Social Media and Marketing: A New Schulich MBA Course

September 15, 2009 by Robert Kozinets.

I’ve been pretty busy lately. My co-authors and I wrote an article for the Journal of Marketing on word-of-mouth marketing that breaks some exciting new ground (more on that soon–to be published in March 2010), I just taught a great 3-day seminar in Chicago on ethnographic research and innovation for Sony’s Global Marketing and Product Planning group (a superb group of people), my Sage Netnography book is in the final typeset proof stage and will be released in December, and I have another 15 research projects on the go. AND the baseball team I am coaching advanced to the semi-finals. Yeah!

To top it off, I started a new course yesterday on Social Media and Marketing. The course was initiated by Vanessa Barretto a wonderfully motivated and action-oriented Schulich MBA student who has been instrumental in pulling a classroom full of interested students together in less than a week. Amazing.

I thought I’d share the outline and some of the ideas with you. Here is the outline:

SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARKETING
MKTG 6900.030: Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto Canada

Online communities, social networking sites, blogging, and other interactive uses of information technology are changing the way people communicate and understand their world. Social media is changing society, and changing the nature of marketing.

An understanding of online communities and online WOM are critical for the marketers of today and tomorrow, who are trying to be heard in a mediascape cluttered with advertisements and drenched in consumer distrust. Companies are trying to discover how to speak to consumers in a way that is more authentic, and social media marketing are begin tried as an alternative to traditional marketing tactics. But how should it best be used? What are the rules for success? It’s all brand new and uncertain.

The purpose of this course is to introduce advanced Schulich MBA students to social media marketing as a method, and then to rapidly develop your skills as Social Media Marketing Strategists. In several classroom discussions led by the professor, students will learn about the theories and practices that inform this new set of marketing techniques, and will study numerous actual and ongoing social media marketing campaigns.

We will be using a reading package and online materials to conduct a ‘real-time’ learning experience that blends theory and practice and talk and action, as well as school and business. The course will also feature guest speakers.

Prof. Kozinets has been working in the area of social media marketing since 1995, when he began writing and speaking about these topics. He was a founding Advisory Board member of WOMMA, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. His book about online ethnography is coming out in December 2009, and his article on WOM Marketing in online communities will be published in the Journal of Marketing in March, 2010.

Specific topics include:
• Terminology issues: distinguishing the different types of social media and social media marketing campaigns
• Similarities and differences between new and traditional media, and between organic
and amplified WOM
• Overview of useful theories about social media and word-of-mouthn
• How networks of social influence work
• Marketing Metrics: Tracking online and offline word-of-mouth and influence
• Building social media marketing into strategy and tactics
• Ethical aspects and codes of the industry

The centerpiece of the course will be a practical assignment. In teams of 5, you will work with a company interested in engaging in a Social Media Marketing campaign and then design and refine this campaign over the 15 weeks of the course. Your mid-term assignment and final deliverables will be based upon this practical, applied assignment. There will be no exams.

The course is realistic, applied, intense, and demanding. By studying these developing, expanding cutting-edge techniques in detail and in a realistic corporate setting, it is expected that students will gain valuable knowledge, expertise and also make valuable connections with important companies and current industry players and firms.

As with all classes, attendance at discussions and participation in them is expected. We will also be sharing online material. The deliverables for the course will be two group assignments.

* * *

In our first class, yesterday, each student was assigned a book about the topic to summarize. Here are some of the books’ titles (easy to google or amazon them for more info):

1. Groundswell
2. Citizen Marketers
3. Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here.
4. Word-of-Mouth Marketing
5. Tribes
6. Beyond Buzz

I welcome your suggestions of new, relevant, and interesting books.

In the next class, students will be presenting their summaries of the books, and the marketing-relevant takeaways.

The questions we will collectively be seeking to answer over the next few weeks are:

1. What is social media? What are its characteristics? How does it relate or compare to other related terms like Internet Marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, and Web 2.0?
2. What is *not* social media? What does the definition exclude?
3. What kinds of social media are out there? What are their characteristics?
4. What marketing purposes are those different kinds of social media good and not good for? How do we know?

As always, I’d love to hear you comments and see your feedback on this new course.

