The Itinerary Method: a methodological contribution from Sociology to
Consumption Studies
Roberta Dias Campos: (Dsc. Business administration – COPPEAD / UFRJ and Dsc
Social Sciences – Paris Descartes / Sorbonne)
Mail adress:
COPPEAD / UFRJ (Cátedra Loréal)
Rua Pascoal Lemme, 355 - Ilha do Fundão
21941-918 - Rio de Janeiro – RJ - Brazil
Email adress: [email protected]
Leticia Moreira Casotti: (Dsc. COPPE / UFRJ)
Mail adress:
COPPEAD / UFRJ
Rua Pascoal Lemme, 355 - Ilha do Fundão
21941-918 - Rio de Janeiro – RJ - Brazil
Email adress: [email protected]
Maribel Suarez: (Dsc. Business administration – PUC / RJ)
Mail adress:
COPPEAD / UFRJ
Rua Pascoal Lemme, 355 - Ilha do Fundão
21941-918 - Rio de Janeiro – RJ - Brazil
Email adress: [email protected]
1
Introduction
This paper presents the Itinerary Method - a research approach developed by Dominique
Desjeux (Desjeux, 1997, 2000, 2006a; Alami, Desjeux and Garabuau-Moussaoui, 2008)
and originally applied in sociology studies investigating consumption as a way to
analyze society. The method can contribute to interpretative consumer research in
management inasmuch as it allows investigation of the decision process or the purchase
act itself, as well as the entire process involving consumption, within a systemic
perspective (Beji-Becheur and Campos, 2008). The itinerary method assumes that
consumer purchase decisions should not be considered as decisions at a specific
moment, but rather as a temporal process, since the decision to make a purchase is
constructed through a ―temporal and spatial itinerary comprised of social actions [...],
submitted to a series of material (logistics, available space, cost) and social (norms)
limitations and as a function of one or various symbolic universes‖ (Desjeux, 2000, p.
4). The focus on systemic, social and material aspects of consumption requires that
interviews be carried out where consumption practices occur, in conjunction with
simultaneous observation, where words are illustrated by objects and spaces, fostering
confrontation between respondents' discourses and practices.
The itinerary method can be a contribution to the tradition of Consumption Studies
(Ostegaard and Jantzen, 2002) due to its investigation focus not on individuals or their
decision process, but rather on the situational context and on the social norms that frame
their action. From the analysis of the concrete and often mundane aspects of
consumption — such as constraints of space / budget / time, or preparation /
consumption / storage / disposal of goods — the method attempts to describe the
cultural categories and principles (McCracken, 2003) that provide each form of
consumption with its particular logic.
Origins and theoretical background
The Itinerary Method was developed by anthropologist Dominique Desjeux over the
course of his field experience with rural development in Africa. His first inspiration
came from itineraries built by agronomists, in which different stages of cultivation were
inventoried and described in their order of implementation. Back in his native France,
Desjeux developed a methodology in order to investigate consumption and explain its
systematic and procedural character. For Desjeux, the phenomenon of consumption is
not solely confined to moments of buying and using a good or service, but rather, to
what happens before and after these stages. Consumption is, for Desjeux, a system of
chained and socially determined actions that must be inventoried within a wider
itinerary.
The understanding of consumption as a process is fundamental for renewing how the
phenomenon is perceived and for the discussion of new methodologies to study
consumption. Frequently, in often-overlooked domains of the consumption process such
as shelf stocking or even disposal, multiple clues can be garnered to aid in our
understanding of the relationship between the subject and the act of consumption. The
systematic collection of data engenders a broad vision that enables the researcher to
escape from preconceived ideas, allowing apparent serendipity during the examination
of moments and spaces that no one would ever think to investigate.
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The theoretical framing of the itinerary protocol is rooted in the sociology of
organizations, originally developed by Michel Crozier (Crozier, 1963; Crozier and
Friedberg, 1981), and particularly, in his notions of the system of action and strategic
decision-making process. According to this perspective, the act of consumption takes
place within a context of social interaction and is, therefore, determined by it. As such,
the mapping of players, interaction dynamics, conflicts, strategies, constraints and social
norms, presented throughout the itinerary, contribute to building a problematized
portrait of consumption, that also encompasses its social and culture aspects.
Additionally, the interactive and systemic view of the itinerary method demands a
qualitative and microsocial approach to observation (Desjeux, 2004), where interactions
between individuals are closely perceived in their specific groups and social relation
networks.
Another important conceptual aspect of the method's underpinnings is the focus on the
concrete dimension of the social universe, in other words, on the practices of individuals
and material culture involved in the situation (Miller, 1987; 1998a; 1998b; Warnier,
1999; Appadurai, 1986). Desjeux’s research (Desjeux, 1997; 2000; 2004; 2006a) exalts
the material universe as a means to gain access to the symbolic aspects of behavior.
