ELISA OREGLIA and KATHI KITNER [s2If is_user_logged_in()]Download PDF[/s2If] In rural China and India, a fragmented commercial distribution system and the lack of online shopping can significantly limit the range of consumer choice. In this paper, we look at the role that mobile phone shopkeepers—the middlemen—play in influencing what users can and will buy, but also in training them in using and understanding technology.[s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Sign in or create a free account to access this content and over 400 articles—the leading collection of peer-reviewed work on ethnographic practice.[/s2If][s2If is_user_logged_in()] [s2If is_user_logged_in()] INTRODUCTION The consumption junction is “the place and the time at which the consumer makes choices between competing technologies” (Cowan 1987:263). We take her insight that consumers’ choices are embedded in a “network of social relations that limits and controls the technological choices that she or he is capable of making” (Cowan 1987:262) and we apply it to...

KATHI KITNER, RENEE KURIYAN and SCOTT D. MAINWARING [s2If is_user_logged_in()]Download PDF[/s2If] This paper will examine the social factors that mediate technology adoption among the emerging middle class in order to show how messaging, positioning, and targeting communications to potential consumers, if based on flawed representations, such as the First Time Buyer, can lead to missed market opportunities, or worse. We advocate an alternative approach based on ethnographic frameworks that can help to gauge the social viability of products, deconstructing these assumptions and notions to help smooth the path of technology adoption in emerging markets. To represent our findings, we created a “tool,” the “Social Viability Measure (SVM),” to help private industry and others approach new markets by bringing an understanding of social forces into the strategic planning, messaging and positioning of products.[s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Sign in or create a free account to access this content and over 400 articles—the leading collection...

DAWN NAFUS, ROGERIO DE PAULA, KATHI KITNER, RENEE KURIYAN and SCOTT D. MAINWARING [s2If is_user_logged_in()]Download PDF[/s2If] This paper documents the beginnings of Intel’s recently launched Consumerization project, and uses these early experiences as a way into exploring new paths to business relevance and impact. These paths weave in and out of the increasingly institutionalized position of corporate ethnography as research that takes place before products are designed. These paths are one response to wider transformations in the business environment, and are not a general prescription, “ethnography should now do X in corporations.” However, this project does embody a significant move away from past modalities of conducting and applying research, and in doing so reveals broader possibilities for ethnography that may prove viable for others in different contexts. We begin by providing some institutional history and exploring the wider industry transformations that compelled us to design a research project in the way that we...