Posted in Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Academic Life, Technology, Communities and Tribes, Word of Mouth Marketing, Marketing News & Insights | 5 Comments »

The Academic Journal Review Process: Nine Suggestions for Scholarly Researchers

July 17, 2009 by Robert Kozinets.

As many of you know, the JMR paper whose progress we have carefully followed in the past several blog postings has gone on to become a fairly well known article.

If you look at the JMR’s list of their most highly cited articles, this one appears #9 on their list of all articles from 2000-2007. It is number one on in its category of 2002-2004, and has been in the top spot in its rolling 3-year class since the top-rated figures have been kept.

So, reading through the reviews, I thought that there might be several lessons in the story that might benefit junior scholars of all stripes, and maybe even all publishing academic scholars in general.

1. Don’t be afraid to research something really new and interesting. Believe in yourself. Innovate. Take risks. The reviewers may not recognize your contribution; they’re only human. Focus on making a contribution. Be the kind of academic and the kind of scholar that you admire.

The greater audience of scholars, the academic community, often recognizes works of value, over time. But you need to get it out there. Do not be afraid to do something risky and different. We need more of that kind of big-thinking scholarship. But you will need to handle resistance and critique. Expect it to take longer. Expect it to be more difficult. Expect to get frustrated. But expect that you will grow in myriad and immeasurable ways as a scholar because of that challenge.

2. Be the right mix of stubborn and flexible as you respond to Reviewers. What’s the right mix? Well, that depends. If this is really something new, a new area, new construct, a new context, a genuinely new theory, or a new methodological approach (as here), then you may well know more than your reviewers and editor, and you may need to enlighten them if they haven’t got it yet. If this is a well-mined area, you may not know as much as your reviewers and editor(s), and you might be best off learning more from them. In that case, keep your mouth shut and be flexible and eminently responsive. You need to know when to resist, when to simply act on advice, and when to just be grateful that these smart, experienced people are mentoring-you-by-mail.

3. Be polite. If you are actually enlightening others, even if you are angry, hurt, and frustrated by the process and the processors, do your utmost to be polite to the others who are involved. Even if they are not polite to you (especially if they are not), try to maintain a deferent, humble tone that keeps the whole thing professional and collegial.

Reviewers and Editors do this work for free. And, oftentimes, others have taught them their (bad) habits. Try to see it through their eyes, and approach them and the process itself with a positive, grateful, upbeat tone. Do anything else, and it’s a slippery, nasty slope.

4. If there’s a big problem with the process, talk to the Editor. They are good people generally and, in my experience, a phone call can be very helpful. It doesn’t matter if you are junior or senior as a scholar–as someone who is in the review process at that journal you all should count the same.

However, don’t abuse this option. Only ask them if you can schedule a call if there is something really, really wrong. I have only done this one other time in my career.

5. Ask for specific, constructive critique on your paper if you aren’t getting it. You will notice that the big difference between Reviewer B and Reviewer C in these reviews is that Reviewer B only criticizes, and never offers actual suggestions for improvement. Any intended improvement is only shot down in the subsequent round. Reviewer C, on the other hand, sets the bar high, but is specific enough that the directions can be discerned and followed. Reviewer C notes and recognizes the improvement, even when s/he is asking for further refinement of it.

I wrote and verbally asked the Editor to try to ensure that Reviewer B be more constructive in his/her critiques. After that, as the Reviewer continued to be unhelpful, I believe that they may have lost credibility with the Editor, and this may have led to their advice to reject the paper being more heavily discounted. Even as a junior author with no other publications, I was able to make my voice heard.

6. Remember that the process can be painful when you are sitting on the other side, and act accordingly when you review. Criticism or faint praise can discourage and dishearten newcomers. Remember that when you write reviews of your own. Try to be constructive, positive and encouraging in all of your reviews. Write with the Golden Rule in mind. And always be constructive, and tell the author what they need to do to improve the paper (see point # 5 above). Even if this is a rejection-especially if it is a rejection—be concrete and constructive. Tell them exactly what they need to do to get the paper to publishable quality.

