Consumer Behaviour s1

Consumer Behaviour

Observation Exercise

The purpose of this exercise is for you to begin learning how to make and record observations of people involved in an activity of some kind. To do this project you will need a pad of paper, a notebook or something else to write on, and a pen or pencil.

To begin this exercise, choose one of the following public spaces on Huang Huai campus in which you will make your observations: a dining hall or other campus eating establishment; the library; a student or faculty lounge; a university sports event. Be aware that too little activity will not give you enough data to work with, and might make people feel like they¹re being watched.

Once you have chosen the position from which you will make your observations, go through the following steps:

 Record the date, day of week, time of day, weather, and other factors you think may have some bearing on what you are observing.  Describe the setting. You should draw a rough map of the activity and the space in which it is occurring. Note features of the physical environment that seem to be significant. Write a brief and general description of what's going on. This is mainly for background and context.  Also record your reactions and thoughts about what¹s going on, but you should keep these reactions distinct from description - perhaps in the margins, or on the back of the page.  Describe in detail the activity you are observing. At this point, you should strive for your description to be concrete, specific, and chronological. For example, it is better to record, "Six people standing single file in line, holding trays horizontal at waist height, advancing several steps in cascading fashion when the cashier says 'next.' On each tray is..." instead of "people waiting in line to pay for their food." Your guiding question right now is 'What's going on here?' Your notes for this part of the exercise should be event-by-event narrative, not generalizations.  For some of the time, pay attention to individuals, and at other times try to describe collective actions.  Separately (again, in the margins or somewhere else) record the perceptions, motives, and values of the people you are watching. As you observe, begin to focus on something that seems interesting to you, such as a pattern that emerges or a particular aspect of what you are observing.

Stop when you've done roughly 20 minutes of detailed observations (the previous two steps). Go back over your notes and fill in any important but missing details from memory, adding questions that came up for you as you were observing, and ideas you could investigate in the future if you were going to do further study. You can also begin adding any of your own interpretations of what you observed.

Rewrite your rough field notes into a more usable form (as if you were doing a long term study and would need to refer to these notes later). Essentially this means making the notes coherent and organized. The rewritten notes should be based on your rough notes, but add any corrections, additional ideas, etc. that emerged after you left your site of observations.