Netnography and Design Thinking:Development and Illustration in the Vegan Food Industry

Purpose This paper aims to strengthen the process of design thinking by aligning it with netnography, specifically auto-netnography, which this paper asserts is particularly suited to the task of studying and enriching the actions of “designerly types” who seek to fashion monetisable businesses. Design/methodology/approach This paper conducts an auto-netnography with a structure divined from established design thinking theory – that of empathising, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing – to afford an understanding of how a popular health food influencer designs a successful vegan restaurant. Findings This paper illustrates the empathetic relationship between a long-term audience member and an entrepreneur/designer/marketer. The intimate cultural analysis reveals the nature of their symbiotic entwinement. In a way that few other methods could, the method shows how this sense of reciprocity, deepens over time. Research limitations/implications Conducting an auto-netnography is a prolonged and difficult task. Nonetheless, by revealing the rituals, expectations, roles and routines of content creators, designers and followers, this paper illustrates exciting possibilities for the enactment and development of design thinking in the marketing field. Practical implications Designerly types such as marketers and content creators should closely study, listen to and interact with consumers by using a similarly staged process that draws equally from design thinking and auto-netnography. Originality/value Prior to this study, existing research has not previously linked design thinking with either netnographic or auto-netnographic research

Opening the Black Box of Buzzing Bloggers: Understanding How Consumers Deal With the Tension Between Authenticity and Commercialism in Seeded Word of Mouth Campaigns

Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing has gained ground as a powerful communication tool. One way in which marketers tap into consumers' WOM potential is by seeding products to influencers. These consumers take on a dual role, being both target and agent in the WOM episode. Because of cultural contradictions between the roles of consumer (authenticity) and marketer (commercialism), this dual role is likely to cause tension. This paper examines how consumer-agents and final target consumers deal with this duality by means of a netnographic study and experiments

Gift Giving in Enduring Dyadic Relationships : The Micropolitics of Mother-Daughter Gift Exchange

This paper investigates the dynamics of long-term gift exchange between British mothers and their adult daughters, delving into the processes behind dyadic gift-giving. Through 54 comprehensive interviews, we elaborate the micropolitics that characterize these dynamics. Micropolitics refers to the subtle, everyday interactions, including gift exchange, that shape the ongoing negotiation of roles and the management of conflict or consensus within relationships. The study uncovers how these micropolitics manifest through four distinct processes of gift exchange: confirming, endorsing, connoting, and commanding. Gifts emerge as key instruments in this negotiation, serving as a medium for the reciprocal regulation of role behavior concerning gender, identity, and both endo-dyadic (within the dyad) and exo-dyadic (outside the dyad) roles. In contrast to previous research that adopts a synchronic (snapshot) approach to gift-giving, our diachronic (over time) perspective emphasizes how power dynamics, intent, and identity politics evolve to sustain and transform relationships. Our findings illustrate the important communicative and power-laden processes of gift exchange in enduring relations, explaining why even unwanted gifts can have significant bonding value. Our study offers fresh perspectives on the continuous evolution of relationship and role dynamics, as viewed through the practices of gift exchange

Analysis of Photo Sharing and Visual Social Relationships. Instagram as Case Study

This article discusses how visuality, through the mobility of Instagram, modifies individuals’ mediated lives. In particular, it examines how Instagram transforms individuals’ perceptions of their interpersonal relationships. It advances a critical re-reading of the concept of mobility (smart mobile devices) and the new approach to sociality. Conducting an empirical examination, this article delineates the changing dynamics that digitality determines within contemporary life experiences. Findings show that the ubiquitous use of smart mobile devices leads individuals towards the development of new forms and conceptions of mobile mediated visualities. In order to understand the rise of new visual practices based on Pink’s (2007) ethnographic work, this article considers how relationships develop among individuals, visual technologies, practices and images, society and culture. A qualitative approach informed by netnography (Kozinets, 2010), computer-mediated interviews and visual analysis (Rose, 2007) is employed in this study. The critical analysis of 44 participant interviews and their photo sharing behaviour presents the transformations that the mediation and mobility of Instagram bring into everyday relations between humans and technologies. The increased use of social media shows how sociality is affected and mediated by new mobile technologies. Although the social potentiality of (visual) social relationships itself does not offer a variety of verbal communication mechanisms, it encourages offline meetings or the relocation onto other social media. This shows that every alteration in the structure of societies has influence on individuals and on their means of expression