Thus his research is more interested in the movement of things, gestures, and spaces
than in discourse, explanation, and justification. Desjeux (Desjeux, 2004; GarabuauMoussaoui and Desjeux, 2000) tend to agree with McCracken (2003) and Miller
(1998b) when they say that material culture reveals human relations as being
continually manipulated, incorporated, and invested with underlying meaning. Thus the
itinerary method maps the rules of movement and the use and presence of objects of
consumption. A practical implication of investigation via objects and material culture
means is that interviews must to be carried out in real time where consumption practices
actually occur, where words are illustrated by objects and spaces that become
instruments of investigation (Kaufmann, 1992; 1996) and tools of access to social
logics.
The itinerary method has been empirically improved over several years by Desjeux and
his team of researchers, resulting in the set of protocols currently adopted (Vincent,
2005; Desjeux and Clochard, 2006; Desjeux, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2006a, 2006b;
Campos, 2004). In Brazil, the method has been studied since 2004 by the research group
of the L’Oréal Chair of Consumer Behavior, under the auspices of COPPEAD/ UFRJ
(Campos, Casotti and Suarez, 2006). This initiative is consistent with the chair's
objectives to promote the development of knowledge in qualitative methods, especially
with respect to those inspired by ethnographic or interpretive methods. Thus, the first
research study performed by the research group applied the method to studying the
consumption of beauty (Suarez, Casotti and Campos, 2006; Campos, Suarez and
Casotti, 2006; Casotti, Suarez and Campos, 2008) and, since that time, several
researchers from COPPEAD/UFRJ have continued this process (Souto, 2007; Casotti,
Campos and Walther, 2009).
The interest of a consumer behavior and marketing research group in a method
developed within the field of social sciences is rooted in the agreement with the view of
Desjeux (2004) and other authors (McCracken, 2003; Douglas and Isherwood, 2002;
Arnould and Thompson 2005, 2007; Appadurai, 1986; Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994;
Campbell, 2006; Cova, 1997; Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982; Holbrook and
O’Shaugnessy, 1988; Holt, 1997; Rocha and Rocha, 2007; Rocha and Barros, 2006)
that consumption cannot be divorced from the social or cultural milieu in which it
3
occurs. For this reason, development of the technology of qualitative research in
business studies and consumer behavior must be undertaken in order to acquire a richer
and more complex view of the phenomenon of consumption. Besides the itinerary
method, the group has also explored and tested other qualitative methods, such as the
life story (Bertaux, 1997; Campos, 2010) and cultural texts analysis (Hirschman, 1988;
Hirschman, Scott and Wells, 1998; Suarez, Motta and Barros, 2009; Campos, 2009) to
broaden the horizons of research on consumption.
How it works
From the standpoint of methodological practice, the itinerary method is concerned with
obtaining qualitative data through in-depth interviews (McCracken, 1988) and
observations within a comparative scenario of itineraries and respective diversities and
regularities, to reveal resultant behavioral logics. The forgoing is implemented via data
collection that includes individual in-depth interviews, ideally combined with real-time
observation of consumption, purchase, storage and transportation. Photographic records
are an important tool in Desjeux's method, because they register the context where the
consumption process is conducted and complement the analysis, revealing details and
logics that organize daily life (Badot et al., 2009; Dion, 2009).
The implementation of the method starts out applying a grid of predetermined variables
that guides the course of the interview. The grid ensures rigor in data collection on the
part of the researcher, who thus cannot leave out aspects that could be judged, a priori,
and however unconsciously, less relevant to the investigation. In this grid, Desjeux
(2006) proposes seven stages, which are described below. In different contexts of
consumption, the different stages of the itinerary are more or less important. However,
the goal is to ensure that the interview covers all stages in a systematic way. For each
itinerary stage, the following variables should be cross-explored: actors involved,
negotiations, objects and spaces used, tensions, norms or rules followed or subverted.
Stage 1 – The purchase decision in the context of social relations: the triggering of
the whole itinerary, which may include, for example, the preparation of shopping
lists, the routine involved in decisions, actors, influential factors.
Stage 2 – Transport to the place of purchase: the means of transport of people and
goods purchased from the place of purchase to the place of consumption.
Stage 3 – The purchase: the moment the consumer is faced with the product in the
area of sale, on a shelf, in a shop window, on a counter, online.
Stage 4 – The storage of the purchased goods: this involves the observation of all
the spaces and forms of storing the product. The rules involved, the people
responsible, proximity with other objects, and accessibility to other members of the
domicile are also observed.
Stage 5 – Preparation for consumption: Preparation can involve the simple
unpacking of the product, refrigeration, or other procedures that intermediate
between the goods in the storage/purchase state and the consumption state.
Stage 6 - Consumption: the actual moment of use or consumption of the product.
4
Stage 7 - Disposal: the stage when the remnants resulting from the consumption of
the object are discarded, including both packaging and waste fragments of the
consumed object. Disposal procedures, those responsible for disposal in the
domicile, and resources used for disposal are investigated.
