The Handbook of Mobile Market Research: Tools and Techniques for Market Researchers

6 Mobile Diaries and Ethnography

INTRODUCTION

This chapter looks at several mobile qualitative approaches that involve working with participants to collaboratively explore their lives, the lives of people around them, and the environment they come in contact with.

The topics covered in this chapter are listed below:

• Mobile ethnography: where participants capture slices of their lives and/or the lives of people around them, as an input to an ethnographic analysis.
• Mobile diaries and blogs: where participants record their activity in relation to a specific topic, for example during the purchase of a mortgage, or whilst trying a new household product.
• Shopper studies: where participants use their mobile device, in effect, to take the researcher along on their shopping trip.
• WE-research: where participants seek out and record their interactions with the subject of the research, for example every time they see an advert for a particular category.
• Passive tracking: Passive tracking uses the phone or tablet features and sensors to record where the participants go, what they do, and so on. It does this without any moment-to-moment intervention from participants. These traces are then reviewed by the researcher as an input to their qualitative analysis.

To some extent, there is a degree of overlap between some of these approaches. For example, in mobile ethnography, mobile diaries, shopper studies, and WE-research, participants might be asked to take a specific action when a specific ...