7. Appreciate and listen to the advice of the Editor or Associate Editor who synthesizes comments, particularly ones that are divergent, and give you specific guidance about the major revisions you need to make to your paper. At that point, you don’t always need to take their guidance (see points #1 and 2, above). But you benefit greatly from knowing exactly what that guidance is. And if you don’t take that advice, you need to clearly and convincingly state why you are doing something different. In probably 99 times out of 100, you want to take a good, involved Editor’s advice as offered.

8. Realize that journal articles don’t spring fully-formed from the minds of their authors the way Athena did from the forehead of Zeus. The vast majority of them take a lot of time, blood, sweat, struggle, and angry, bitter nights and weekends to get to be the way that they finally appear. New authors: don’t be discouraged if your first drafts don’t look exactly like the published articles. Neither did my first drafts. As you can see.

9. Persist. Persist. Persist. Never give up. Rise to the challenge. Make your case. Persist. Perform your revisions and changes as quickly as you can, keep it fresh, keep it moving. Be efficient and do the best job you can. Be thorough. Keep coming back. Stay in the game. Don’t give up. Work through the disappointment. Refuse to go away. Persist.

There are probably many more takeaways and many more interesting stories. I would be happy to hear your stories and share them and also work through any questions you might have.

That’s enough journal publishing stuff to last me a while. Stay tuned for lots more new blog material, coming your way soon.

Posted in Qualitative Research Methods, Academic Life, Marketing Research, Marketing News & Insights, Marketing Science | 2 Comments »

Anatomy of an Academic Article, Round 4: End Game

July 16, 2009 by Robert Kozinets.

In this long and detailed series of blog postings, I have tried to bring out the “backstage,” behind-the-scenes elements of what goes into a top-tier journal publications, from the initial submission, through the review process, to the final, accepted version of the paper.

I have done this for a paper that was historically very important to my career, a pivotal paper that marked the clearest and most widely-distributed explanation of the new approach of netnography, a rigorous approach to online ethnography. And an article that broke ethnography into the pages of the psychy and economics paradigm dominated JMR–something very few culturally-oriented research articles are able to achieve.
If you have been following the postings, you will have seen that this was not exactly an easy process. The blog posts were a good way for me to reveal the hidden story behind this new qualitative or ethnographic methodology.

One of the big stories here is that the paper was accepted because it had two champions, two people who believed in it enough to go against the grain and try to publish it. Russ Winer and Wagner Kamakura, the two editors of JMR, were those champions. They were supportive of the paper, but insisted on changes that made it better. They were able to judge the reviewers’ comments and to argue against them when they felt it was necessary.

In the first round, Prof. Winer was confronted with three reviewers. One said accept the paper unconditionally, basically as is. The other two said to reject it. Prof. Winer stated in his letter that he wanted to see a paper on this topic, citing his belief in JMR’s mandate to publish new methodological articles and approaches.

In the final round, which got the paper accepted, Prof. Kamakura was confronted with the two remaining reviewers. One said to accept the paper conditionally, meaning with some changes. The other said to reject it. That reviewer was consistently saying reject every single round of the paper.

In his cover letter, Prof. Kamakura went on record saying that he saw the contribution of this paper as different from Reviewer B. He said that, although he didn’t know the area of ethnography well, he thought that this adaptation had value, and he listed several sensible criteria to back that up, including the fact that it was applied to a real marketing and marketing research set of questions (i.e., the example helped to make that point convincingly).

These two champions of netnography are both from outside the qualitative consumer research field. They have training in economics, and are considered experts in the type of marketing research commonly referred to as ‘modeling.’

The surprising part of the story might be that that two remaining reviewers-who are both qualitative “CCT” people, likely senior ones, with apparently strong records of publication–were less than supportive. I see one (Reviewer B) as downright hostile, trying repeatedly to slam the JMR door in my article’s face.

In this last round, Reviewer B pulls out all the stops to try to argue that JMR absolutely must not publish this article. In his/her review, Rev. B keeps talking about what JMR readers would want to see, how expert they are, how simplistic the approach is, how little value it would have for the typical JMR reader, what a “mismatch” there is between JMR’s readership and “the paper’s content.” In other words, Reviewer B has it in for this paper. Reject, reject, and definitely-you-absolutely-must-reject this article. Not innovative. Not newsworthy. Not useful. Not for this audience.