In addition to observing the consumption trajectory of the object, the itinerary method
holds that the movement and occupation of space by the objects in question should also
be described. The method argues that the location of certain objects is socially codified
and can be described according to three groups of categories. The first refers to the rules
of presence: the presence of a given object can be permitted in a given location;
presence can be prohibited in another; finally, presence can be obligatory or
recommended in a third. Additionally, rules of exposure may come into play: a given
object may be exposed, shown, or hidden. Finally, there are rules that govern the spaces
where individuals may circulate: in a house, for example, there are public spaces, where
people from outside the home are admitted; private spaces, where only residents are
admitted; and finally, intimate spaces, reserved for the use of just certain residents.
During the individual interviews, the management of objects and spaces is observed
according to these categories, in order to gain insights as to how the material universe is
managed by social norms.
Data collected via interviews, observation and photographs are analyzed separately,
then compared and triangulated. It is precisely through the comparison and contrast of
these three data sources that new and more complex aspects can emerge in the analysis,
such as hesitations related to less conscious or more automatic gestures, or other
inconsistencies such as aspects that, though not mentioned by the interviewee, are
present in the observation (Beji-Becheur and Campos, 2008).
Some research examples
In Brazil, the itinerary method has been used to investigate the universe of feminine
beauty (Casotti, Suarez and Campos, 2008), with a conscious effort to momentarily
abandon the investigation of the symbolic sphere of the theme and, instead, to dive into
the study of the practices and products used by women in their intimate universe. The
study identified a change in female behavior in relation to the use and purchase of
products based on the moment of the life cycle. In addition, the itineraries revealed a
particular relationship between storage and disposal. In certain groups, ―product
cemeteries‖ were encountered in bathroom cupboards, waiting for that special moment,
referred to as ―the right occasion‖ or the opportunity to ―pass them on to somebody.‖
Certain beauty products are never thrown away, for emotional reasons, because they are
either expensive or difficult to obtain, or because they constitute an "emergency supply"
for women who believe can be surprised at any moment by an "unexpected" need.
The method was also used in the investigation of wine consumption in Brazil. Ten
different wine consumption itineraries were identified, according to varied social
occasions: more-formal / less-formal situations; more-public / less-public situations;
more-routine / less-routine situations. Even the itinerary stages that might be imagined
as less-glamorous for a product such as wine provided interesting observations. With
regard to wine stocks, sophisticated accounts provided by wine drinkers were
sometimes at odds with the reality of closets where wines were found in disarray —
without the care initially described, and even defended by the respondents. The moment
5
of disposal revealed a desire to maintain the link with the product, attested in accounts
of the continued use of parts of the wine packaging. Corks, for example, undergo a
range of modes of disposal: the "sentimental cork" is a reminder of a special occasion or
to remember the fine wine consumed; the "functional cork" was kept sporadically in
order to stopper an open bottle; and the "decorative cork", made of glass in
miscellaneous shapes and displayed in the living room (Souto, 2007).
The most recent research project of the group with the itinerary method entailed
conducting interviews with various members of the same family, all describing the same
consumption itinerary — that of buying a new car. The objective was to take to the
extreme the method's theoretical assumption that social interaction contextualizes
consumption practices. One moment all in agreement — the next in disagreement —
buyers and their relatives will influence each other, all the way from perception of
market offers, through construction of judging criteria and the purchase decision itself,
to the final satisfaction with the choice. The individual stories functioned as a sort of
jigsaw puzzle to understanding the complex family relationships and their relationship
to the car purchase.
Final Considerations
This article has sought to present a new research tool used in sociology for the
investigation of consumption as a way to analyze society (Desjeux, 1997, 2000, 2004,
2006a). In the area of marketing, and more specifically in consumer behavior research,
the itinerary method provides marketing researchers with an instrument that underscores
the importance of investigating not just the purchase act itself, but the entire chain of
events involved in consumption. According to the definition of McCracken (2003),
consumption includes the processes through which products are created, purchased and
used. This systematic perspective is revealed by Desjeux (2006a) in the itinerary
method.
The itinerary method presents other possible contributions to the field of consumer
behavior and marketing because it focuses on practices and material culture, in other
words, the concrete aspects of consumption. In doing so, it offers potential
complementary contributions to the body of research on marketing. The use and daily
handling of objects, the accompanying gestures, and the spaces in which they are
allowed, may inform very specific restrictions or recommendations for areas such as
engineering, new product development and packaging design. Desjeux (2006a) believes
that by using the itinerary method, the approach to the concrete universe of
consumption can involve areas not habitually exposed to the results of anthropological
research.
Methodologies not widely recognized in the field of consumer behavior, can,
nonetheless, create fresh inspiration and foster more creative and effective strategies for
companies. In this context, the itinerary method, born of the need to use consumption as
a tool to understand society, can also offer an alternate path: revealing hidden
mechanisms and different logics that explain consumption. This new path of research
attempts not just to describe itineraries, but also to understand and explain them. The
understanding of consumption cannot be limited to paths that follow a straight line; to
the contrary, it should seek to understand consumption as a social phenomenon rich in
contradictions, surprises and multiple perspectives.
6
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