June 14, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

Well, I can’t believe I been absent from feeding this blog for so long. It’s been an insanely busy, and insanely great month and a half, full of travel, presentations and practical applications of netnography to global companies. I’m going to bring you up to date in my blog postings here over the next few weeks. So let’s get started.

I just returned from Munich, Germany where I presented the keynote speech at “Netnography08,” which was, as far as I know, the very first conference dedicated entirely and exclusively to netnography as a practical marketing research method. The conference was organized by Hyve AG, the Munich-based innovation firm that I wrote about previously when I visited them in February (see the posting here). The conference was also sponsored by the Burda Group, one of the largest publishers in Germany and a digital communications pioneer in that space. I have to say that this was very exciting, and an honor, to see a technique that I developed as a Ph.D. student grow to become the focus of an entire business conference.

It was an excellent conference, held at the beautiful posh new Sofitel Munich Bayerpost. In attendance were people from BMW, IBM, G2, Swarovski, Ogilvy, Vivaldi, Ferrero, Daimler, o2, Yahoo!, Siemens, PbS, W. L. Gore, McKinsey, Wrigley, many other companies, a bunch of university people, lots of prominent bloggers, and other media people (I continue to admire and be amazed at how the academic and professional communities combine and merge in Germany). You can see a bunch of pictures taken at the event in this Flickr album.

We had some excellent and memorable presentations that really brought to life how useful applications of netnography are becoming to the conduct of marketing research, particularly emphasizing its role in generating the consumer insight that leads to new product development. Although the presentations were in German (and my German is, ahem, not very good), I was delighted to have a set of capable and very accommodating translators (one of whom was Prof. Anton Meyer of LMU).

I’m going to highlight and briefly overview three of those presentations and what they told us. The first one was by Jörg Blumtritt of the Burda Community Network. Burda’s research team, led by the very insightful and engaging Christina Heinz, seemed convinced of the value of netnography, as above and beyond the utility of other qualitative methods such as focus groups and interviews.

Jörg shared some of the findings of a series of netnographic studies about consumers’ media habits undertaken with Hyve. Interestingly, he noted that the method originally didn’t seem to work. There were no places, no forums, no boards, no real communities that they could find where people went to discuss, for example, how and where they used magazines. But a deeper look into online content revealed that consumers certainly did talk about media and the role of media in their lives. But consumers usually talked about their media habits incidentally. It appeared in the margins as people discussed fashion, business, celebrities, cooking, or TV shows. But it was ever-present.

Through the study, Burda felt that they got a much more holistic, embedded, contextualized, honest, and nuanced view of German consumer’s media usage meanings, habits, and rituals than they would have through asking direct questions in a focus group or a survey.

The next series of studies was presented by Michael Bartl and Michael Schmidt, two of the ruling troika of Hyve’s partners (Bartl is the businessman and manager; Schmidt is the creative designer; the other member is Professor Johann Füller, who is the scientist academic). They presented a couple of wonderful case studies with some rich detail.

The first one was done to find creative new ideas for Adidas shoes, and part of this study was written up in a wonderful article for the Journal of Business Research by Johann and his colleagues (you can search it here). In that study, Hyve sought out communities where basketball and other shoe “fans” were gathered to discuss shoes and also to design new shoes themselves. This was low-hanging fruit in some sense, because there are very active, engaged, creative communities. Their study highlighted some of the individual posters on some of the biggest boards, such as the incredibly rich Niketalk board, as well as some other sites, boards, and forums, and it also emphasized some of the new shoe designs.

After observing these basketball shoe enthusiasts, they drilled down from hundreds of thousands of postings in thousands of threads to a few hundred that were classified having the highest potential to inform innovative efforts. They then distilled their findings into two rich themes. First, they found that these shoe enthusiasts were also collectors. As collectors, they liked to display their shoes. The photographs that some shoe enthusiasts shared with one another depicted room after room filled with ugly cardboard boxes stacked one upon another. And there were multiple comments about how to display, maintain, and store the precious, collectible shoes.

The second theme revolved around the many pictures of shoes customized by individual users. Shoes were colored, died, cut, decaled, stenciled, painted, reshaped, melted, and altered in just about every substantial way that you could think of. Users were highly motivated to want to express their own individuality by changing the shoes, customizing them, adding their own symbols to them, making them their own.