This level of hostility and single-mindedness is, fortunately, pretty rare in my experience. As a writer, reviewer, and associate editor, I don’t often see reviewers who are quite this focused on killing papers, at least not nearly as obviously so.

I am grateful that Prof. Kamakura explicitly argued against Reviewer B’s comments,stating, quite simply, that he didn’t see things that way.

Reviewer C’s comments continue in this round to be somewhat helpful. Reviewer C pushed me to do better, to deliver on the promise of the topic, and that is what a Reviewer should do. This person did move in their evaluations and recognize the value in the paper. If not for them, acting as the fulcrum point, this paper would likely not have been published.

Reviewer B’s comments and approach, however, provide some food for thought. Do qualitative consumer researchers, or CCT people, have a reputation for ‘eating their young’? Have they, for a long time, been shooting down the work of young scholars? Are they failing to do the proper job of mentoring new people and new ideas into the field? Something must have explained the dearth of new people in this area for many years. I think this has changed, and continues to change, but certainly reviews like these should give everyone pause.

In the next blog posting, I will offer a few key takeaway points from this set of blog postings about academic publishing.

To complete the file itself, here are my Reviewer notes to the 4th revision. You will probably notice that I was just as meticulous and careful with this set of notes as I was with the last two. I did not want to jeopardize the paper’s full acceptance at this stage. Conditional acceptances can still be revoked if you don’t take the comments seriously.

Revision Notes RE: JMR MS# 1205-9-4: “The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography For Marketing Research in Online Communities”

First, I would like to thank you, Prof. Kamakura, as well as the 2 Reviewers for all of your helpful comments in these rounds of revision. I have revised the enclosed manuscript in line with the minor revisions in your suggestions, and the reviewer comments, as contained in your letter dated March 2, 2001.

I enclose this note to overview the specific changes that have been made. The notes will respond in detail to each point in your letter of March 2.

Responses to Editor’s Requested Changes

1. Hard-core users: since this seemed to be an important concern raised in your comments, in the comments of Reviewer #3, and also in exchanges with a range of people interested in the research, this revision treats these concerns in detail. On p. 12 of the manuscript, there is an extended section in which careful triangulation and long-term immersion are described as necessary to help marketing researchers distinguish hardcore, marginal extremists from a more typical group of consumers (which directly addresses your question about differentiating typical consumers from extremists). Directly addressing your question about avoiding being misled, rigorous methodology is demonstrated in the empirical example on p. 19 where the importance of sampling a range of conversational participation to avoiding “being misled or unduly influenced by a minority of unrepresentative and vocal extremists” is shown. The revised manuscript revisits and details this point about avoiding being misled by vocal extremists on p. 28 in the conclusions section and links it to distinguishing typical consumers from (as your medical metaphor puts it) “‘hard core’ pathological cases.”

So that readers do not get the impression that extreme or hard core perspectives are the norm in online community environments, the manuscript proceeds to explain (also on p. 12) that there are internal social mechanisms keeping this behavior in check. On p. 17, it is noted that even the hard core user may contribute to creative ideation, an important role of lead users (who could very easily be described as marginal, extremist, or hard core in their own right). A follow up to this appears on p. 28, with an assertion that links ostensibly extreme consumer behavior (i.e., “innovators” in the diffusion of innovation literature) with eventual diffusion into the mainstream. The assertion is that, while it is important to be conscious about whether or not extreme perspectives are being expressed, they still can be treated as useful and interesting information for marketing research.

2. Generalizability: The hard-core user issue is related to the issue of generalizability. As you suggested in your letter, this revised manuscript now covers issues of generalizability in several places, discussing it both in the presentation of the method and in the empirical section of the paper, giving specific guidelines. On p. 4, it is noted that generalizing the findings of a “netnography” to other groups must involve careful evaluations of similarity and employ multiple methods for triangulation. This point is again made and elaborated upon in some detail on p. 12.

