Netnography: Effective Market Research Through Online Communities

Robert V. Konzinets. The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communities

Summary

The article describes quite explicitly how a marketer can take advantage of the internet and use a type of ethnography to research about a product. This ethnography is based on information gained from members of boards, rings and lists in online communities. The process of netnography is as follows:

1)      Find suitable online communities through online portals. www.epinions.com or www.dir.webring.yahoo.com provide directories of web rings. Googles newsgroup search is used to find newsgroups of certain products. Email lists are found from www.egroups.com and listzt.com.

2)      Choose which communities best represent the topic of investigation.

3)      Familiarize with the communities characteristics such as group membership, market-oriented behaviors, interests and language.

4)      Data collection: a) collect data directly from computer-mediated communications of online community members, b) inscribe observations of the community and members, interactions, and meanings.

5)      Continue collection until new insights on topical areas are still being generated.

6)      QSR NVivo and Atlas.ti help in coding, content analysis, data linking, data display and theory-building functions. The rest the researcher has to produce from the written observations.

Theories & Methodology

The main theory, implicitly stated, is that netnography can help marketers get official insight into possible offerings much more efficiently than through traditional ethnography. This is if efficiency is measured in cost and time, which it generally tends to be.

Reaction & Analysis

After reading about ethnography, I was surprised that procedure is so complicated and time-consuming, which really doesn’t fit a company that needs information fast. Netnography applies the underlying concepts of ethnography to the context of the internet. Since this context lacks physicality, some of the methods from ethnography are cut out, however new methods are introduced with direct communication with members occurring through online messaging. These methods are invaluable to a market researcher wishing to gain insight on a product or service.

The article itself was much more explicit in the sense that it provided clear references and examples. The fact that the author provided sources for finding the boards, lists and rings of a certain product or service provides true practicality to any researcher. The example in the end discussing an investigation into coffee consumption through an online newsgroup, <alt.coffee>, demonstrated the actual investigative process.