Ethnography: Sneakers
Overview
For my Ethnography for Designers class, I and a team of three others spent four months gathering qualitative research to answer our research question: Why do sneakerheads buy, sell, and collect sneakers? Our process further led to our cohering metaphor: ​Sneaker culture is a pawn shop. ​This process page will further explain the steps my team and I took to gather qualitative research by performing a virtual, applied ethnography to create our final research report and to answer our research question.
Role: UX Researcher Duration: 4 Months
Introduction
My team and I wanted to explore the value and consumption behaviors of sneakerheads who are either resellers or consumers. We wanted to learn the role sneakers play in their lives and to better understand what sneaker culture is. Together we conducted an applied ethnography to investigate behaviors and social interaction within the sneaker community.
​This process page goes in-depth about the research done to answer our research question and complete a. I will further explain the methods my team and I used during our process for completing this project. This page will cover the fieldwork that was done during our observations and interviews. After, I will go into detail about the analysis that was done while being in the field and after leaving the field. Finally, I will talk about the challenges that were faced while during this whole experience.
Method
For this project, we conducted a virtual, applied ethnography. Ethnography is the in-depth study of culture. My team and I wanted to explore the culture of sneakers so we did an applied ethnography, which is a qualitative research method done with interpretation through observations, interviews, and analysis of a specific field site. We wanted to get an emic perspective, insider's perspective, of sneaker culture. Due to COVID-19, we decided to take the course of this project virtually and explore how people interact with one another in a virtual environment. We participated in close observations and analysis of the Sneakers Reddit page, which consists of over 2.3 million sneakerheads (people), in which our main goal was to understand: Why do these sneakerheads buy, sell, and collect sneakers? During this project, My team and I also did contextual research from online resources such as articles and videos to familiarize ourselves with sneaker culture.
Our applied method was done in the span of sixteen weeks starting from August 2021 through December 2021. My team and I compiled all of our findings with our notes and analysis to create our research report and answer our research question.
Fieldwork
Observations
Before we started our observations, my team and I reached out to the moderators of the Sneakers Reddit page to ask for consent to be allowed to observe and participate in the field.
I set up my journal using Microsoft Word creating a “Jottings” section and a “Field Notes” section. The jottings section is where I took the time to sit and observe the field and see how the people within the community interact with each other, what they post, and find common patterns. This part of this journal is where I was allowed to write anything and everything I saw whether it was a post, comment, replies with one another, etc. After each observation session, I took the time immediately after to analyze what I observed in my field note section. This is where I explained the time frame I observed, what patterns I noticed, and hypothesized what I saw going on within the field. My team and I did almost 36 hours of observations. I did 11 hours in total breaking them into 8 sessions.
The most common posts that were observed were participants showing their rare sneaker finds, newest buys, or organization/clean refurbishments of their collection. ​During the observation period, I noticed that the most valuable sneakers that were being posted on the page were the ones that have a history or a story, but the sneaker community also focused on sneakers trending today, mainly consisting of Nike Jordans. The community was found to be very supportive of one another within the field and we realized that people apart of the sneaker culture love unique and valuable sneakers.
The most consistent pattern my team and I noticed within the Sneaker Reddit community was value. Whether it was buyers or resellers, they were trying to find value within the cost of a sneaker or the style. With this common pattern, we were able to come up with our cohering metaphor: sneaker culture is a pawn shop. People use pawn shops to exchange something for monetary gain and to find the best value. In this community we noticed, resellers especially, that sneakers that are sold through web apps, such as StockX or GOAT, were being priced for a higher value than what they originally cost. For most people, selling sneakers is an investment.
Interviews
My team and I reached out to four different people within the Sneakers Reddit page to learn one-on-one an insider's perspective of sneaker culture and what collecting sneakers mean to them. For each interviews, there was one moderator and one facilitator. The moderator is usually the person who is mainly speaking, taking quick notes, and asking questions to the interviewee while the facilitator is the one observing, jotting in-depth notes, and budding in to ask quick questions if needed. I had the opportunity to interview one of the four people we interviewed. Due to COVID-19 and us choosing a virtual environment, we decided to use Microsoft Teams to conduct all of our interviews. We sent out consent forms beforehand to each interviewee to be allowed to record the interviews for research purposes, take a screenshot, and ask questions.
