July 27, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

So much of the marketplace experience comes down to the retail experience. And so much of the retail experience comes down to service. I had long heard about the service standards in Japan, which had even been summarized by the saying that “The Customer is God.” My expectations were high.

And they were not disappointed. I’m a fairly demanding customer (and if you haven’t read my blog entries about my disappointment with Costco online, you can catch it here), and I have to say that the service standards in Japan were incredibly high.

For example, I was very impressed by the guy who sold me my shoes at Seibu, one of Tokyo’s major high-end department stores. He knew everything about the shoes I was interested in (yes, he even expressed a type of an otakki wisdom). He told me their original price, when the store first received them. He even knew the name of the Italian designer of my new shoes. He gave me advice on the fit of the shoes, and also told me how to take care of them properly (and no, he wasn’t selling me any add-ons like a leather conditioner or anything, just telling me about the straps and that they were quite delicate). When I bought the shoes, he thanked me with a very low bow. I had this feeling of incredible knowledge, courtesy, and gratitude. And guess which store I can’t wait to visit when I return?

It certainly wasn’t just Seibu, although that sale impressed me enough to really stick in my memory. Almost everywhere I went the service was outstanding. In the USA, you find a good level of service overall, and exceptional service at a few places, such as Nordstrom or at fine hotels. But across Tokyo’s retailworld, I found wonderful attention to detail. Even the person who cleans tables, who makes food and cuts mushroom, seems to take special care.

Everything seemed to be a conscious, deliberate performance, calculated to delight the customer. Everything marketplace-related seemed to be an expression of self. There was this deep pride, this mindfulness, this sense of giving through momentary quality transactions as a social contributions, an expression of the communal that unites people, a sense of wanting to give rather than simply take.

More examples. The sushi maker was far more than just a guy whose served at a fast food counter. His hand moving rapidly, each piece of sushi seemed almost like an act of prestidigitation, each act of protein-starch mingling a creative wonder, a small miracle, a performance meriting deep concentration, deserving and drawing the attention of a grateful audience.

In the paper stores, there was origami precision in the wrapping of items and beautiful gifts, and it was ubiquitous, detectable even in the folding of a sales receipt, in the two-handed returning of a credit card, in the final thank you and bow. There was a complete care taken in every aspect of the service experience.

I pondered this servicescape. Could other countries aspire to have service levels like Japan? What would it take?

I could detect that there is a larger cultural frame at work, an ideology driving this pride in each transaction, this joy that comes from doing our jobs well and relishing the contact they give us with each other. A shared way of seeing how every service experience partakes in the performative power written about by Pine and Gilmore in their excellent book The Experience Economy.

I’m far, far from expert in any of these matters. This is very initial thinking. Speculation and little more. But here is a short list summary of some of the cultural factors that I think contribute to the phenomenon of phenomenal Japanese customer service:

• 1. A hierarchical society (origins in military society?)
• 2. Strong ideologies of service (some born of faith/Buddhism?)
• 3. Deep-rooted rituals and traditions of gift-giving (emphasis on material culture)
• 4. Admiration for the West, particularly the USA, and a desire to excel, outreach, and out-accomplish
• 5. Traditions of mindful labor (e.g., Zen mindfulness, Japanese gardening)
• 6. Aesthetic sense (translates into planograms, store layouts, signage)
• 7. Visual/artistic culture (colors, logos, packages, wrapping)
• 8. Notions of kaizen or continuous improvement
• 9. Theatricality (ability and willingness to entertain the experience economy)
• 10. Critical mass (with so many people, organization and service becomes much more essential; consider Tokyo’s spotless, high-tech, highly efficient public transportation system)

It’s interesting to contemplate how much in this list draws from drama, the arts, and ritual/religion/the sacred. I considered that this reveals the richly ritualistic qualities of the sales transaction in all their hierarchical and yet beautiful glory, the omnipresent dance of giving and receiving, of doing-for-each-other and having-it-done-for-oneself that is the essence of our consumer society and civilization.

