Social Interaction at Tesco - Case Study Example

The Research Process: An Observational study of social interaction at TESCO by Sociology [Department ] Introduction The paper aims to discover the social interaction carried on in the setting of a checkout queue of a supermarket. The research method used for the data collection is unobtrusive observation. The researcher selected Tesco retail store as the place of observation, and conducted naturalistic observation analysis for noting the observations. The manner in which people conversed with each other in relation to the supermarket setting was captured. The use of naturalistic observation method has been studied in a couple of researches. Brown (2004) examined the nature of social interaction in a study consisting of customers and service staff. He found various patterns of behaviors engaged in interactions with each other. The service staff planned the placement of the queue with respect to the number of people. The people used several artifacts and objects placed in the market in their conversations. The observations concluded by finding a sense of morality among the people in the queue. This research gave a significant insight into a characteristic of people expressed in the social setting. Jamieson, Winter & Rogers (2010) examined the use of self-checkouts in Tesco stores and found the average time of checkout to increase. It was observed that the people now spent more time on self-checkouts as compared to the traditional checkout methods. The use of automated till could not enhance the saving of time. The people were seen making longer queues for getting them checked out by the service staff. They experienced delay in the check out process on automated machines. On the whole, the observation of Tesco retail stores identified that people preferred being served by real people than machines. The Research Process The researcher used unobtrusive observation approach for conducting this study. The observational studies are frequently conducted in the area of ethnomethodology (Wodak, Johnstone, & Kerswill, 2011; Turner & Risjord 2007; Rouncefield & Tolmie 2011). This term ‘ethnomethodology’ has been originated by Harold Garfinkel (Durkheim, Weber & Garfinkel 2001; Garfinkel 2003). It is a method to study the social processes in a certain cultural context. This area of study includes the social interactions, actions and behaviors of the people. It consists of all the utterances of the people living in the society which construct a social world around them. The present study is a form of ethnomethodology because of the use of a social scenario for gaining valuable insights about it. The researchers have studied qualitative data by means of focus groups, unobtrusive interviews and participant observations in a number of studies (Francis, & Hester 2004; Livingston, 1987; Rouncefield & Tolmie 2011). These methods have been developed for studying the phenomenon which cannot be studied through quantitative approaches. The social situations, for instance, consist of qualitative characteristics which are difficult to transform in numbers. The unstructured interview technique is frequently used in qualitative research studies. This method involves a flexible interview methodology in which the interview can ask questions depending on the situation. At times, the interviewer forms an outline on what type of questions to ask. However, this outline or a structure is not strictly followed. The researchers have critically evaluated the interview method because of various reasons (Hammersely 2008; Llewellyn & Hindmarsh 2010). First of all, the interview technique cannot provide evidence of the accuracy of the conversation of the interviewee. There is a chance of giving false information to the interviewer. Because of the alertness of the interviewee caused by the awareness of the data getting recorded, the fake responses can be expected. In addition, there is no such measure to gauge the individual’s responses given in the interview. As the people become highly conscious while being interviewed, it forced the researchers to search for an alternative technique. The alternative method for collecting qualitative data in sociological research is observational technique. This method consists of two types; naturalistic observation and participant observation. The former method involves not intervening in the socially occurring situation while the latter method includes taking an active role in the observed setting. In other words, the researcher has a passive role in naturalistic or unobtrusive observation method. In the present study, the researcher has also utilized unobtrusive observational technique for collecting the data. Observational Setting and Participants The researcher entered the retail store of Tesco with his notebook and pen. A checkout queue was selected as the place of observation by the researcher. There were many people, men and women, in the queue. The queue was quite long and consisted of around twenty people. The people seemed to belong to various age groups. There were few old people in queue as well as some adolescents. However, there were no children in the queue. Most of the people were dressed in a casual manner although some seemed to have come from offices and wore formal dresses. It was the day time so it can be inferred that the people had several