Ethnography & Shop-Along Study Planner

Example output

Ethnography & shop-along study plan — Little Sprout, snack decision behavior

Research question, sharpened
Not just "what snacks do parents buy" but the specific moment of decision: what makes a snack a diaper-bag item versus a pantry-only item, and what that sorting reveals about how parents think about Little Sprout specifically.

Recruiting criteria and screener
Parents or primary caregivers of children 1-3 years old, sole or primary grocery shopper for the household. Mix of current Little Sprout buyers and category buyers who don't currently buy Little Sprout (recommend 60/40 split to see both loyalist and non-buyer sorting logic). Screen out anyone employed in market research, food product development, or a competitor company. Recruit across two income bands within each metro to avoid the sample skewing toward a single household type — flag this as worth checking against your actual buyer profile before finalizing quotas.

In-home visit protocol (8 sessions, ~75 minutes each)
1. Warm-up (10 min): household and routine context, no product talk yet.
2. Pantry and diaper-bag tour (25 min): ask the parent to physically show you where snacks live in both locations and narrate why each item is where it is — this is the core data-gathering moment; let them lead, do not suggest categories.
3. Restock walkthrough (15 min): ask the parent to describe their last grocery trip and which snack decisions they remember making versus which were automatic.
4. Reaction to Little Sprout specifically (15 min): where would this product go in their home, and why.
5. Wrap-up (10 min): anything they wish existed that doesn't.

Shop-along protocol (4 sessions, ~45 minutes each)
1. Meet at the store entrance; confirm they're doing a real shop, not a staged one.
2. Follow through the snack aisle silently first — do not interrupt initial scanning behavior.
3. After they've made a selection or passed the aisle, ask them to narrate what they considered and rejected.
4. If Little Sprout is on shelf, note whether they noticed it before you point to it.

Observation guide — what to watch for
Physical location logic: is the diaper-bag/pantry split about portability, mess-risk, or something else entirely? Do not assume the answer before the visit. Decision speed: which snack choices happen instantly (habit) versus with visible deliberation (a real decision point worth influencing). Language: what words do parents use to describe a "good" snack for the bag versus the pantry — capture verbatim, this feeds messaging later. Packaging handling: do they check anything on-pack during the shop-along moment, and what specifically.

In-the-moment probes (non-leading)
"Tell me why that one and not this one." "Walk me through what almost went in the bag instead." "What would make you switch this from a pantry item to a bag item?"

Field-note template
Session ID, date, household composition, verbatim quotes (flagged separately from your own interpretation), photos of pantry/bag contents (with consent), and a single-sentence "what surprised me" note captured immediately after each session while memory is fresh.

Debrief and synthesis structure
After all 12 sessions: cluster households by their diaper-bag/pantry sorting logic (likely 2-4 patterns will emerge), identify where Little Sprout currently fits versus where parents wish it fit, and flag any pattern that appeared in fewer than 3 households as a lead worth a larger quant check, not a confirmed finding.

Assumption to validate: 8 in-home plus 4 shop-along sessions is a reasonable starting sample for pattern identification, but is not statistically representative — treat findings as directional hypotheses for further validation, not population-level claims.

Want me to build the actual field-note capture sheet as a fillable template?