Thursday, July 29, 2010
Ethnography and Deception
My personal favorite in terms of research is ethnography. I love to watch people and thinking about, guessing, and discussing the possible reasons why people do what they do. I think this is so interesting because it requires an understanding of people, their mannerisms, various cultural differences, and emotion. When thinking about the idea of deception I automatically go to sales people, so I would research something around the various types of deception salesmen employ on heir work. My question would be: Do cultural differences of customers change the method of deception used by sales people? I’m not sure what method I would use to answer this question, but I wonder if ethnography won’t be a perfect match. Interviewing those that sell and those that bought from them would make an interesting research project. It would give a fairly whole picture of the reasons why different deception tactics were used, and is cultural differences really play role.
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I too find Ethnography to be the most interesting method and enjoy watching people and thinking about why they act the way they do. Taking the ethnography approach does teach us how to understand people and read people. I like where you are going with you research question. It would be a very interesting study and one that I would find very intriguing. And using the Ethnography method would be a great way to research the question. As well as interviewing, you could observe for yourself the way in which sales people react to different cultured customers. You could even be one of the customers and see how your interaction with the sales associate differs with another customer from a different cultural background. Thanks for sharing your thoughts :)
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you the ethnography would probably be the most accurate method to measure the amount of deception that occurs on the sales floor. If sales people were lying on the sales floor, it is probably safe to assume that they would lie on a survey. I have worked quite a few retail jobs and deception is really commonplace when it comes to the sales people. All the managers know this is happening and I’m sure corporate knows as well, but this is what keeps business going. Just because they’re not overtly lying doesn’t mean it’s not deception. In fact, the most common method I have seen is to withhold information until you get them to agree and then reveal all the details/”fine print.”
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