meetings to attend. It was gathered through the interactions of the people in the queue. Most of the people seemed in a hurry and were looking perturbed. It was obvious in their facial expressions and manner of behaving. There was occasional pushing of individuals to get forward in the queue. Once, a man skipped the queue and tried to reach the service staff. It was badly received by the other people standing in the queue. One aged woman scolded the man for not following the queue order. It was soon followed by the collective complaints by the other people in the queue. It was observed that the man had responded to the first objection made on him by the old lady negatively. However, when more people started to complain about the same thing, he could not retaliate. He seemed to get worried by the host of complaints made on him. One man even tried to push him inwards the queue by force. This situation created a conflict situation in the queue. So the person who was guilty of misconduct had to surrender. He apologized to the individuals in the queue for his misconduct. He explained to the people standing in the queue that he was in hurry due to an urgent appointment. He requested them to let him checkout soon because he needed to badly to reach to some place. A change in the behavior of the mob was seen when the man put forward his request to others. The responses were mixed by the people of the queue. Some people favored letting him check out first in view of the hurry he was in. On the contrary, there were others who totally objected to letting him in the queue before them. They maintained that everyone standing in the queue was in a hurry and nobody was standing idle here. They strongly spoke against it and threatened to call the security. The people who were against letting that man in the queue before everyone were young adults. However, the older people struggled to take the man’s side. They tried to calm others down and asked them to avoid fighting with each other. Meanwhile, few people went to call the security and complained them about the person who was trying to upset the queue. The security staff came in between and sorted the matter by inquiring the queue about the unrest. The people narrated the situation to the security staff and they took the man who was the cause of trouble to the management. The security staff asked the other people to keep standing in the queue and wait for their turn without breaking any rules. The researcher closely looked at the people’s behaviors after the departure of that man who created unrest among the mob. It was found that the people mostly interacted about the situation of possible conflict happened some time ago. The people talked about how uncivilized some people had become nowadays. However, after some time, the interactions between people took a normal turn after moving out of queue. The new people who were unaware of the conflicting situation that occurred here joined the queue. The people talked about the various items they brought from the store. A man carried a bag of potatoes and talked to a women standing near him about the rates of vegetables. Another person talked about the shaving kit he purchased to the other man standing nearby. It seemed that they were trying to kill the time by interacting with each other. The subject of most of their conversations was the items of the retail store. Conclusion To sum up, the paper examined the social setting of a supermarket to study the social interactions of the people standing in the checkout queue. The observation of the people in the queue concludes that forming a queue is an important social process. The people do not take it lightly and express their moral values and attitudes while attending a checkout queue. The current observational study indicates that people react to any misconduct made in forming a queue. It also comes to our mind that different people react differently to a single social event. References Brown, B 2004, ‘The order of service: the practical management of customer interaction’, Sociological Research Online, vol. 9, no. 4. Available from: . [8 March 2012]. Durkheim, E, Weber, M & Garfinkel, H 2001, The classical roots of ethnomethodology, The University of North Carolina Press, United States of America. Francis, D & Hester, S 2004, An invitation to ethnomethodology: language, society and social interaction, Sage, London. Garfinkel, H 2003, Studies in ethnomethodology, Blackwell, America. Hammersely, M 2008, Questioning Qualitative Inquiry: Critical Essays, SAGE, Ch.5 Assessing the radical critique of interviews. Pp. 99-100. Jamieson, A, Winter, AV & Rogers, C 2010, ‘Self-service checkouts have not cut supermarket queues’, The Telegraph. Available from: < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/7957800/Self-service-checkouts-have-not-cut-supermarket-queues.html>. [8 March 2012]. Llewellyn, N & Hindmarsh, J 2010, Organization, interaction and practice: Studies in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Livingston, E 1987, Making sense of ethnomethodology, Routledge, London. Rouncefield, M & Tolmie, P 2011, Ethnomethodology at work, Ashgate, Great Britain Turner, SP & Risjord, MW 2007, Philosophy of anthropology and sociology, Elsevier, Netherlands Wodak, R, Johnstone, B & Kerswill, P 2011, The SAGE handbook of sociolinguistics, SAGE, Great Britain Read More