Research and consulting services

Consumer Research

We study the cultural patterns of specific consumer groups, and how different groups consume specific products. In the context of consumers’ everyday lives, we read the reasons behind what they buy. This is market research grounded in culture, not in numbers alone.

Consumers do not behave the way they answer surveys. We enter the places where consumption actually happens, from homes and stores to online communities, and find the unmet needs in the gap between what people say and what they do. New product development, brand positioning, and the rediscovery of a target audience all begin there.

Every era and region, every generation, gender, and subculture creates trends of its own and lives under their influence. Big data is good at tracking how fast a trend moves. Chainjee looks underneath: at the meanings, the contexts, and the relationships in which people follow a trend, or refuse it. The clues to the next wave are found there.

Political Opinion & Policy Research

Democracy begins with listening to citizens. We find the voices of voters across regions and generations in the context of their lives, and study the interests and public demands that surround specific policies.

On the surface an election is a contest of numbers. In reality it is the outcome of deep currents of public sentiment and the demands of an era. Polls show the result, but not why the numbers moved. Chainjee captures what lies beneath the approval ratings: voters’ needs, their frames of perception, and the language voters themselves use.

Government policy, the dialogue between councils and residents, the way voters see their world. Wherever the public sphere needs evidence instead of guesswork, that is Chainjee’s field.

International Field Research

Entering a new market begins with understanding local consumers in the context of local culture. For global companies, Korea is one of the world’s most closely watched test markets: consumers here are quick to adopt, quick to judge, and set trends that travel far beyond the country. For international clients, Chainjee offers qualitative research on Korean consumers, conducted from inside the culture.

The same fieldwork runs in the other direction. We have studied consumers in China and Vietnam, and, working with experts from the Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology, the Korea Academic Association of Contemporary Chinese Studies, and the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies, we research consumers across the world’s cultures, from Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia to Central Asia, the United States, and the EU.

Methodology Workshops, Lectures & Consulting

In the age of AI, the focus of research is shifting to the qualitative. Drawing on academic theory and field experience, Chainjee offers workshops and lectures on qualitative methodology for the AI era.

We cover the history and principles of qualitative research; its theoretical foundations, from ethnography to phenomenology and grounded theory; key concepts such as thick data, semi-structured interviews, and coding; and how the work is actually done. This is not abstract lecturing: we show how to apply the methods in your own field, and how to combine them with quantitative research to produce the best possible knowledge.

For graduate researchers preparing a thesis, and for organizations that want to run qualitative research in-house, we provide methodology consulting from study design through analysis.