France) joined the panel
for an overall period of 50 days.
During this period, panellists performed different activities ranging from filling simple structured
questionnaires on their habits and attitudes to keeping diaries of their eating and cooking; from
uploading images of the dishes they cooked to evaluating new concepts and features and sharing
their opinions and experiences with the researchers.
Three consumer targets were recruited in the panel: Upscale Modern Living and Home Enthusiasts
women (primary and secondary target for the Whirlpool brand) and Creative Passionate Gourmets
(people defined behaviourally and attitudinally for their interest in cooking).
The benefits of this tool for researching technology are several:

the perspective of time (the 4th Dimension) is added to the simple snapshot taken by a
standard survey. This is particularly important in researching new technologies because
habits, cultural influences, adoption and adaptation processes can be observed and
analysed only over time.
 interactivity and wide use of expressing tools (images, projective techniques, etc.) can
enhance the qualitative feedback of the panellists, providing more insight to the final picture
As quantitative methodology is out of the scope of this paper, the overview of the results will only
focus on the qualitative findings.
Ethnographic sessions
Ethnographic sessions have been conducted on a sample of households in order to observe in full
detail current habits and better understand the cultural aspects of cooking.
The participant observer spent 3 hours at the respondent’s home while cooking was going on.
Sessions were filmed and pictures were taken of the preparation, of the cooking process and the
interaction with the appliances.
Imaginary diaries
The use of imaginary diary is particularly interesting and valuable for researching new
technologies, especially when functioning prototypes of the product are not available for research
(the rule more than the exception in NPD).
This tool required a particular procedure:
 a first interview was conducted at the respondent’s home: behavioural and attitudinal
information were collected. Product concept and features descriptions were then shown by
the moderator and left to the respondent for evaluation.
 respondents was then asked to fill a diary of her cooking during the following two weeks. In
the diary she annotated it’s actual behaviour (type of food cooked, appliances used) but
was also asked to imagine what she would have done with the new product or feature if
available to her in that very moment
Imaginary diary allows to observe the potential adoption and adaptation processes of the
consumer over time and in the real context, when the consumer is facing real life situations: would
the new product or feature be of real help? Would it solve a problem or provide new opportunities?
Would it provide new ways to do the same things or broaden the range of possibilities?
To this regard, consumer response from an imaginary diary can be quite different from what you
would get from a standard focus group or in-depth interview: ideas that might look very fancy and
appealing at first sight may prove not really useful when facing the challenge of real life; on the
contrary, apparently uninteresting concepts may acquire appeal and interest over time either
because they provide real solutions to everyday problems or because they make the user imagine
new ways and new opportunities of usage.
Research findings
It goes beyond the scope of this paper to review all the different aspects covered by the research.
Focus will be on how cultural anthropology was used not only as a way to collect information but
also to provide a conceptual framework for interpreting results.
The authors will cover some of the most relevant emerging themes and their impact on NPD.
Cooking as a ritual of transformation
Relating to what previously described about the
role of cooking as submission of nature to culture,
cooking can be analysed as a ritual of
transformation.
Transformation rituals can be of different types in
human societies but they generally share
commonalities in their different phases:
separation, transformation, re-incorporation.
The first and the third phases relate to the “in”
and the “out” phases of the ritual.
With separation, the ritual agent (the cook) is
selecting the ingredients, separating them from
Reincorporation
Servin
g
Weeping
warm
Reheating
Finishin
g
Eatin
g
Menu
choic
e
Separation
The
cooking
transform
ation
cycle
Ingredient
s
selection
Preparatio
n
Cookin
g
Transformation
their contexts: picking vegetables from the garden Figure 2: cooking as a transformation ritual
(or from a refrigerator drawer), selecting and
cutting the parts of meat to be cooked, etc..
With reincorporation, on the contrary, the cooked food is reintegrated into the external world
through activities like serving, eating, disposing of leftovers, etc.
The second, central phase, transformation, was obviously the most important for the research
scope.
In the transformation phase the raw food is transformed through a particular process. This is the
phase where cooking tools and appliances become of great importance for the ritual agent.
The ethnographic material (both from the ethno observations and from the consumer diaries) was
analysed with the help of this ritual model and allowed us to identify clear symbolic patterns in the
way people were considering the transformation taking place through cooking.
What apparently resembled just habit-driven behaviours and attitudes, actually related to very
important cultural meanings, highlighting three main types of cooking transformations:
conservative, alterative and innovative.