3. Opinion Leaders: On p. 18, the background of the opinion leaders categorization of the prior manuscript is explained more clearly. The group of members are termed “insiders” who are frequently quoted and referenced by other community members, deferred to by existing and new members, and mentioned by members as important arbiters of taste. In the manuscript, this is termed “an informal type of network analysis” and it is noted that “these insiders seem to be usefully conceptualized as opinion leaders” in the local context of this particular online community. The assertion here is that the way in which these persons’ opinions are repeated and referenced by other online community members makes conceptualizing them as opinion leaders a useful categorization.

4. Distinguishing Netnography from Traditional Ethnography: As you suggested, netnography has been redefined. On p. 3 of the manuscript, netnography has been defined as a specialized adaptation of traditional ethnography. This revisions also attempts to carefully distinguish the particular need for netnography in a range of places within the revised manuscript, as suggested in Reviewer #1’s many comments to this effect, and your direction to address the issue. On the top of p. 3 has been added a very important paragraph that should help to clarify the positioning of this method in the two main literature streams it addresses (ethnographic methodology and marketing research method). This paragraph begins with a very concise description of the novel context of online community (a much-abridged version of material originally presented in revision 2 and later excised for brevity). Then, the manuscript proceeds to note that the difficult context may have challenged and hampered investigation of online communities by researchers -which sets up what I believe (and have observed in my exchanges with students and industry practitioners) is a very real problem. The manuscript then provides numerous references from the anthropology, sociology, and marketing research literatures where scholars have noted that rigorous guidelines are needed to adapt existing ethnographic research techniques to online contexts (evidence disputing and indirectly addressing Reviewer #1’s many concerns that a new adaptation of ethnography is patently obvious, nothing new and not needed). Finally, the manuscript describes (as you suggest in your letter) exactly what its contribution is in relation to standard ethnography. As stated on p. 3, “Although it does not break entirely new ground methodologically, this paper addresses this important need by providing researchers with a rigorous methodology adapted to the unique characteristics of online communities.”

Throughout the revised manuscript, in every section of the descriptions of methodology (and in the empirical example), netnography is distinguished and differentiated from traditional ethnography. As noted above, this is not the sort of quantum leap radical breakthrough that seems to be what Reviewer #1 is looking for. It is, however, an important and much-needed extension and adaptation. So through this revised version, there are many references to the differences between “netnography” and traditional ethnography. In every case, the adaptations are important and non-obvious. For example, on p. 6, it is noted note that “Distinct from traditional ethnographies, in the identification of relevant communities online search engines will prove invaluable.” On p. 9, it is noted that “Dealing judiciously with instantaneous information overload is a much more important problem for ‘netnographers’ than for traditional ethnographers.” On p. 10, it is noted that “in a sharp break from traditional ethnography, a rigorous netnography could be conducted using only observation and downloads, and without writing a single fieldnote.” On p. 11, the importance of procedures that are adapted to the purely textual nature of much online information is detailed, noting that utilizing online data can requires “a radical shift from traditional ethnography.” On p. 12, in the summary, these differences are again emphasized. On pp. 12-13, the texts emphasizes that “One of the most important differences between traditional ethnography and ‘netnography’ may be in issues of research ethics,” and then proceeds to elaborate a set of guidelines distinct from usual online practice (i.e., web-surfing and searching) and also from traditional ethnographic procedure.
5. Quotation Marks: As you requested, “netnography” now appear only within double quotation marks in the manuscript. Following this, “netnographer,” and “netnographic” have been placed in quotation marks as well. In addition, double quotes are also now used for the typology of newsgroup users (”minglers,” “tourists,” etc.).

6. Title Change. The title of the manuscript has been changed in line with your astute comment. It now more clearly portrays the nature of the contribution, which is to describe the use of netnography to conduct marketing research on online communities.

Responses to Changes Requested By Reviewer #1

All of Reviewer #1’s points have been addressed in my comments #4: Distinguishing Netnography from Traditional Ethnography, above.

Responses to Changes Requested by Reviewer #3

7. Virtual Community: On p. 1 of the revised manuscript, the colloquial use of the word virtual community is explained in order to acquaint readers properly with the topic of this paper (since the term is in common parlance). Reviewer #3’s correct assertion that the term may be misleading is then addressed by, citing appropriate (and earlier) literature. Thereinafter, in this revised version, the term “online community” is used to distinguish communities formed through computer-mediated communication, a topic central to the methodology.

