Cultural embeddedness

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Lately, entrepreneurs are coming to realize that the economy, just like other areas of human life, is deeply embedded into culture. The efficiency of a business largely depends on understanding customers, their needs, behaviour and the context of their lives.

 

From an anthropological point of view, goods and services are much more than just a set of utilitarian properties. In fact, they are strongly tied to such anthropological concepts as lifestyle, identity, experience, impressions, status, etc. So, when people acquire new products, they don't just consider their actual functions, but also the ephemeral cultural properties that are associated with the products (even though the latter may happen unconsciously).

 

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Social impact

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In addition, society is becoming more demanding of companies. Customers now have more choice, more information, more leverage and higher expectations. So the way businesses interact with customers is changing as well. As a result, it is no longer enough for companies to just sell goods and services and to pay their employees on a regular basis, but they also need to consider their role and purpose in the world, the impact they have on society and the environment. 

 

So it is important to understand the social and cultural context, trends, meanings and social effects associated with a particular product or brand. It is also important to know how customers interact with the product, what role it plays in their daily lives, and what it means for them. A deep understanding of and empathy for the end user is what largely determines the success of companies today.

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Hence, there is a need for a professional mediator who would act as an intermediary between society and business and translate people's needs into real products and services.

 

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Why anthropology?

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Applied anthropology equips best for this role of a mediator because, firstly, it offers a cultural framework for almost every problem in the real world and allows to see separate cases as part of a general trend in society. In fact, anthropologists don't make such a strong distinction between business problems and academic problems that are normally dealt with at universities: any practical issue can be ethnologized, i.e. turned into an ethnological research topic and analyzed with the help of cultural concepts. This may be handy when it comes to conceptualizing the wider social role and impact of a company and its products.

Secondly, anthropology, more than any other discipline, advocates for a deep, empathetic understanding of people from the inside with a full immersion into their worlds and ways of thinking. The qualitative methods it relies on (such as participant observation, in-depth interviewing, autoethnography) facilitate this deep understanding better than quantitative methods do. Anthropology, thus, offers a more humanistic approach that puts people's perspectives and needs first and is very important in business, as it gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of the end-users. It basically puts businesses directly in touch with the desires and life circumstances of their customers. This essentially helps to better understand what exactly the company has to do to meet their customers' needs and desires.

  

 

In short, the cultural analytic approach helps answer the following questions:

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Fields of application

 

Here is a list of fields where cultural analysis can be applied in business:

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1. Stakeholder analysis: Understanding the cultural context of stakeholders and how their needs and values impact the success of a business.

2. UX design: Creating user experiences that take into account cultural nuances and behaviors.

3. Storytelling: Crafting stories that resonate with the cultural identity of customers and stakeholders.

4. Organizational culture: Analyzing and shaping the culture of an organization to align with the values of its employees and stakeholders.

5. User-driven innovations: Developing products and services that are designed around the cultural needs and desires of end-users.

6. Branding: Building a brand identity that is culturally relevant and resonates with customers.

7. Place branding: Analyzing the cultural identity of a place and creating a brand that reflects its unique cultural heritage.

8. Marketing: Creating marketing campaigns that tap into the cultural values and behaviors of target audiences.

9. Product development: Understanding the cultural meanings associated with a product and developing strategies to meet the cultural needs and desires of customers.

10. Experience research: Conducting research to understand the cultural context of a customer's experience with a product or service.

 

Below you can find examples of specific projects that tap into some of these fields:

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Place_branding 

Storytelling

Experience_research

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