With conservative transformation only moderate modification to the raw food is required. The main
visual aspect, texture and nutritional value of food is retained. A typical example of conservative
cooking is boiling or steam cooking of vegetables. Through these processes, integrity, softness
and humidity are preserved as much as possible.
In alterative cooking (typically roasting, grilling or frying) the visual aspect and food qualities are
modified substantially, although the end result still preserve some similarity to the raw version. New
qualities are added through modification (e.g. gravy, browning, crunchiness, etc.).
The innovative transformation is especially related to baking. This implies a complete change of
visual aspect, dimensions and texture. Through rising, a formless dough is becoming a cake: a
completely new structure is created through something that is still seen by most of us a sort of
magical event.
What the research clearly demonstrated is that, although our diet and the way cooking is
performed have changed a lot from the ancient times to our modern days, people still want to
perceive a distinction among these fundamental modes as they are part of our culture and social
identity.
Although technology may be welcomed in principle as it helps us, it has to take this cultural
framework into consideration.
Looking at cooking as a ritual helped in interpreting other findings of the research, particularly the
role of “time” and of “control” in the consumer mind with respect to the cooking process.
One of the rich points coming from the interviews was the clear rejection of an excessive reduction
of the cooking time. Consumers frequently reacted quite negatively to benefits like “a chicken
cooked in half of the standard time”. This was apparently conflicting with their claimed need to
spend less time in cooking or performing different cooking tasks in a shorter time.
However, once cooking had been analysed as a transformation ritual, it was clear how culturally
important was for consumers that the “proper time” was maintained for each specific type of food.
Reduction of time would be always welcomed in other phases of the process (as separation and
preparation) but the core transformation phase had to retain as much as possible some specific
rules in order the food can be perceived as properly cooked. In other words, technology should not
cut or ignore the “cultural” time of cooking.
Finally, another rich point was the relative scepticism of consumers about a complete automation
of the process. The idea of an appliance that acts like a “black-box”, where a user just introduce
food, press a button and wait for a “beep” without being involved at all in what’s happening raised
many concerns, not only among the most traditionalist respondents.
Again, although the need for a more convenient and easy process is there, it was clear that for
consumers it was important to maintain some role in controlling the process, either with the
possibility to change parameters according to their need or at least to receive a feedback on what
the appliance was doing. In cultural anthropological terms, the ritual agent has to keep the control
over the ritual to maintain her social role and self-esteem and to ensure that the end results are
culturally consistent.
The importance of control is also enforced by another specific factor: cooking is an irreversible
process. Unlike other activities where technology plays a relevant role (e.g. listening to music,
communicating with others), there is smaller room for faults in cooking. Whilst we can easily go
back from a wrong song selection on our I-pod or say “sorry” and hang-up if we dialled a wrong
number on our mobile, the implications of a mistake in setting the parameters of a cooking process
can be much more frustrating: a burned roast or a sad cake can be quite disappointing if you have
guests at home!
Adopting and adapting: the re-invention of tradition
Imaginary diaries proved to be very helpful in better understanding how consumers were reacting
and coping with potentially new technologies and features in a real life context.
Similarly to other technologies, we found some clear patterns already described in the previous
section: adopting and adapting.
Research highlighted how respondents were frequently trying to “adopt” the new features, figuring
out how each feature could fit with their current habits and be culturally acceptable: “how can this
help me in cooking my roasted potatoes?”
However, research findings showed also how respondents were not only trying to adopt the new
features inside their habits but were also seeking for a more innovative impact on their life: in other
words they were also trying to see how they could actively adapt to the new scenario put in place
by the new features available to them. “May be I could start cooking fish now with this new pre-set
guided recipes…”. “Why not trying to bake bread with this new convection cooking mode?”.
Research demonstrated how adoption and
adaptation are both extremely important in
determining the success of a new technology:
a right mix between the two is key.
Consumers are intrigued by something that
might introduce innovation in their life but
they are usually not looking for dramatic
change and will always try to find links with
their culture and habits.
This consideration can be also related to
another concept explored in cultural
anthropology: invention of tradition. This
theory was developed in the 80’ by a group of
anthropologists to analyse the cultural trends
linked to globalisation. Invention of tradition is
Figure 3: adopting and adapting
about the need to re-interpret tradition in the
contemporary context; it’s about the need of human beings to see continuity in the change.
Examples of how technology is re-inventing tradition are frequent and can range from how
interface is mediating between user and machine (e.g. an icon representing a paper agenda on our
mobile phone or the format of a palmtop display representing a classic paper diary), to more
culturally dense behaviours as the re-introduction of concept of billet-doux at S. Valentine through
SMS.
