Insights into customers and buying centers are critical. GE’s ethnographic research into the plastic-fiber industry revealed that the firm wasn’t in a commodity business driven by price, as it had assumed. Instead it was in an artisanal industry, with customers who wanted collaboration at the earliest stages of development. GE completely reoriented the way it interacted with companies in the industry as a result. In developing markets, ethnographic research also can be very useful, especially in far-flung rural areas, given that marketers often do not know these consumers as well.