From these two themes, Hyve came up with designs and recommendations to develop a new type of packaging for the shoes. The new packages would double as display cases, with UV-reflecting plastic allowing them to see the shoes inside and display them, but to protect them from harsh light and its aging effects. Moreover, the display packaging would have a branded seal at the top that, if it remained unbroken, would signal that the shoes remained in their pristine state. The seal would not only have symbolic value but would contribute to increased value on the after-market for shoes (and yes, if you haven’t heard it already, shoes are major collectibles; there’s a great documentary about the entire phenomenon called Sneaker Confidential).

In addition, Hyve designed shoes with a type of customizing kit, that included special paint, brushes, decals and designs so that the shoes could be easily and effectively customized by anyone.

Both of these design initiatives were adapted and launched by Adidas, and the resulting product was a huge success. Michael Bartl’s presentation really hammered home the impact and importance of netnography and its attendant insights to Adidas’ innovation process in developing this new smash product.

In the next two postings I’ll tell you more about some of the presentations at Netnography08 that really brought to light how netnography is being adapted and used by companies in their innovation processes.

Posted in Marketing Research, Netnography, Conferences & Presentation, Innovation & Creativity, Word of Mouth Marketing, Marketing News & Insights, Communities and Tribes, Marketing Science | No Comments »

April 30, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

I just found out about another book review of our book, Consumer Tribes. This one was written by Alan Bradshaw of the University of Exeter. I thought this was a wonderful review, and wanted to share it with you. The review is great not only because it’s very positive and complimentary about the book (which is always nice) because it’s clear that Alan read this book very carefully. And although the book is designed to be browsed very effectively, as all of its chapters stand well on their own, he read all of it. He synthesized. He really “gets” it. And that makes his review very valuable because I think his review conveys some of the big central points of the book extremely well.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the review is a perfect substitute for actually reading it yourself….

Here’s the reference: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING, 2008, 27(2). And here’s the review (thank you, Alan!).

Bernard Cova, Robert Kozinets and Avi Shankar have edited the excellent collection Consumer Tribes detailing the arrival of tribalism as a core conceptual contemporary framework in consumer research. Containing a neat geographic spread of contributors, and even a chapter by the founding father of tribal social theory himself, Michel Maffesoli, this text must surely be regarded as essential reading that pushes beyond conventional framing devices such as subculture, brand communities and cultures of consumption towards the exciting and sometimes strange worlds of consumer tribes.

Rejecting traditional polarities of control versus freedom wherein consumers are either manipulated marionettes or fierce freedom-fighters, Cova, Kozinets and Shankar argue for a hybrid model in which consumer tribes are tacit compromises where consumers collectively determine to what extent they are to be manipulated by and to what extent they, in turn, choose to manipulate brand meanings. Market resistance and engagement become reframed as a dance between brands and consumer tribes with neither truly in control, and as a balancing act where escape becomes a game to play rather than an essential cause. Consumer tribes are presented as harbingers of an age that updates the marketing challenge of knowing-your-customer to one where consumer tribes know-the-corporation and emerge as guardians of brand authenticity; if brands are symbolic resources for the construction of personal identities, consumer tribes will want to be more than mere customers and become actual stakeholders and even partners in the co-creation of brand equity. As the editors surmise, what is at stake with Consumer Tribes is essentially a new way of thinking about the relationship between producers and consumers, and this is deeply significant for any advertising scholar or practitioner.

A strong and rewarding aspect of the book is its collection of contributors. While mostly consisting of the great and good of the consumer research community, the book contains chapters by a manager of a pharmaceutical company (Fabrizio Cocciola), a market researcher (Pamela Nancarrow) and, wonderfully, a student who was a shining light of the class of 2004 at Stirling University (Stephen Treanor). Fans of the written word will be pleased to read Stephen Brown’s latest offering, but surely the editor’s masterstroke is the inclusion of a chapter on tribal aesthetics by Maffesoli himself. And if Maffesoli’s contribution leads readers to become plagued by self-doubt in their ability to comprehend, then they may be grateful to Canniford and Shankar, whose follow-up chapter reminds us that being a primitive savage can actually be a virtue and a form of capital in itself.

