Breaking into a new market is a classic path to business growth. Ability to understand consumption
experience of consumers is a major concern of today’s marketers, most especially in view of the rise of
experiential marketing approaches that seek to re-enchant people through consumption (Schmitt, 1999,
2003). Service businesses, in particular, are being urged to have a global view on what types of
experiences to organize for consumers and how they should be provided. One of the entry strategy of a
successful global organization is to research the market they are about to enter and most marketers are
now turning to ethnographers.
Ethnography has therefore, devised a compilation of retrospective and introspective consumer narratives
called “big stories” in contrast to “small stories” Therefore, ethnography of consumption has evolved
towards a double method featuring, on one hand, observations that generate “small stories” and, on the
other, introspection that generates “big stories”. Ethnography of consumption has been strengthened by
the shift from a researcher-devised retrospective narrative in an interview form to an introspective
narrative that is produced, fine-tuned and diffused by the consumer in the shape of a text diary, audio
diary or video diary (Caru and Cova, 2008). This non-empirical article is to detail the major roles of
ethnographers when a company wants to enter an international market. Romania is the largest oil
producer in Central and Eastern Europe with reserves of 956 million barrels. According to the 2008 BP
Statistical Energy Survey, Romania produced an average of 105.4 thousand barrels of crude oil per day
in 2007, 0.12% of the world total and a change of 0.9 % compared to 2006. The country is a net oil
importer, and according to the 2008 BP Statistical Energy Survey, Romania consumed an average of
229.29 thousand barrels a day of oil in 2007, 0.27% of the world total and a change from 2006 of 10.44
tbpd. This non-empirical article is to look into the entry strategies of oil multinationals wishing to do
business in Romani