The combined roles of adoption and adaptation, also helped in interpreting consumer reactions in
relation to cultural diversity.
If, on one side, the need to maintain cultural roots in food was key and emphasised different needs
in different countries, consumers were also interested in looking at what the new features could do
for them to take new dishes or cooking modes from other cultures and bring into their lives.
Implications for NPD
Research findings and interpretation led to valuable insights and relevant recommendations to the
new product development.
The following just summarizes what the cultural anthropology perspective brought into the new
scenario.
Research helped in understanding how to optimise the configuration and communication to the
consumer of the different cooking modes. Dedicated modes for each type of “transformation” (e.g.
convection for baking) and clear distinction among the different options were key elements in the
final equation.
A second area of development was about how the new appliance had to answer to the issue of
time. Although moderate reductions of cooking time were welcomed, major efforts had to be
concentrated in reducing dead time and improving time management for the user without affecting
too much the perceived “proper” time for the actual cooking transformation.
Substantial reduction of pre-heating time and extended possibility of multi-level cooking (to
effectively cook more dishes simultaneously) were promising options to be fed into the product
development process.
A third area of development was relating to the range and type of pre-set recipes to implement in
the new oven. Again, the research finding were extremely helpful in the understanding of consumer
dynamics and the fine-tuning the final list. In particular, the analysis of adoption vs. adaptation
behaviours led to a correct “balancing” of the list in order to allow the right mix between “tradition”
and “innovation” for the consumer.
Finally, what has been probably the most important area of implications for the research, was the
role of user interface (UI) for the new product and the way the concept of automation had to be
conveyed to the consumer.
As more features were available and more automated functions were performed by the oven, UI
was key as a mediation tool between the machine and the user.
The outcomes from the research, helped in optimising the design of the digital interface, making
sure that issues as “mode selection”, “control” and “feedback” were properly addressed.
Findings also reinforced the strength of the Whirlpool 6th sense concept as a distinctive and
powerful way to vision and deploy technology and automation in cooking appliances.
This concept perfectly fits with the “anthropological” needs of the consumer, providing a credible
and imaginative solution to the issue of the relationship between the human being and the
“transformative machine”. Instead of imposing science into culture through hard-based technology,
6th sense proposes a machine who thinks and feels alike the user, or, even better, think and feel
with a bit of that “supernatural” capacity that human cultures generally assign to women.
Conclusions
This paper has examined the usefulness of cultural anthropology in researching technology
products and services.
The first benefit of cultural anthropology, and ethnography in particular, is in providing valid and
powerful research methodologies that focus on consumer real context and situation.
Ethnographic method is not to be intended only as participant observation but can be rather
extended to other research tools. The use of 4D online panels is allowing to explore consumers
habits and attitudes over time also in a qualitative way and to help in understanding their
underlying cultural patterns and latent needs.
Moreover, imaginary diaries demonstrated to be an interesting way to study the potential of new
product concepts through the analysis of consumer’s reactions when confronted with real life and
real context situations.
The second benefit of cultural anthropology is to provide useful models that can help us to interpret
our research findings. The paper highlighted the role of concepts as adoption and adaptation in
explaining consumers reaction to new technology products but also examined the usefulness of
the model of ritual of transformation in analysing the cooking process.
Although the case study was inevitably focused on one specific area (i.e. cooking), we should not
make the mistake of thinking that anthropology is valid only to research consumers attitudes and
behaviours for topics that are apparently more related to our rooted traditions.
Qualitative research is going to face new challenges for the increasing demand from clients for
advice in areas as technology convergence, technology mobility and web 2.0, just to mention a
few. Cultural anthropology can provide a great help to us as researchers in facing these challenges
as these areas are affecting the way consumers communicate among each other, represents
themselves and their identity and how they participate to different communities; in other words the
way they belong to a culture. Anthropology as also the ability to focussing and following on how
consumers initiate change, in everyday life situations, and how they act, think and behave in their
practical experience.
Human being are not neutral sponges, and they filter, adopt, reject, transform, interpret what is
technological innovation, according to culture, needs and desires and they do so differently in
different contexts. Not only individually but also as social entities
Moreover, consumers build on new technologies, and technological innovations mould our social
and cultural worlds in ways that do not follow simple, causal relationships. Technology is a
relational object, or an object in action – not a black box - that helps construct our perception of
the world around us, in new ways.
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