Digital methods for ethnography: analytical concepts for ethnographers exploring social media environments

The aim of this article is to introduce some analytical concepts suitable for ethnographers dealing with social media environments. As a result of the growth of social media, the Internet structure has become a very complex, fluid, and fragmented space. Within this space, it is not always possible to consider the 'classical' online community as the privileged field site for the ethnographer, in which s/he immerses him/herself. Differently, taking inspiration from some methodological principles of the Digital Methods paradigm, I suggest that the main task for the ethnographer moving across social media environments should not be exclusively that of identifying an online community to delve into but of mapping the practices through which Internet users and digital devices structure social formations around a focal object (e.g., a brand). In order to support the ethnographer in the mapping of social formations within social media environments, I propose five analytical concepts: community, public, crowd, self-presentation as a tool, and user as a device

Assessing the Societal Impact of Research: The Relational Engagement Approach

Marketing and policy researchers aiming to increase the societal impact of their scholarship should engage directly with relevant stakeholders. For maximum societal effect, this engagement needs to occur both within the research process and throughout the complex process of knowledge transfer. The authors propose that a relational engagement approach to research impact complements and builds on traditional approaches. Traditional approaches to impact employ bibliometric measures and focus on the creation and use of journal articles by scholarly audiences, an important but incomplete part of the academic process. The authors recommend expanding the strategies and measures of impact to include process assessments for specific stakeholders across the entire course of impact, from the creation, awareness, and use of knowledge to societal impact. This relational engagement approach involves the cocreation of research with audiences beyond academia. The authors hope to begin a dialogue on the strategies researchers can use to increase the potential societal benefits of their research

Trivial and normative? Online fieldwork within YouTube’s beauty community

In this article, I discuss methodological understandings around qualitative research and online ethnographic practice to bring forward a reflexive account on the particularities of doing fieldwork on YouTube. I draw from a multiyear ethnographic examination of YouTube’s beauty community that sought to understand online popularity framed by local norms and practices and shed light into the local significance of knowledge, expertise, and self-development. I argue for an epistemological perspective that acknowledges the diversity of viable, conceivable fieldwork experiences while distancing from prescriptive modes of argumentation. I propose seeing fieldwork in and through its richness and predicaments, persistently naturalistic while interpretive. I approach online popularity, fandom, and even YouTube itself from a perspective that tolerates ambivalence, contradictions, and embraces the complexity of social worlds and human interaction

The stigma turbine:A theoretical framework for conceptualizing and contextualizing marketplace stigma

Stigmas, or discredited personal attributes, emanate from social perceptions of physical characteristics, aspects of character, and “tribal” associations (e.g., race; Goffman 1963). Extant research emphasizes the perspective of the stigma target, with some scholars exploring how social institutions shape stigma. Yet the ways stakeholders within the socio-commercial sphere create, perpetuate, or resist stigma remain overlooked. We introduce and define marketplace stigma as the labeling, stereotyping, and devaluation by and of commercial stakeholders (consumers, companies and their employees, stockholders, institutions) and their offerings (products, services, experiences). We offer the Stigma Turbine (ST) as a unifying conceptual framework that locates marketplace stigma within the broader sociocultural context, and illuminates its relationship to forces that exacerbate or blunt stigma. In unpacking the ST, we reveal the critical role market stakeholders can play in (de)stigmatization, explore implications for marketing practice and public policy, and offer a research agenda to further our understanding of marketplace stigma and stakeholder welfare