Netnography can be described as a tool used by marketers, which aims to collect and process the data related to social behaviour of people on the Internet. There have been other research tools for data collection, such as surveys and focus groups to obtain the consumer insights, considering they might be misleading due to ostensible responds; netnography focuses on gathering data accurately and instantaneously while consumers are behaving freely (What is Netnography? | Martech Zone, 2021). To understand the difference of netnography from traditional methods, it is better to go through the history of the term.
The History of Netnography
The word netnography was invented by Dr. Robert V. Kozinets in 1995, depicting a connection between ethnographic research and free social behaviour of the individuals on the Internet. Accordingly, the name of netnography comes from the combination of ethnography and internet which is also as known as net in short. As ethnography is considered one of the qualitative research methods that requires the researcher to be present in the actual place of the study for data collection, its context depends on cultural or sociological insights. As well as ethnography, netnography holds similar perspective in terms of searching about people’s behaviour, which means both studies are descriptive, immersive, benefiting from different methodologies and may easily adapt to different contexts (How Market Research Is Like Anthropology, 2021).
How It works and Why It is Different from Other Methods?
To understand how netnography works is simple. It uses from the same methodology as ethnography does, but it also integrates online or social media data into cultural insights. According to Kozinets, in the light of netnography, online interactions are regarded as cultural reflections.
Comparing with other methods, netnography looks more useful and realistic than surveys and focus groups as they might be intrusive, artificial or irrelevant to consumers, and cost more considering the number of research population. Netnography is “cultural insights” and “context” focused, which means it doesn’t interpret online interactions and communications as simple content and searches for meaningful conclusions from that cultural insights. Netnography aims to provide significant outputs to the marketers to help them with better decision-makings while discovering characteristics of the online communities by analysing their images, texts, symbols and the language in general (2021). Now, it is time to take a look at the advantages of netnographic approach for creating successful marketing strategies.
What Netnography Offers to Marketers and Companies?
Here are some convincing reasons why companies and marketers need to pay attention to netnography (Netnography is Digital Anthropology — Netnografica, 2021):
- Brand perceptions can be easily recognised by netnography.
- Netnography provides significant insights for companies that want to achieve their goals in brand positioning and repositioning.
- Ensuring meaningful cultural insights, netnography also helps companies and brands for customer segmentation process.
- Netnography is a great tool to measure the customer feedbacks before the development and innovation of new products.
- Netnography can be used as a trend identification tool by determining future trends of the market.
- Netnography can guide to a new service models for value creation such as crowdfunding.
- Netnography can lead to an effective social media strategy by increasing customer reach.
- Netnographic insights helps to activate emotional connection between customers and brands.
Keywords: Netnography, Cultural Insights, Social Behaviour, Ethnography, Social Media, Marketers
Ilgin Damla Omay
References and Sources
Martech Zone. 2021. What is Netnography? | Martech Zone. [online] Available at: https://martech.zone/what-is-netnography/ [Accessed 7 April 2021].
Netnografica. 2021. Netnography is Digital Anthropology — Netnografica. [online] Available at: http://www.netnografica.com/netnography-101 [Accessed 8 April 2021].
Preventviolentextremism.info. 2021. [online] Available at: https://preventviolentextremism.info/sites/default/files/White%20Paper%20%E2%80%93%20Netnography-%20The%20Marketer%E2%80%99s%20Secret%20Weapon.pdf [Accessed 8 April 2021].
The Balance Small Business. 2021. How Market Research Is Like Anthropology. [online] Available at: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/investigate-social-media-like-an-anthropologist-2297153 [Accessed 8 April 2021].
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