Netography: Rich insights from online research

Netnography as a methodology for consumer and marketing research has been introduced in the late 1990s (Kozinets, 1998). It designates an interpretive method devised specifically to investigate the consumer behaviour of cultures and communities present on the internet. As such it is a written account that results from fieldwork studying on-line, computer-mediated or Internet-based communications. Based on the traditions and techniques of cultural anthropology, netnography investigates the specific instance in which community is formed through computer-mediated communications (CMC). The data collected consists of the researcher’s field notes combined with the artifacts of the culture or community, and hence this data will be mainly textual such as downloaded files of newsgroup postings, transcripts of MUD (multi-user dungeons) or IRC (Internet relay chat) sessions, and e-mail exchanges.

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