When customer ethnography is good for you - A contingency perspective

Industrial corporations increasingly undertake customer ethnography studies to expose and understand their customers' and end users' latent needs better. However, the benefit of this practice is ambiguous and evidence for it is largely based on anecdotes and qualitative case studies. The aim of this study is to shed light on the relationship between customer ethnography and new product development (NPD) success. We explore internal and external factors that attenuate or strengthen this relationship by investigating the contingency influences of a team's innovative work behavior and the task's innovativeness. Data from a large international corporation show that customer ethnography is worth considering in terms of creating understanding for customers at the front-end of innovation. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we demonstrate the relevance of customer ethnography by showing that ethnographic methods at the front end generally have a positive relationship with NPD success. Second, we deepen our understanding of this relationship by showing that customer ethnography is not beneficial for NPD in all circumstances, but depends on the team's innovative work behavior and the innovativeness of the context. The results suggest that product developers should invigorate ethnographic practices carefully and selectively.