Ethnography as an interdisciplinary approach to marketing: a new attempt

Abstract

The subjects of culture experience transformations in their daily lives which affect social practices, including marketing. Therefore, traditional appreciations and methods are insufficient, and there is an urgent need for dialogue with other disciplines in order to enrich these forms of thought. Here, ethno-marketing, borrowed from the ethnographic methods of cultural anthropology, may be a strategic tool to understand or comprehend marketing matters. Nonetheless, we should ask ourselves, "Is this tool just one more methodological instrument in the search for points of connection between disciplines which support marketing practice? Or, is what I can see in fact an ontological type of claim, which transcends the positive dogma that has characterised the discipline?". This work approaches these questions through documentary investigation and a presentation of experiences and arguments to support an epistemological position on the importance of interdisciplinary practice for understanding the discipline, the formation of its professionals, and approaches to its practical problems.