<P> Businesses, too, have found ethnographers helpful for understanding how people use products and services . Companies make increasing use of ethnographic methods to understand consumers and consumption, or for new product development (such as video ethnography). The Ethnographic Praxis in Industry (EPIC) conference is evidence of this . Ethnographers' systematic and holistic approach to real - life experience is valued by product developers, who use the method to understand unstated desires or cultural practices that surround products . Where focus groups fail to inform marketers about what people really do, ethnography links what people say to what they do--avoiding the pitfalls that come from relying only on self - reported, focus - group data . Modern developments in computing power and AI have enabled higher efficiencies in ethnographic data collection via multimedia and computational analysis using machine learning . </P> <P> The Ethnographic methodology is not usually evaluated in terms of philosophical standpoint (such as positivism and emotionalism). Ethnographic studies need to be evaluated in some manner . No consensus has been developed on evaluation standards, but Richardson (2000, p. 254) provides five criteria that ethnographers might find helpful . Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein's (1997) monograph, The New Language of Qualitative Method, discusses forms of ethnography in terms of their "methods talk ." </P> <Ol> <Li> Substantive contribution: "Does the piece contribute to our understanding of social life?" </Li> <Li> Aesthetic merit: "Does this piece succeed aesthetically?" </Li> <Li> Reflexivity: "How did the author come to write this text...Is there adequate self - awareness and self - exposure for the reader to make judgments about the point of view?" </Li> <Li> Impact: "Does this affect me? Emotionally? Intellectually?" Does it move me? </Li> <Li> Expresses a reality: "Does it seem' true'--a credible account of a cultural, social, individual, or communal sense of the' real'?" </Li> </Ol> <Li> Substantive contribution: "Does the piece contribute to our understanding of social life?" </Li>

Credibility is a term to describe the degree to which an ethnography