Two of the four interviews wanted to keep their names anonymous. I had an opportunity to interview Adam Shnick, who consented to use his name. Throughout this interview, Adam showed major interest in sneakers and the culture. He showed us multiple valuable sneakers he owned in his collection and explained the stories behind them. We learned that Adam is a seller and a buyer within the sneaker community. He explained that within the past year he was able to make up to $15,000 from investing in sneakers. This goes to show that Adam is an example of those within the community who tried to get the best value by buying and selling sneakers.
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Other interviews: The rest of my team moderated the other three interviews while I facilitated. The two anonymous interviewees had strong opinions about sneaker culture and explained that they found reselling sneakers and raffles to be unfair. They explained that it is difficult to come across a rare sneaker and that it is unrighteous to price a sneaker four times the original price it is being sold. Even though they expressed their opinions on the culture, both of them still explained that they have or had an interest in purchasing sneakers and style. Four our third interview, Carlos Villanueva, was in the middle of the idea of sneaker culture being positive and negative. Carlos showed parts of the collection he owns now with some of the famous styles that we commonly saw posted within the field, but also mentioned he buys a lot of shoes mainly for comfort and everyday wear. Three out of the four interviewees are mainly sneaker buyers while the one person we interviewed, Adam, is both a buyer and seller within the community. Overall, we learned from these interviews that sneaker culture is a controversial topic due to the fact that there are mixed opinions about the way sneakers are being bought and sold.
Analysis
My team and I held multiple meetings through the Discord server to discuss and analyze all of our information from our fieldwork combined in order to answer our research question: why do sneakerheads buy, sell, and collect sneakers.
An ordered matrix consists of rows and columns which organizes information. This tool helped us come up with and organize the common patterns we saw throughout our fieldwork. During our meetings we first discussed common posts and interactions we saw to get a general idea of similar findings we all had. Next we started discussing different categories to add to our matrix. We added a row for each interview and a row for four of our observation sessions. For the columns we came up with five open ended questions that could have multiple answers. After, we went to each box and discussed answers for each question pertaining to either an interviewee or observation session and added stickies to each category.
Ordered Matrix
Answering The Research Question
Research Question: Why do sneakerheads buy, sell, and collect sneakers?
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After creating our matrix, we were able to use this tool to create our research report and find an answer to our research question. There are multiple answers to our question; people buy sneakers for style or every day wear. Sneakers are sold for more value and are an investment. They are collected as a hobby for most people. The main answer we came up with is that sneakerheads buy, sell, and collect sneakers for value. This could mean that they could be purchasing them to get bring more value or importance into their personal style or simply reselling sneakers at a higher cost to get more worth out of them.
Cohering Metaphor
A metaphor is a simple way us as humans organize and understand what goes on around us. A cohering metaphor helps us understand and summarize the complex ideas of qualitative research.
Cohering Metaphor: Sneaker culture is a pawn shop.
In pawnshops, people try to sell their items to get the value out of them, but there are also disadvantages with interest rate and finance charges being too high. In sneaker culture we see that shoes are being sold for more of a value to get more worth out of them, but we also notice that they are often being sold too high for what they originally cost. The comparison between a pawn shop and sneaker culture helps us understand the behaviors of the sneaker community its within the culture.
Challenges
Due to COVID-19, we had to perform this project in a virtual environment. This makes a difference in an applied ethnography study because most of the times people might not portray who they are online. Even though, yes, it is possible someone could not portray their true self in person as well, online gives them a much easier pathway to be something they are not as we have to interpret everything the way we read it.
A major challenge we faced during this project was receiving consent from a field. We originally started out trying to join the Addicted To All Things Fresh Facebook group as our field site to study sneaker culture. Unfortunately, not everyone on the team was able to get their request to join approved in time by the group's moderator so we diverted to the Sneakers Reddit Page instead. This had shortened our fieldwork period with not as many observation hours as we had hoped.
​As for the team, one of the difficulties we faced during this process was time management. We are all current students at Kennesaw State University with different and conflicting schedules. Though we were able to make it work, it was challenging at times trying to set up meetings at a decent time where we could all meet up together virtually.
Conclusion
Applied ethnography helped my team and I gather qualitative research about sneaker culture and allowed us to interpret the sneaker community. This lead to us completing our goal which was to answer our research question: Why do sneakerheads buy, sell, and collect sneakers. Though there were challenges along the way due to COVID-19 and being virtual, my main takeaway from this project is being able to learn in-depth user research and focusing on qualitative data than quantitative data using applied ethnography.