The service occasion becomes, in this way, cast in the moment as timeless, marked, made sacred and larger-than-the-self. An opportunity to think beyond ourselves, and beyond this moment.

And what does this, I think, is pride on both ends. Pride in being the customer and (the missing ingredient in much of the West) pride in being the server.

“I’m not bowing to anyone,” is probably the likely, angry, grudging response of the typical Western service provider asked to do better, or compared to the Japanese.

Yet it is exactly this sort of refusal to do for others that holds us back, that keeps us from seeing the bigger social picture, from being able to act collectively for our future and for the greater good. And I don’t think it is just humility that is missing. Or even, so much, a “collective” orientation. It is, instead, this mindfulness linked to and applied to our work ethic—where work ethic has almost become an oxymoron. It is this devotion to skill and constant improvement that gets built into this other Japanese term “kaizen.” And pride in a job well done. For me, those are qualities of quality that I try to manifest in my own work, my teaching of students and managers, my research writing, my peer reviews. They are qualities I found all around me while shopping in Tokyo.

In the 1980s, the American business press idolized and frequently wrote about the wonders of the Japanese economy. There is still much that we can learn and apply.

Posted in Marketing News & Insights, Marketing Science | No Comments »

June 25, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

Well, for the big names in academia, 200 citations for an article might not seem like a lot, but to the little guys like me, working in areas that are pretty marginal and way off the beaten track, 200 citations seems like a pretty big deal. So it is with great pride and a smidgen of hullabaloo that today marks the day that my very first article, E-tribalized Marketing?: The Strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption, from the European Management Journal in 1999, received 200 citations on Google Scholar.

To commemorate this event, I’d like to share the article with you. I am posting the entire article in pdf for in its entirety (here: E-tribalized Marketing, EMJ 1999). Almost all major journals allow their authors to post their articles on their web-sites in pdf format with the proper accreditation (properly so, I think), and so I am following in this practice now.

Here is the full citation:

Kozinets, Robert V. (1999), “E-Tribalized Marketing? The Strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption,” European Management Journal, 17 (3), 252-264.

And here is the full article:

E-tribalized Marketing, EMJ 1999

This is still my most cited work. The reason it seems to have gathered interest and these citations is probably because:

1. It is one of the first academic articles published to draw the connection between online communities (or “virtual communities of consumption” as I somewhat anachronistically call them in the article) and marketing research
2. It is one of the first academic articles published to draw the connection between online communities and consumer or customer relationships
3. It is one of the first academic articles published to draw the connection between online communities and word-of-mouth and other online marketing techniques
4. It is the original citation for the widely-adopted and used model of online community participation that splits online community participation styles into tourist, minglers, insiders, and devotees

At some point, I’d really like to revisit that article, update, annotate and look at it in retrospect. I’m thinking next year, on its ten-year anniversary. I think it is important to look at the article in the light of its times.

So here is a little bit of “behind the scenes” on its “origin story.” The article followed from a 1997 article I wrote for a Financial Post series on contemporary business, a newspaper article called “How Online Communities Are Growing in Power.” That article was later republished in a book series. Here’s the citation for the book and chapter:

Kozinets, Robert V. (1999), “How Online Communities are Growing in Power,” in ed. Tom Dickson, Mastering Marketing: Complete MBA Companion in Marketing, London: Pearson Education, 291-297.

A little more back story on the article. The editor of EMJ, Professor Paul Stonham of the European School of Management at Oxford, had read my article in the Financial Times (I think in the book series) and liked it so much he contacted me in 1998 and asked me to expand it and write something on the topic for the European Management Journal. As a new author and a very junior academic (I had just started my job at Kellogg/Northwestern in September of 1997), I was flattered by the interest, and happy to get some of my ideas in print. Paul was really taking a chance on a complete unknown by doing this.

