Abstract

There is a rich literature on corporate ethnography focusing on new product design and development (Flynn et al. 2009; Salvador et al. 1999), but we still know relatively little about the role ethnography can play in guiding brand strategies. In a tale of rum, rugby, and urban tribes, this chapter describes how ethnography facilitated strategic change for an established brand by attending to the intricate system of differences between various fan groups of Australian rugby. Our work further illustrates how ethnography can help organizations deal with the complexity and ambiguity of markets (Cayla and Arnould 2013).