There are certainly a lot of similarities between advertising agencies and anthropologist. First of all, they both specialize in studying their audiences and finding out what appeals to them the most. But the main difference between these two areas of research is that advertising agencies concentrate more on gaining a competitive edge over their opponents by mostly concentrating on aspects of the society that they need to target, while anthropologist carry out a more general research. Another distinct difference is the fact that, advertising agencies may try to exploit their research in order to manipulate their audience in some way, while anthropologists do their job in order to provide data about the communities that they study. But nevertheless, ad agencies hire anthropologists, because the structure of their jobs is practically identical.
The same thing applies to ethnographer and market researchers. Ethnographers that work for the government or some company, research into the impacts of certain actions on the culture of a community. Market researchers work very closely with advertising agencies and their job is to investigate the impact of the adverts and send the feedback to the creators of the ads, so that they can improve their strategy. In addition to that, market researchers and ethnographers, are able to build complex mathematical models that are able to accurately predict possible trends in the future. Advertising agencies use that data to gain a competitive edge.
Well, it is a very well known fact that adults usually never understand the needs and wants of the new generation. Therefore, the need for a group of specialists that are able to research deep into the jungles of teen mindset seems inevitable. I think that the only difference between normal adults and market researchers is that the second group is paid much more money.
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