Indeed the pot-smoking surfers to whom Canniford (who, we read, is about to pupate) and Shankar refer perhaps set the tone for the empirical studies into the extraordinary tribes that follow as consumer research continues its focus on the marginal and the downright weird. Tribal activities explored here include the pleasure of writing bootleg Harry Potter homoerotic adventures (as described by Stephen Brown), the fun of leather-fetish nightclub revelling in Copenhagen (Roy Langer), the thrill of video-taping Sir Cliff Richard as he sunbathes (Henry and Caldwell) and, of course, the excitement of breakfasting across the table from a life-size cardboard cut-out of the crown-clad
Queen Elizabeth II and her husband as they sit frozen, regally waving back (Otnes and LacLaran).

To be sure tribal consumers are decidedly extraordinary, as are the complex social relationships that emerge between tribe members who wrestle with questions of legitimacy and authenticity. The problems faced by tribes can include contentious relationships with the relevant corporation; for example, the problem of copyright restrictions can put tribes into dispute with corporations (as described by Brown’s discussion of Harry Potter tribes) though Kozinets notes the compromise that forms the basis of the mutually rewarding relationship between Paramount and online Star Trek bootleggers. At other times tribes can be entrepreneurial (as described by Goulding and Saren’s review of the burgeoning industry that surrounds gothic gatherings), though commercialisation comes at a price. As one gothic respondent nicely puts it: “How can our scene continue to develop and thrive when everywhere you look the same themes resound without the cutting edge or distinctive flare that made it exceptional?”

Apart from empirical studies, Consumer Tribes revisits a seminal study as Schouten and McAlexander, together with Martin, interestingly note how their 1995 “subculture of consumption” paper was limited by their previously held masculine-centric world-view.

A distinctive and rewarding aspect of Consumer Tribes is the degree of authorial excitement that permeates the book, not least in the passionately written opening chapter by the editors. This is often caused by the insider status and participant observation of the scholars in the tribes –for example, we learn that Hope Jensen Schau is an avid Tom Petty fan, Diane Martin is a biker, that Brownlie, Hewer and Treanor went to cruise events over a six-month period (though Goulding and Saren are keen to point out that they are not in fact goths themselves!). The subject enthusiasm leads to impassioned writing but may come at the price of critical concerns being eclipsed at times; notably Marxian concerns of fetishisation and commodification become worked into the coping strategies of tribal members rather than a critique of the tribes themselves.

In other cases consumer tribes are presented as re-enabling in a post-consumption/production nexus (Szmigin, Carrigan and Bekin; also Kozinets). The editors make a strong case in their leading chapter by arguing convincingly that structuralist and Marxian concerns belong to the limiting polarisation that their book seeks to transcend. Yet it is worth noting that Consumer Tribes appears at the same time as the sociologist Charles Leadbeater°s We-Think, which also explores communal consumption activity, though gives greater emphasis to the often tightly controlling fabrics of the social movements.

Consumer Tribes pulls together a considerable amount of empirical studies and conceptual development that reveal the robustness of tribalism as a conceptual framework. For advertising, the consequences of brand equity and meaning emerging from wider tribal activity that exists independent of, and even in conflict with, marketing management help us to re-imagine the practice and study of advertising in an age that transcends traditional business-customer relationships. Therefore, while not a book about advertising, its implications for advertising, and indeed right across the social sciences, mean that this excellent book is to be heartily recommended.

Alan Bradshaw

University of Exeter

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February 17, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

Holy Digital Schnitzel and Bavarian Blog Pretzels, Batman, did you know that some of the most advanced netnographic work on the planet is being done in a cool little buzzing office located in an exciting university-embedded area of downtown Munich? Well. I sure didn’t.

At least, not until I met up with Professor Johann Füller and Hans Gebauer at the Associaton for Consumer Research conference in Memphis, Tennessee in October of last year. These two fine gentlemen introduced themselves and proceeded to tell me that Johann and his partners had built a marketing research and consumer insight business that was using netnography. Cool. They were maintaining the cultural quality of online community communications in their analysis. Kool 2.0. They were calling it “netnography.” The real name. Not some new name. Very kewl. And they were actually crediting me in their brochures and communications for inventing the technique. Well, that’s just super-über ultra fine.

There are so many companies out there today, and I won’t name names, and I genuinely hope to hear from them and invite them into the discussion, that don’t (or cant’t?) do what HYVE does even on this most fundamental level:

• 1. Do a faithfully cultural analysis of online data,
• 2. use legitimate procedures, doing due diligence in terms of finding existing research methods already developed, and
• 3. give credit where credit is due.

