Mayor: Knock Off the Knockoffs
You want to talk addictions? Drugs, you knew. But sacks — handbags, purses — are the next frontier. Every day, another sweet-face gal gets hooked on some high-price pocketbook she can't afford. She comes to New York and buys a counterfeit. "You get sort of a double punch," consumer anthropologist Robbie Blinkoff said. "It's like, 'I wouldn't be caught dead with a Louis Vuitton, because I'm not actually a Louis Vuitton person. I'm a Louis Vuitton person who's smarter than that.'"
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Thin is beautiful when it comes to gadgets
Thin is cool. Thin is sexy. Thin is chic. The thinner, the better. "I think we're turning the corner on thin," says Dr. Robbie Blinkoff, a consumer anthropologist and managing director of Context-Based Research Group. "People are slowly coming up with new ways of thinking about thin. "It's about 'thinning out' all the unnecessary technology you carry around. It's about just bringing the essentials along. Our culture right now is about getting rid of excess baggage."
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Get real: People will want to connect in 2008
We are convinced that the new year will find more people responding to the problems affecting the USA…by setting out on a soul-searching mission that eventually will lead them to..arrive at a place of "radical acceptance”…says Robbie Blinkoff.
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Virtual gifts are hot-ticket items, but some wonder if they are really just a rip-off
You don't wrap these presents in a box. You can't wear them, play with them or show them off, at least not in the real world. Even so, virtual gifts — computer-generated items given and displayed online — are quickly becoming must-haves. And people are willing to pay cold, hard, real-life cash to purchase them for friends, family and co-workers. The novelty is driving the market for virtual gifts and goods. So is the frenzy to gain status on social networking and virtual world sites, says Robbie Blinkoff, an anthropologist who studies online trends.
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Gifts are tied up in cultural trappings
WHEN SANTA reaches Papua New Guinea this Christmas, he won't be leaving many toys or DVDs. The natives might prefer him to share cookies or chopped wood. Every society has its own gift-giving occasions. But the idea of giving, and the gifts themselves, vary from culture to culture, says anthropologist Robbie Blinkoff.
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A Greener Holiday As Retailers Embrace 'Lefteousness'
"Even though green gifts and green products are hot right now, the flame of consumer interest burns out very quickly," says Robbie Blinkoff. "Right now, with all the interest in global warming, there's a lot of energy. Smart marketers need to be not righteous, but 'lefteous'," he says, "and recognize that consumers want to be taken to the next level."
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Coveting thy neighbor's stroller
There are a number of factors behind stroller mania, from pervasive celebrity culture to the fact that people are having children later in life when they're more financially secure, says Tracy Pilar Johnson, a cultural anthropologist with Context-Based Research Group in Baltimore who has studied the trend.
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Marketers, designers study consumer habits
This process gives you an all-natural setting,” said Robbie Blinkoff, principal anthropologist and co-founder of Baltimore’s Context-Based Research Group, as he led the study in Inner Harbor. “You get people who are involved in what they’re doing, not saying what they do.”
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Downsizing's downside
Are the downsizers becoming backsliders? Has finding the simple life proved harder than it looks? Are New Year's resolutions to cut back as insincere as plans to clean out the garage? Or are people just going about it wrong?
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First and Goal for Food and Fun
"While the importance of the actual game has diminished for fans, the significant role the celebration plays has catapulted," says Robbie Blinkoff, a consumer anthropologist for the Context-Based Research Group in Baltimore.
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The Ethnography of Marketing
A software tool allows researchers to study human behaviors and plot them along dimensions that reveal product and service needs. The new core competency is ethnography. Companies use it to gain insights into the culture and behavior of their customers.
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Corporate Ethnography
High-tech companies are deploying ethnographers and anthropologists by the score to study how people actually use technology.
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Anthropologists Go Native in the Corporate Village
Anthropologists Go Native in the Corporate Village, according to a recent article in Fast Company...
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Off with the pith helmets
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The Consumer Anthropologist
The problem with focus groups? They take consumers out of their natural habitat. So welcome the idea of ethnographic market research, which uses the anthropologist's tool kit of methods and theories.