8. Lead Users: On p. 17, the term “lead users” is defined and then the concept is compared and contrasted with online community participants. The essence of the assertion is in lead user’s creativity, inventiveness, and knowledge, which may (or may not) be evidenced by online community members. On p. 28 and 29, the text demonstrates how treating online community information as similar to lead user information can be useful to marketing researchers when accompanied by the proper critical evaluation and rigorous analytic procedure. Since the utility of lead user analysis is in invention and creativity, notions of representativeness (implied by Reviewer #3’s invocation of “marginal” and “inconsequential”) are not relevant to this classification. They are, however, useful points in and of themselves, and have been dealt with in my response #1: Hard-core users, above.

9. I respond to the comments on “opinion leaders” in response #3: Opinion Leaders, above.

10. “Maing” has been changed to “making”

11. “On these Internet-based” has been changed to “In these Internet-based”

12. Muniz and O’Guinn (forthcoming) has been changed to Muniz and O’Guinn (2001), although the issue has not yet been published and the page numbers are not available.

13. “Virtual” has been explained and the term “virtual community” changed to “online community” throughout, as explicated in detail in response #7: Virtual Community, above.

14. Opinion/Politics: On p. 13 I note the contentious, contestable, and still-under-debate nature of the online ethical marketing research discussions. As I wrote in considerable detail about this topic in my previous note responding to JMR reviewers, I will be brief here and state simply that I believe erring on the side of being overly cautious and considerate of online community member’s wishes is the most ethical course of action. Legality does not come into my methodological consideration set, because many things in the online environment are so new that they are only now being considered in a legislative and regulatory context (e.g., Napster, consumer privacy). Simply because Reviewer #3 says it is a public medium, this does not mean that this long-standing and important debate is settled. I politely but very adamantly differ in my opinion from Reviewer #3 on this matter. I believe that my “taking the high ground” treatment of research ethics in this paper may be an important contribution to the discourse on online marketing research.

15. Influence: The prior confusing reference to influence has been removed. The nature of the opinion leadership has been elaborated upon, as stated above. Influence was evidenced by quotations and references to the opinions and tastes of particular members of the online community, some of which have been represented in the illustrative example.

Final Comment

16. In closing these comments, it must be noted that each of these requested changes required the addition of textual material, often explicitly in several places (for example, on p.2 of your letter you direct that the revision be “improved…on page 3-15″ by adding emphasis of its distinctions, and that generalizability “should be discussed both in the presentation of the method and in the empirical section”). There were no directions cut back on existing material. The prior version was cut to the bone. In the last revision, considerable material was excised (such as distinguishing the method from traditional ethnography and face-to-face qualitative research methods), some of which needed to be added back intro the manuscript in a more focused manner. Cutting back on existing material would, in this author’s opinion, impair the ability of this manuscript to make a contribution by either cutting short the explication or impairing the persuasiveness and depth of the illustrative example. It should be noted that consumer ethnographies (for example, the one I will be publishing in JCR this summer) can easily run over 70 pages -and contain little or no methodological explication. The current length of this revised manuscript -which contains a new method, guidelines for researchers, and a concise-yet-detailed ethnographic example- is thus by no means excessive.

Adding the additional material to this manuscript has considerably raised its contribution level to JMR. It has improved its ability to address certain fundamental questions of importance to marketing researchers about the generalizability of the technique and its differentiation from traditional ethnography. With this added material, netnography can make a much clearer contribution to the marketing research literature.

Here is the Abstract:

ABSTRACT

This article develops “netnography” as an online marketing research technique for providing consumer insight. “Netnography” is market-oriented ethnography conducted on online communities dedicated to marketing-relevant topics. As a method, “netnography” is faster, simpler, and less expensive than 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. Guidelines are provided 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, a “netnography” of an online coffee newsgroup is provided and its marketing implications discussed.

And here is the Round Four Manuscript: field_behind_round4.pdf

Posted in Academic Life, Qualitative Research Methods, Netnography, Marketing Research, Marketing News & Insights, Marketing Science | 1 Comment »