Visual ethnography: Achieving rigorous and authentic interpretations

Visual methods have a long history in ethnographic research and ethnographic methods are increasingly used to gain a depth of insight and understanding not achievable with traditional marketing research approaches. As a rigorous and valid research method, visual ethnography enables documentation of marketing and consumption as social and cultural phenomenon. Visual text collected through the process of cultural immersion serves as an effective and credible research tool in the quest to collect and analyze empirical evidence as well as disseminate research findings. As a case application, this paper builds on the ethnographic investigation of Schembri (2009).