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Corporate anthropology: Dirt-free research
The influx of corporate anthropology has grown in recent years as companies have tried to get more tactical about consumer research, evaluating increasingly technological products before their release.
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Consumer Input, Scientific Analysis Provide Foundation for MSN 8 Research and Innovation
MSN 8 represents the first intensive use of anthropological study to enhance the MSN client and bring the customer's voice into the product development cycle.
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How to Get Really Close to Teens' Lives: MTV's "Ethnography Study"
MTV has long emphasized market research to learn about its teen audience. But in the late 1990s it noticed its ratings were starting to slide. So MTV embarked on a new teen research campaign, the hallmark of which was its "ethnography study."
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THE HUMAN TOUCH
Companies that truly want to understand their customers are hiring social scientists -- such as anthropologists -- to bring their insights to the enterprise. Says Intel's Shane Wall, "When you compare it to the traditional marketing effort, there's no comparison."
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THE HUMAN EQUATION
As participants at an Intel conference on Human Centered Product Innovation learned, companies that really want to figure out what people want are turning to antropologists and social scientists for help.
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ROBBIE BLINKOFF OF CONTEXT-BASED RESEARCH NAMED TO FAST COMPANY MAGAZINE’S FAST 50 CHAMPIONS OF INNOVATION
Robbie Blinkoff, PhD, Principal Anthropologist of Context-Based Research Group, whose efforts have helped make Ethnography, or cultural anthropology, the fastest-growing segment of marketing research, has been named to Fast Company magazine’s 2003 list of the “Fast 50” Champions of Innovation – individuals whose achievements have helped change business or society.
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THE (R)EVOLUTION IS NOW: ‘THE MOBILES’ DEFINES AN EMERGING WIRELESS LIFESTYLE
A growing and vibrant international subculture has seamlessly integrated wireless products into their daily existence: The Mobiles. Context-Based Research Group's latest global study reveals a shift in human consciousness as wireless integration alters behavior, attitudes and etiquette around the world - as well as how business should adapt to this evolution.
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ROBBIE BLINKOFF NAMED ONE OF BALTIMORE BUSINESS JOURNAL’S 40 UNDER 40
The Baltimore Business Journal recently named their top 40 under 40 business people. Context Principal Anthropologist, Robbie Blinkoff was among them.
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CONTEXT-BASED RESEARCH GROUP HIRED BY WORKPLACE INNOVATOR HERMAN-MILLER
Herman Miller, Inc., the leading global designer and manufacturer of office furnishings recently selected Context-Based Research Group for an extensive ethnographic project.
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GLOBAL ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF WIRELESS USE REVEALS KEY LESSONS FOR COMPANIES MAKING WIRELESS PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Context's Wireless Opportunities study provides a new perspective on what consumers really want from wireless and what companies need to do if they want to close the gap between expectation and user experience that is keeping wireless from reaching its potential.
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ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF THE OLYMPICS UNCOVERS REASONS WHY AMERICANS HAVE OUTGROWN INNOCENCE OF THE GAMES
A Context study has found that the reasons Americans used to love the Olympic Games are actually alive and well in other parts of the world. The research, conducted through Context's network of 1,700 anthropologists around the world, also uncovered some of the reasons – beyond the tape-delayed coverage – why Americans aren’t connecting with the Games like they have in the past.
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CULTURAL OLYMPIC INSIGHTS FROM ANTHROPOLOGISTS AROUND THE WORLD PORTRAY WHAT THE OLYMPICS MEAN TO PEOPLE ALL OVER THE GLOBE
Using the powers of observation and cultural description that are the hallmarks of anthropological insight, Context’s network of 1,700 anthropologists around the world were asked to observe people and the media in their communities and provide global cultural analysis of the Summer Olympics.
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CONTEXT-BASED RESEARCH GROUP TAPS ANTHROPOLOGY DISCIPLINE TO GAIN TRUER INSIGHT INTO CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Context-Based Research Group uses ethnography to fuel innovation and help companies manage their brands. The firm's innovative approach features a global database of anthropologists and use of the Internet for real-time reporting of results.
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