What I love about anthropology is its focus on deeply understanding people within the natural environment of their everyday lives. We look at how they construct meaning from their experiences and their surroundings. And as an anthropologist and marketer, I'm intensely passionate about the interactions between consumers and products.    

Once upon a time, the connection between marketing and anthropology might have been confined to the edges of business thinking. Not anymore, though...it's clearly moving to the mainstream. This was one of the discussion topics at a recent Forrester Roundtable here in Austin: 

Takeaway #2: Stop Asking Your Customers What They Do. Really? Tech marketers are obsessed with surveys — so why should we do something different? According to Markman, “If you’re trying to uncover why customers act, they can tell you what they’re doing, but are likely unaware of the human factors that are influencing them, and no survey will every capture that.” So what then?

He urged tech marketers to spend more non-selling time on-site, observing how their buyers and users go about their day. They should start with three areas: 1) personal information consumption methods; 2) organizational technology decision-making rituals; and 3) habits they’ve developed with your competitors.

WIM:Do more field work and break out of the tech marketer survey-obsessed habit. Instead of inviting customers to your next Customer Advisory Board meeting, ask them to host you for a day of shadowing. It may seem farfetched and even difficult, but if you’re serious about embedding your products and services into instinctive actions for your customers, break with traditional thinking, find a way, and begin a new habit.

Josh Duncan over at A Random Job also posted his write-up of this session:
http://www.arandomjog.com/2011/10/getting-your-customers-to-stop-thinking-of-you

Habits, rituals, and meanings...all good stuff from an anthropological perspective.