Paper short abstract:

Ethnography has been gaining popularity in industries such as marketing and design. This paper explores how and why ethnography appeared in the Japanese business scene around the late 2000s, and highlights the "feedback loop" between mass media and firms' business affairs.

Paper long abstract:

The focus of this paper is to discuss the consumption and usage of ethnography, the chief methodology of social/cultural anthropology, in Japanese industry. Nowadays, ethnography is not exclusive to anthropology. As an investigative method, it has been gaining popularity in various industries such as marketing, design and engineering, to name but a few. On one hand, ethnography as a "new" technique - not new, per se, but relatively new for business people - is regarded as a most promising technique, which uncovers hidden needs and leads to exciting new products and services. On the other hand, depending on the context, ethnography can be an authoritative source for a firms' advertising.

Through recurring interviews with ex-managers and researchers of various firms, as well as business magazine reporters, this paper explores how ethnography was introduced to, and spread through, the Japanese business scene, in the decade following 2000. The way ethnography was introduced to the business community is rather convoluted and far from straightforward. (1) The explanations of ex-managers of companies that were first to adopt ethnography, described as "early adopters", were really only focused on business issues. (2) The researchers at the companies' laboratories were not just interested in the practicalities of ethnography, but started their research from an academic interest in the field. Researchers value academic networks, and they assert that ethnography entered Japan though endogenous developments in academia. (3) Recognising this trend, the mass media (more specifically, reporters from business magazines), sought other examples from various companies that they then reported on. These were companies that were doing consumer research and work in the field. These companies, described as "followers", did not know the English term "ethnography", but recognised the trend through being reported on and proceeded to employ this in the PR. One could see this as a "feedback loop" between mass media and firms' business affairs. The implication of the discussion here, could also be seen as an example of how business trends are formed and take hold.