That has disappointed me, because I know netnography has enormous potential to help bring the voice of customers and their communities into every aspect of marketing and management. Increasingly, I’ve been doing this work myself, giving presentations, teaching students the basics of the technqieus, recruiting Ph.D. student, and trying to spread the word about netnography.So it was a wonderful happy day when I got a chance to meet these kindred spirits at HYVE. Yesterday, I was treated to a full day of presentations from this business that sells innovation based on sophisticated netnographic inquiry, selling insight, design, and hardcore communal intelligence. Johann, Miki, Micheal, Hans, Gregor, Julia, and the rest of the HYVE welcomed me like I was an old friend, and showed me some of the work they do.

They’ve got lots of great details on their snappy web-site, which you can reach by clicking here. As you see on that site, they’ve got an A-list of happy clients, including Adidas, BMW, Miele, Gore, Vodafone, Swarovski, Audi, and many others.

I can’t reveal the exact details of a lot of what they showed me, but I do want to convey the spirit of their enterprise. Most of the studies they showed me were inquiries that took an extensive view of the online communities on the Internet, did comprehensive overviewing of the online communityscape, picked relevant areas to focus upon, and then got to work. The team of professional netnographers downloaded extensively, coded appropriately and propitiously, and did solid grounded theory development with the input of members of the guiding research team. They tested and compared findings and theories. Then they developed conclusions. This was academic-solid research. But….

As I do with my clients, they were doing it in the service of applied practical marketing and brand management questions. A variety of different questions. The kinds of questions I like to handle, including:

• What sorts of opportunities/what white space of gaps exist for new products or services in this particular market category or industry?
• What are the brand discourses held by online communities regarding my brand?
• What are the global or social or consumption-oriented trends facing us in this particular area?
• How is this particular marketing campaign or WOM marketing effort working out? What are the implications and what should we do?

Their analysis looked solid to me, and they also are able, thanks to the talents of their design team, to extend their research conclusions into innovative ideas that helped companies to realize the potential of their findings. This is an innovative approach to innovation that has yielded some outstanding new products.

I’m excited about HYVE and the work they are doing. I should state right up front that I have no financial stake in the business, although I think that the potential for us to collaborate in the future is very exciting. What stokes my professorial fire is that they are using netnographic techniques in ways that are faithful to the method and its legitimate standards. Professor Johann Füller is a brilliant scientist is running an honorable market research shop that remains faithful to academic principles of methodological rigor, research quality, and building on the extant body of scientific knowledge.

It was also a wonderful social occasion as, despite the fact that we had been separated by an ocean and different cultures, we were instantly on the same page, sharing ideas and high-level opinions about online communities, consumer-generated media, and netnography. I felt very much at home. Here’s a picture of me with some of the HYVE gang, who, as you can see, are a very handsome bunch.

Johann even virtually introduced me to one of his mentors, Eric von Hippel, the celebrated MIT Professor who invented Lead User Analysis, whose work has been enormously influential to me in my development of netnography. The group at HYVE even asked me to sign their wall for posterity. It took a little prompting, but I did it. Here’s a picture of the result.

So I thank the great people at HYVE for treating me royally and, maybe even more importantly, for treating the technique of netnography with the class and careful concern it merits. I look forward to continuing our fascinating discussions and to building on the strong base of research community we’ve begun. Prost!

Now, to top it all off, on my plane ride home from Munich (via Zurich), I had the pleasure of sitting next to Shae-Lynn Bourne, a very famous Canadian ice dancer who has competed in 3 Olympics. We had a great chat over the 7 hours of our flight together, and it was a real honor and pleasure to meet her. She put up with all my naive questions about what she did, educating me about what it was like to be at the pinnacle of athletic achievement, and her whole interesting life, and she was just all around incredibly nice, interested, and sweet. After a mad dash through Zurich airport after a late arrival and a very tight connection (I almost missed my plane home), it was a great way to return from a wonderful time in Munich. I hope to be back to visit again soon. And I hope to have the pleasure of seeing Shae-Lynn perform sometime soon, hopefully in Toronto so that I can bring my family.

If you really want my opinion, she was robbed: she should have won Gold in 1998!

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