I thought for a second about the fact that this was not an officially “Top-tier” journal, not on the A-list of big impact journals, and that it “might not count” in my tenure decision. But then I thought–”but getting ideas out there, and real soon in this case, is what being a writer and thinker is all about.”

Thankfully, my organic intellectual instincts prevailed. And boy I’m glad they did. Writing this article was super easy. After years of studying it, I had tons to say about the topic, and the writing just flowed in no time at all. Sending it out was a joy. Paul accepted the article almost exactly as I sent it, with just a few small, helpful suggestions. What a difference from my JCR experiences, which were (with one exception) about as joyous an experience as being slowly hammered to death during a weeklong bout of marathon gum surgery.

Here is a brief taste of the article here, to whet your appetite to read it (and to keep on citing it, thank you, thank you!!!). This is the introduction section, in its entirety, with a few notes (italicized) added today by me:

Over three decades ago, Marshall McLuhan expounded that “cool” and inclusive “electric media” would “retribalize” human society into clusters of affiliation (see, e.g., McLuhan 1970). With the advent of “cyberspace,” networked computers and the proliferation of computer-mediated communications, McLuhan’s predictions seem to be coming true. Well, jeepers, nothing like an All-Canaidan prophetic opening. McLuhjan said it first, and he deserve the most credit for that!

Networked computers and the communications they enable are driving enormous social changes. People are retribalizing in cyberspace: they are E-tribalizing. Networked computers empower people around the world as never before to disregard the limitations of geography and time, find another and gather together in groups based on a wide range of cultural and subcultural interests and social affiliations. Because many of these affiliations are based upon consumption activities, these E-tribalized groups are of substantial import to marketing and business strategists. Marketers who rigorously understand them and the opportunities they present will be able to position themselves to benefit from fundamental changes that are occurring in the ways people decide on which products and services to consume, and how they actually consume them. Now, what’s important to remember was, back in 1997, 1998, and 1999, there was no Web 2.0. There was no terminology for this. And the trend was very far from obvious….I was definitely going out on a limb here.

By the year 2000, it is estimated that over 40 million people worldwide will participate in “virtual communities” of one type or another. Research has revealed that new users’ online activities tend to revolve around vapid surfing activities and e-mail. Yikes, that sounds like a value judgment. “Vapid”? OMG! Who am I to judge?

However, the longer an Internet user spends online, the more likely it is that they will gravitate to an online group of one sort or another. Once a consumer connects and interacts with others online, it is likely that they will become a recurrent member of one or more of these gatherings, and increasingly turn to them as a source of information and social interaction.

These gatherings have been variously termed “online,” “virtual,” or “computer-mediated” communities. The term “virtual community,” was coined by Internet pioneer Howard Rheingold (1993), who defined them as “social aggregations that emerge from the net when enough people carry on. . . public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.” McKinsey and Company consultants Arthur Armstrong and John Hagel (Armstrong and Hagel 1996) have termed groups of consumers united by a common interest “communities of interest.” Again, acknowledging two giants who pioneered thinking and writing about these issues. Rheingold in the social sphere. Armstrong and Hagel applying them to business. The contributions of these pioneers can not be overstated.

In spite of the prevalence of the term community to describe these groups, there has been considerable debate regarding its appropriateness. Online groups often never physically meet. Many participants maintain their anonymity. Many interactions are fleeting and ostensibly functional. Nevertheless, research into the diverse and full social interactions of online consumers has revealed that the online environment can indeed be used as a medium of meaningful social exchange (e.g., Clerc 1996, Rheingold 1993, Turkle 1995). That was the big debate back then. Notice how no one mentions this much anymore? Are virtual communities “Real” communities? Huh? What the heck does that mean?

The term virtual communities have usefully referred to online groups of people who either share norms of behavior or certain defining practices, who actively enforce certain moral standards, who intentionally attempt to found a community, or who simply coexist in close proximity to one another (Komito 1998). While sharing computer-oriented cyberculture and consumption-oriented cultures of consumption, a number of these groupings demonstrate more than the mere transmission of information, but “the sacred ceremony that draws persons together in fellowship and commonality” (Carey 1989, p. 18). Given this, the term community appears appropriate if used in its most fundamental sense as a group of people who share social interaction, social ties, and a common “space” (albeit a computer-mediated or virtual “cyberspace” in this case).

