Netnography - An Intoduction

We have come across the term "Ethnography" which etymologically, consists of two words, these are, "Ethno" means culture and Logos mean science or study and therefore Ethnography refers to an in-depth study of an individual culture. 

Now, I would like to talk about the term "Netnography".

The term "Netnography" coined by Dr. Robert V. Kozinets during his dissertation on the Media fan community in 1995.

 According to Kozinets, netnography is the branch of ethnography that analyses the free behavior of individuals on the Internet that uses online marketing research techniques to provide useful insights. Kozinets develops “Netnography” as an online marketing research technique for providing consumer insight. It is an adaptation of the anthropological approach of studying ethnography to the study of online communities. Netnography is a new approach to conducting ethical and thorough ethnographic research that combines archival and online communications work, participation and observation, with new forms of digital and network data collection, analysis, and research representation.

Reference:

Hine, Christine (2000). Virtual Ethnography. London: SAGE Publications.

Hine, Christine. (2008). Virtual ethnography: Modes, varieties, affordances. The SAGE handbook of online research methods, 257-270.

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, Robert V. (2010). Netnography: Doing ethnographic research online. Sage publications.

https://medium.com/@BrownPantha/top-10-multinational-companies-in-nigeria-cd92a9ce97ac (retrieved on 10th July,2020)