Understanding Netnography as a Marketing Research Tool | Louise Grant

The Fashion Industry is a rapidly changing field that has to adapt to change in consumer behaviour and social changes as a result of new technologies. There has been a major shift in power from larger online brands to people who generate their own influence through participation in online conversations through social media channels, blogs and more. 

What is Netnography?

Netnography is a form of participatory online research that aims to understand social interaction and culture within communities by observing and collecting conversations that are recorded and used as data. Kozinets (2002) explains netnography as an online marketing research technique that provides consumer insight. Netnography, as a market researching tool is an efficient and cost-effective approach that achieves a better understanding of consumer perceptions, leading to innovation and new product development.

Ethnography VS Netnography 

Netnography and Ethnography both adopt a similar approach of using qualitative data and collection analysis.

Ethnography is the study of people through participant observation in all forms of human communication and interaction (Atkinson, 2015). Ethnography can be described as conducting research into the cultural phenomena, with the broader culture being studied. 

Netnography is ethnography online, where study of an online community through participation is the foundation to the research (Kozinets, 2010). Netnography is developed through ethnography and applied to research in digital communities.  

How Group Fashion Agency uses Netnography for Market Research

At Group Fashion Agency, we are constantly trying to observe the social changes that occur through the use of new technologies and developments in social media. Netnography is used as a tool for Group Fashion Agency to understand online communities. It looks at the existing computer-mediated environment differently and in a more logical practice. 

At Group Fashion Agency, our team monitors our weekly fashion blog as well as our LinkedIn page to reach out to our clients and increase the overall engagement on these sites. Netnography studies are more accurate methods of qualitative research, this acts as a cost effective tool as we are paying our team of researchers to go online and provide their expert opinions. Kozinets (2002) explains how netnography uses online information that is published on different forums, blogs and websites to identify and understand the needs and decision influences of relevant online consumer groups. 

Online Fashion retailers like Zara and H&M use the social media platform Instagram to communicate online. Kozinets (2010) explains how important online social networking sites are when implementing netnography as they combine: web-page, private emails, chat rooms and blogs. Through these interactions of their online brand, these fashion retailers will gain further analysis on whether their brand is successful with these different interaction methods.

#Netnography #DigitalMarketingAgency #Ethnography 

References 

Atkinson, P. (2015). For Ethnography. 

Kozinets, R. (2002). The Field behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communities. Journal of Marketing Research, 39(1), 61-72. 

Kozinets, R. V. (2010). Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online by KOZINETS, ROBERT V. The Modern Language Journal (Vol. 96).