Apple Ethno an Ethnographic Observation

Apple Ethno

An Ethnographic Observation at the Apple Store

Fieldwork Observations:

Apple Store located inside the Generic County Mall: Spacious store with regular customer traffic. Roughly 5 to 10 customers in the store at all times. At high-volume, 30 customers or so.

Layout:

Wide aisles give store roomy, uncluttered look. Displays line both east and west walls, with monitors, laptops and television-based peripherals. Eight rectangular, short aisles line the middle of the store displaying iPods, iPhones and other accessories and peripherals. A long counter with stools in front of it lines the back wall of the store. Personnel engage in tech support and sales here. An LCD screen displays current time and approaching tech appointments.

Employees:

Staff is friendly and has significant store presence. Always somebody available and free to help. Staff wears color-coded t-shirts to denote position and skill set. Staff is both behind the counter and floating throughout the store, offering to assist customers. A staff member tends to approach any individual shopping who has not been helped yet. Customers have little difficulty gaining attention or help of knowledgeable staff members.

Write-Up:

I had the opportunity to observe an Apple Store in operation during a normal business day. Placing myself inside the store and presenting myself as a customer with the approval of the manager on hand that day, I casually browsed products for the period of one hour while customers came and went.

It was my impression that the Human Resource aspects of the operation are particularly efficient and progressive. Apple stores work with customers on two different levels, both of which seem to flow with little wait-time for customers. The two major functions performed by the Apple store are as a retail location for the purchasing of new products and as a destination for already existing customers to receive technical support.

The store attends to the first of these charges by maintaining a significant staff presence. Personnel are dressed in differently colored t-shirts intended to reflect tech support, sales associate, product specialist and managerial positions. This makes it easier for customers to identify the type of staff member who might be able to assist them. However, upon entrance, most customers are greeted by an employee who asks the purpose of the visit. He will then direct the customer to either the proper display or staff member according to the response. The size of the staff is usually large enough that the ratio of staff to customer was rarely worse that 1 to 3 even during the busiest moments. As a result, most customers were assisted in a timely fashion by sales associates who were attentive, friendly and knowledgeable. Personnel use walkie-talkies to communicate with one another inside the store, making response time to customer needs typically very fast. With wide aisles and sleek looking, uncluttered product displays, the stores have a cool, calming and modern look that is easy to navigate.