tailieunhanh - The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography For Marketing Research in Online Communities

For tracking the marketing related behaviors of online communities, “netnography” is a stand-alone method. It is a way in which to understand the discourse and interactions of people engaging in computer-mediated communication about market-oriented topics. During the course of netnographic data collection and analysis, the market researcher must follow conventional procedures that the research is reasonable or “trustworthy” (note: in most qualitative consumer research, the concept of “trustworthiness” is used rather than “validity,” see Wallendorf and Belk 1989, Lincoln and Guba 1985). “Netnography” is based primarily upon the observation of textual discourse, an important difference from the balancing of discourse and observed behavior that occurs during in-person ethnography (cf. Arnould and Wallendorf 1994). Informants therefore may be presumed to be. | 1 ROBERT V. KOZINETS The author develops netnography as an online marketing research technique for providing consumer insight. Netnography is ethnography adapted to the study of online communities. As a method netnography is faster simpler and less expensive than traditional ethnography and more naturalistic and unobtrusive than focus groups or interviews. It provides information on the symbolism meanings and consumption patterns of online consumer groups. The author provides guidelines that acknowledge the online environment respect the inherent flexibility and openness of ethnography and provide rigor and ethics in the conduct of marketing research. As an illustrative example the author provides a netnography of an online coffee newsgroup and discusses its marketing implications. The Field Behind the Screen Using Netnography For Marketing Research in Online Communities Consumers making product and brand choices are increasingly turning to computer-mediated communication for information on which to base their decisions. 2 Besides perusing advertising and corporate web-sites consumers are using newsgroups chat rooms e-mail list servers personal World Wide Web-pages and other online formats to share ideals build communities and contact fellow Robert V. Kozinets is assistant professor of marketing at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management Northwestern University Evanston IL 60208 e-mail address r-kozinets@ web-page http faculty kozinets htm research . The author thanks the marketing seminar group at Kellogg Annama Joy Jay Handelman and John Sherry for comments on earlier versions of this paper. The two editors and three reviewers also provided kind encouragement and useful remarks that helped improve the article. The members of the newsgroup generously contributed their utterances and insights. 2 For example surveys on adults who use online services indicate that 36 of them access newsgroups and 25 visit chat rooms .