Your research plan should, in all but a very few cases, stick with the idea of just a little fieldwork during your China visit. (A few of you have some very special needs, or a bit more time in China, and you may do a bit more business-related fieldwork and interviewing while in China, and that's fine). This limitation makes sense because our time in China is quite short. Anyway, as you know by now, China demands a long-term commitment. A short visit will not allow you time to do a great deal of in-country field research.
But when you launch into a little fieldwork, you can borrow an idea from Intel, where anthropologists like Ken Anderson (that's Ken in the photo) are using anthropological techniques for research that drives business strategy.
So while I recognize that much of your China visit is a chance to smell the culture and not a full-on field research experience, there may be a few handy hints in the field-research department that I can offer.
These days, more and more businesses recognize the value of an anthropological approach not only for discovering what consumers do with products and services, but for building strategy, too. You can visit my colleague Ken Anderson's short article in the on-line version of the Harvard Business review, here, for a taste of what I mean. The rather more open-ended approach that anthropologists usually take to fieldwork may be just the ticket for an exploratory visit to China. I hope you'll find a few methodological (and theoretical) hints interesting and useful.