Whatever one chooses to call them, at least one thing seems assured. With fifty-one percent of Internet users using the Web daily (whoa! what else is there to do on the Net now?), and exponential global growth rates for new users, prodigious growth in the quantity, interests, and influence of virtual communities is guaranteed. That was a bolder claim then than it sounds like now!

Unlikely to replace physical encounters, or information from traditional media, online interactions are becoming an important supplement to social and consumption behavior. Consumers are adding online information gathering and social activities into an extended repertoire that also includes their face-to-face interactions. Now, that was pretty prescient. I never saw or wrote about these as separate domains, but always intermingled and intermingling….Ahnd I nevesaw online media replacing traditional media, but always as an “important supplement”…never either/or, always both/and….

Online interactions and alignments increasingly affect their behavior as citizens, as community members and as consumers. The prospect of advancing marketing thought and practice may come from an enhanced understanding of these groups of consumers.

And here’s the gist of the article…..A detailed account of the strategic implications of virtual communities will be provided herein, informed by four years of empirical and conceptual research on the online interactions of groups of consumers (Yep, I started taking my notes and doing my research in 1995). New developments in consumer behavior research and marketing will be conceptualized, focusing on the revolutionary changes wrought by online interactions. First, terms will be defined, and several different aspects of these groups will be theorized. Next, these concepts will inform a comparative analysis between the ways in which traditional “relationship marketing” theory has been implemented online, and the difference suggested by a newer framework based on the existence and utility of “retribalized” virtual communities of consumption. Strategic options will be explored and discussed. The final section overviews the practical implications of these changes for a revised online marketing strategy and suggests appropriate cyberspace locations through which to pursue it.

I hope you enjoy the article, which, if you missed it above, is available for you here: Etribalized Marketing, EMJ 1999

And the fun thing is, I’m still working on this stuff today, building and growing, changing and refining and commenting and critiquing, and so are lots of great students and academics. There are some lessons for fellow academic here, too:

1. Don’t be afraid to publish outside the A-list, even as a junior. Getting your work out there, and keeping your voice intact, are more important than anything. B-list, C-list, book chapters. Don’t ignore the A-pubs, by any means, but build a portfolio. When I wrote this article, I had 2 JCRs under submission. One was published in 2001. The other was published in 2008. If I had waited that long to publish these ideas, they probably wouldn’t have made it into print at all. And they would have come far too late to have had impact.
2. Don’t be afraid to publish in international journals. They can be great outlets. And guess what? It’s a big, wide world out there, outside of America.
3. Recency counts. If you can get your ideas into print in a decent format quickly, that may be better than waiting forever, and publishing when your findings and thoughts are already old news. People will cite you for being first.
4. Just publish it. Gather your thoughts, theorize, think big, and then publish it. B and C journals will let you think big, speculate, stretch yourself, in a way that A’s just will not. Get it out there. Our field has become so careful and micro that most of our articles say a lot about very small and specialized corners of the world. We need to practice big thinking again. We need to Go Large. Sizable Ideas Matter. Think ‘em and Get ‘em Out There.

Don’t agree? Good. Then post it and let’s talk about it. I’ve got tons more to say, but who knows if this is relevant to anyone….And…..

Speaking of Sizable ideas and thinking big thoughts, we had some great ones last week at Suffolk University. I’ll have more to tell you about the Consumer Culture Theory Conference in Boston last week in an upcoming post.

Posted in Netnography, Technology, Marketing Research, Communities and Tribes, Marketing News & Insights | 5 Comments »

June 18, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

Now I want to talk a little bit about the keynote address that I was honored and delighted to give at Netnography08 in Munich, Germany last week. My presentation sought to provide a fairly broad overview of the method of netnography and to look at it from a big picture point of view. How has it been developed? How has it been used? What patterns are there in the way that it has been applied by scholars and other researchers?

