Observational research techniques are aimed at observing consumers interacting naturally with their surroundings including products and services in use. A key advantage of observation research is that often the respondent or consumer is unaware that they are being observed, allowing their behaviour to be observed naturally.

Focus groups, interviews, intercepts, and questionnaire surveys generally elicit secondary accounts of product use. Such "self report" data is subject to many sources of error, including memory effects, and the unconscious motivations of respondents to tell the interviewer what they think the interviewer wants to hear.

Direct observation can reduce or negate much of this error, by relying on pure observed consumer behaviour rather than secondary accounts of that behaviour.