I began by reminiscing a little bit about the origins of the technique in my thesis year, and gave some details on that. Then, I went straight to the definition and carefully looked at the origins of netnography in ethnography, and the ethnographic stance of participant- observation. I re-examined the goals of netnography as similar to the desired insights we get from ethnography.

Then, I turned to my assessment, and here was where things got a little bit interesting. I overviewed some of my early work, and detailed how well it did, or didn’t fit with my intended stance, and with the participative ethnographic imperative. After this I started looking at the published works that had used netnography as a method since then. What I detected was a movement, a pretty dramatic one, towards a purely observational stance, and away from a participative one. Some of my own work could definitely be included as participating and even contributing to this trend.

When I looked at the major marketing research firms that were using information in online forums, discussion groups, and the blogosphere, I could detect very similar patterns emerging, a movement towards larger datasets, a classification-and-sorting approach that necessarily decontextualized the communal and cultural elements and characteristics of the data.

After detailing this, I went back to the classics and quoted some of the most important sociologists and scholars, The Masters and Giants upon whose Shoulders we stand. I drew on their wisdom to inform the topics that related directly to online communities and the major ways we were seeing them behave.

I bumped that knowledge against the ethnographic goal of participation again to argue that different types of knowledge and insight are generated through participation. Not better knowledge and insight, necessarily, but different. The different stance and perspective afforded by participation added real value-that was why ethnography was so often held up as the gold standard of innovation-seeking marketing research (in books such as Cagan and Vogel’s classic Creating Breakthrough Products, for example).

In the next part of the presentation, I outlined my own analysis of why this movement away from participation and towards more observational and quantified stances was occurring. My conclusion was that marketing research is still related to models of marketing that are quickly becoming outdated.

Just as marketing was oftentimes still about talking instead of listening, marketing research was still about taking rather than giving. In the margins, I briefly outlined a vision, A New Hope for what marketing and marketing research could one day become. I believe that the participative options opened up by managers doing netnography could play an important role in this ongoing transformation not only of business and marketing, but even of society (yes, lofty big and maybe impractical “vision thing” thoughts for the keynote….).

I enjoyed the talk very much and plan to write it up for one forum or another, maybe develop it into the book I’m planning on writing about online communities and their range of implications.

Before I close this topic of the Netnography08 conference in Munich, I also want to mention that I had a chance to meet some very interesting colleagues there. Prof. Dr. Frank-Martin Belz from the TUM Business School in Munich. He holds the—wait for this (and it’s worth waiting for) “Chair of Brewery and Food Industry Management.” I asked him if it includes samples of beer. He smiled slowly, and nodded. Now that is a dream-job. Seriously though, we found out that we have lots in common with his work on sustainability and communities.

Nice also to see Prof. Dr. Anton Meyer again, to catch up with McKinsey’s Florian Jodl, and to see Fabian Göbel, and to meet Rita.

And here’s a major callout to Maria Horn, the Insights Strategist from the ad agency G2 in Hamburg, who is a regular reader of this blog. It was great to meet you, Rita, Maria, Fred, and all the rest of you.

Finally, a great big thank you to Hyve for their invitation and major Bavarian hospitality. Thanks to Julia J. for her limo services (don’t quit your day job), to Hans G. for soccer commentary, and to Steffen H. for his kind and able tour guiding. Mega-thanks also to Johann for the thoughtful talks and insights. As before, I had a very memorable and enjoyable time in Munich.

I came away from this conference with a renewed sense that German companies like Hyve, Beiersdorf, Adidas, BMW, and Burda are global innovators and early adopters. These are companies that are recognizing, developing, and spreading the use of netnography for marketing and innovation.

Posted in Netnography, Conferences & Presentation, Marketing Research, Word of Mouth Marketing, Marketing News & Insights, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »