The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/0025-1747.htm

Netnography
Netnography approach as a tool approach
for marketing research: the
case of Dash-P&G/TTV
Antonella La Rocca 689
Institute of Marketing and Communication Management,
USI – University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland
Andreina Mandelli
Institute of Marketing and Corporate Communication,
Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland, and
Ivan Snehota
Institute of Marketing and Communication Management,
USI – University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland

Abstract
Purpose – Online communication technologies have profoundly affected consumption and buying
behaviours, and put pressure on businesses to find ways of dealing with these developments.
Businesses are increasingly experimenting with new approaches and tools to keep up, and
netnography – ethnography applied to the web – has become popular. However, exploiting the
potential of netnography requires companies to cope with new problems and acquire new capabilities.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the organizational and managerial implications of using the
netnographic approach in market research.
Design/methodology/approach – After a literature review on netnography in marketing research,
the authors present a case study of best practice of netnography for market research: the research
project of Dash-Procter & Gamble on Motherhood Support.
Findings – The authors found four issues as critical for exploiting the potential of netnography
as a tool of market research: first, immersive involvement; second, mediated participation; third,
the use of multiple techniques and distributed specialized capabilities; and fourth, the need for
orchestrating the emergent network organization of the project. The quality of the research
outcomes is related to the resources available and the integration of different roles and competences
in the project.
Research limitations/implications – Since netnographic studies involve collaborative research,
further studies of experiences in organizing netnography projects are needed. These studies are bound
to yield valuable insights.
Practical implications – Exploiting the potential of netnography implies experimenting with novel
approaches and solutions in marketing research practices to orient management decisions and calls for
developing skills to orchestrate research project networks.
Originality/value – The value of this work lies in zooming in on the methodological principles of
netnography and zooming out on the networking managerial processes that make it possible to
implement the networking required to exploit the potential of netnography.
Keywords Netnography, Network organization, Market research, Collaborative research,
Research project management
Paper type Research paper

Management Decision
Vol. 52 No. 4, 2014
The authors gratefully acknowledge the collaboration of all the participants to the project. pp. 689-704
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
A particular thank to R. Flavia and L. Giuliana of TTV and the External Relation Manager 0025-1747
D.P. Francesca at the Dash-P&G Italy. DOI 10.1108/MD-03-2012-0233
MD 1. Introduction
52,4 Understanding customers has always been the main aim of market research. What is
changing is how this can be achieved. Until about 15 years ago the main approach was
to enter physically into contact with customers in various ways. Today, gaining
insights into customers’ online activities paves the way for a better understanding of
them. Consumers engage in conversations that are relevant to companies (Firat and
690 Dholakia, 2006). The fact that consumers’ activities take place in a virtual space does
not make the effects less real; rather, these activities are part of the “real existence for
their participants, and thus have consequential effects on many aspects of behavior,
including consumer behavior” (Kozinets, 1998, p. 366).
The traces consumers leave on various web platforms are countless, and knowing
how to tap into them could be extremely advantageous for marketing researchers
and management. “Data” are easy to access, costs of access are relatively low and
participants’ responsiveness is relatively high. However, taking advantage of this
scenario is not simple since it poses specific problems and requires distinct
competences. Marketers and marketing researchers realized the importance of the
virtual space early on (Armstrong and Hagel, 1996; Hagel and Armstrong, 1997;
Kozinets, 1997a, b, 1998, 1999; White, 1999) and started to discuss how it affects the
methods of studying consumers. Qualitative methods using an ethnographic approach
have been traditionally useful in research on consumer needs, behaviours and choices.
The quest for qualitative research into behaviours in the virtual space has led to the
emergence of netnography as “a new qualitative research methodology that adapts
ethnographic research techniques to study the cultures and communities that are
emerging through computer-mediated communications” (Kozinets, 2002, p. 62).
Compared to traditional research on web behaviours that has focused on data
gathering and descriptive mapping, netnography means a shift to interpretation,
which requires a different approach.
The internet has spawned a new and unique source of information for management,
confronted, however, with how to exploit this opportunity (e.g. Kane et al., 2009). While
the academic literature on netnography is growing, as are its applications in practice
(Bilgram et al., 2011; Kozinets, 2002, 2010b; Langer and Beckman, 2005), the potential
of the netnographic approach is still under-exploited (Xun and Reynolds, 2010) and, in
particular, organizational issues in using netnography and implications for managing
the marketing research process are underexplored. This paper examines the practice of
employing netnography with the aim of shedding light on the organizational and
managerial implications of its use in marketing research.
We will proceed by reviewing the literature on netnography and then examining a
case of best practice of using netnography for marketing research Dash-Procter &
Gamble (P&G) Italy. On the basis of the literature review and the case reported we put
forward four issues that appear critical for exploiting the potential of netnography as a
market research tool:
(1) immersive involvement;
(2) mediated participation;
(3) the use of multiple techniques and distributed specialized capabilities; and
(4) the need for orchestrating the emergent network organization of the project.
Finally, we discuss relevant implications for management and research.
2. Netnography in marketing research Netnography
Netnography emerged as the application of ethnography for observing and studying approach
cultures and communities formed through online communications. The purpose of
ethnography is to observe and describe behaviours, meanings and languages,
interpreting and extracting patterns and codes of conduct, that is, unwritten rules and
frames of reference, indicating shared and therefore cultural meanings. Netnography
as a research approach is linked to the nature and development of social media 691
(internet-based media platforms characterized by users’ extensive contribution to
content production). The space of online interactions is a form of culture whose
rules/rituals cannot be ignored as a context of consumption and buying behaviours.
The first effect of emerging communication technologies has been that of an effective
information and low-cost communication channel for consumers and businesses
permitting access to a wealth of information. However, since the mid-1990s, both
consumers and businesses have been utilizing the available and developing
communication technologies to actively communicate and interact with each other.
The diffusion of these technologies facilitates the development of relationships
among firms and consumers (Brown et al., 2002; Dholakia et al., 2004; McAlexander
et al., 2002; Schouten and McAlexander, 1995; Sun et al., 2006). Consumers not only
exchange information, sharing opinions and ideas, but also continuously redefine what
products mean in their lives (Cova and Cova, 2001). “Online communities form or
manifest cultures, the learned beliefs, values and customs that serve to order, guide and
direct the behaviour of a particular society or group” (Kozinets, 2010a, p. 12). Social
media are on the rise today; the boundaries between the virtual and online and the
“real” and offline have become fuzzy and the “virtual” has become an inseparable part
of the real ( Jones, 1995).
This development has not gone unnoticed by marketing practitioners and scholars
who observed that “marketing activities have the power to influence the strength of the
relationships among community participants, the brand, and the company” (Won-Moo
et al., 2011). Scholars have started to explore “[y] how consumers actively rework and
transform symbolic meanings encoded in advertisements, brands, retail settings, or
material goods to manifest their particular personal and social circumstances and
further their identity and lifestyle goals [y]. From this perspective, the marketplace
provides consumers with an expansive and heterogeneous palette of resources
from which to construct individual and collective identities” (Arnould and Thompson,
2005, p. 873).
The first to introduce the notion of netnography was Kozinets, who coined the term
in 1995, and provided several examples of how ethnographic methodology can be
applied to research on the online world. Netnography has become a widely accepted
form of marketing research since the end of the 1990s and has been applied to a variety
of research questions (Cova and Pace, 2006; Kozinets, 2002; Kozinets et al., 2010; Muñiz
and Schau, 2005; Nelson and Otnes, 2005; Quester and Fleck, 2010; Xun and Reynolds,
2010). Initial netnographic studies have explicitly aimed at constructing a “thick
description” of consumers (Geertz, 1973). Kozinets’ first study, an inquiry into the
devotion of consumers named “X-Philes” to the television show “X-Files”, evidenced
the importance of the multifaceted relationship of fans, stars, media texts and the
media industry (Kozinets, 1997a). Multiple methods were adopted in data collection
over a seven-month period, which included a form of site triangulation (Wallendorf and
Belk, 1989) through the use of multiple sites for sampling X-Phile culture. Such an
application of netnography went beyond tracking the flow of network conversations
MD and the classification of messages around themes, towards deeper enquiry into people’s
52,4 motivations, experiences and relationships with others in order to capture the
dimensions of the culture investigated.
A similar approach and methods were later used in studies of brand communities
(for a review see Kozinets, 2010a), illustrating interpretative depth as another hallmark
of ethnography and netnography. Recent netnographic research applied narrative
692 analysis to communication among members of various communities, adopting an
inter-textual narrative analysis approach (Boje, 2001, p. 74). One such study highlights
the networked nature of brand storytelling online and studies the reactions of bloggers
to a buzz-creating campaign by a phone company (Mobitech) in two steps (Kozinets
et al., 2010). The first was to identify the influencers by using social network data
analysis (blog visits) to describe quantitatively the links between the social network
nodes. The following step was the use of narrative analysis techniques to interpret
bloggers’ communications “to look beyond measures of communication frequency or
valence and consider its content” (Kozinets et al., 2010, p. 73). Such research required
several months of observation and data collection where the researchers, however, did
not participate directly in the blogs. The findings suggest that the communicators
altered the attendant meanings and that word-of-mouth marketing operates through
a complex process that “transforms commercial information into cultural stories
relevant to the members of particular communities” (p. 86). The study highlights the
“need to balance inherent commercial–communal tensions while being consistent with
the character elements of their ongoing narrative” (p. 86). It draws attention to “the
importance of working with a deep knowledge and awareness of the network coproduction
of marketing messages and meanings through consumer-generated narratives” (Kozinets
et al., 2010, p. 86).
Other studies (Martin and Woodside, 2011) have shown how netnography can
adopt a narrative analysis approach analysing consumers’ first-person online stories
and exploring how they interpret their experience, creating a thick description of
experiences and their meaning and role in the life of the consumer. This research
suggests that in order to build ethnographic “thick descriptions” of consumer cultures
online, we need to combine different methods of data collection (based on content,
interviews and observation), and to include offline observations of consumer rituals
and interactions.
While there is a significant accumulated experience of netnographic studies,
characterized by methodological rigour of the procedures, inclusion of multiple
methods and of the offline dimension of the culture investigated, and the specific
interest in the dynamics and structures of this culture, little has been published on the
organizational and managerial implications of this methodological approach applied
to market research.

3. Methodology
The aim of the case analysis reported is to explore the organizational aspects of a
netnographic research project in the business context. Given the investigative nature of
this research, a case study method seemed appropriate. Case studies are the preferred
strategy when the focus is on a contemporary phenomenon within some real-life
context (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 1994) and when the aim is to “pinpoint aspects
concerning the evolution of corporate processes which are otherwise difficult to grasp
in their entire complexity” (Guercini, 2004, p. 466). Moreover, in the early stages of
many research programmes, exploration is needed to develop research ideas and
questions (Voss et al., 2002). Although the authors were not engaged in the project as Netnography
consultants but as researchers only, the research has elements of action research approach
(Argyris et al., 1985) insofar as the researchers contributed to (and influenced) the
development of the entire project. This role of the researchers facilitated access to data
and informants.
Various methods were employed to collect data, and multiple sources of data
enabled cross-checking of information through triangulation (Denzin, 1978; Lincoln 693
and Guba, 1985). Repeated unstructured interviews, lasting from one to two hours,
with the project coordinator, who is also one of the founders of The Talking Village
(TTV), were the main source of information on project content and development.
Having been part of the research team, the authors also bring insights from direct
observation of the processes and their outcomes. In particular, participant observation
was employed during the development of the first project proposal for P&G; during the
first planning meeting between TTV, P&G, the PR agency and the most influential
bloggers; during the preparation of the intermediary report and the final presentation
to P&G; and finally during the (open) press conference at the end of the project.
Detailed notes about all interviews and meetings have been transcribed and shared
with TTV (project coordinator) for a further check. Finally, document analysis was
also employed, in particular for reporting project findings. Aggregation of the results
was done ex post, using both the material used for presentation to P&G and related
material elaborated by the researchers.
The prolonged internal engagement in the project team also allowed the researchers
“to be certain that the context is thoroughly appreciated and understood” (Lincoln and
Guba, 1985, p. 302). Finally, member checks in the form of follow-up interviews,
telephone calls and e-mail correspondence resolved the open issues and provided
supplementary information. Through member checks, informants were also given the
opportunity to check whether the researcher correctly understood the data collected,
improving the case quality.

4. The Dash-P&G (Italy) Motherhood Support project a case of best

practice
The case reported is the result of collaboration between Dash-P&G Italy, the PR agency
Studio Peliti, an agency specialized in online research called TTV, and the researchers,
authors of this paper. The objectives of the research on Motherhood Support, part of
the Idee per le Mamme (Ideas for Moms) project, were decided within P&G following a
formal proposal by TTV. The project, in line with the global campaign “Thank you,
Mom” launched in the occasion of the Olympic Games, aimed at positioning Dash as a
brand close to the world of Italian mothers, and building a deeper relationship with
them through participation in their online life. The Idee per le Mamme project linked
this objective solely to the goals and needs of the online mothers, the bloggers and the
associations, with the intention to participate in a relevant process of influence in
this market, being however, aware that online mothers do not represent the entire
population of Italian mothers.
The PR agency, with which P&G was already collaborating, was involved from the
start in facilitating the decision process and the development of a sound proposal. TTV,
well known for their expertise in social media and their relationships with the online
Italian mothers, in turn, aiming to further improve its methodological competences in
the field, decided to involve academic researchers in the fields of digital communication
and marketing research (the authors of this paper). The PR agency was in charge of all
MD the off-line communication activities related to the project, in particular, managing
52,4 relationships with TV, press and radio and involving a celebrity – an Italian
actress – as sponsor of the project. TTV organized a workshop with the academics in
order to discuss methodologies to adopt in the project. In the discussion between TTV
and the researchers it was agreed that, given the aims of the project, netnography
was the most useful approach. TTV then submitted a formal research proposal to P&G
694 marketing. P&G found the proposal innovative and in line with their overall interest
in experimenting with new methods to gain marketing insights. The project was
approved in November 2011, and the first organizational and research decisions were
made during the first meeting between the External Relationship Manager of P&G,
who acted as interface with P&G for the entire duration of the project, TTV, the PR
agency and the academic researchers.
In reporting the case we start by describing TTV’s activity and its research
approach in order to present the principles and tools guiding the research proposal
approved by P&G. We then explain the goals and contents of the Dash-P&G
Motherhood Support project. While we dedicate a detailed section to the research
design, central for the aim of our study, the project findings are synthesized for reasons
of project completeness, but they are not at the centre of our discussion.

4.1 TTV and its digital research approach

TTV is a web marketing start-up, founded in 2010 by R. Flavia and L. Giuliana, two
experts in research methodology regarding social media and bloggers. Flavia, a
former P&G marketer, worked at Reckitt Benckiser (Athens and London) and at
Johnson & Johnson (Italy) before being attracted by the internet’s potential for
marketing research. After a maternity leave, she decided to study the phenomenon
in depth and became an active blogger on her own Motherhood blog in 2008.
Two years later she founded TTV which is, she says, “the result of reflections shared
on the web, on the empowerment of consumers in the era of online conversations”.
The founders were inspired by the idea of social media not trivialized by the hype of
the moment: buzz marketing, crowdsourcing, guerrilla marketing, etc. They believed
in dialogue and practicing conversation marketing. TTV has been conceived both for
“experts” and for consumers active in the network. The intent is to create a virtual
village which makes it easy for companies, experts and consumers to meet and talk
to create new ideas from their conversations. This virtual village is also a platform
for bottom-up marketing projects. TTV intends to foster dialogue and collaboration
between companies and consumers. The agency is inspired by principles of
participation in the sense that all of the involved – from whoever commissioned
the research to the researcher, to the online/offline participants – are in the same
situation/context and have the equal right to speak. TTV organizes and manages
online and offline dialogue between companies and users, adopting the six tools
described in Figure 1.
Dialogue can take the form of question-answer interaction about specific problems,
looking for insights, collective storytelling or collaborative creativity in creating new
concepts, products and communication campaigns. Clients’ various forms of
collaboration span from ad hoc transactions to on-going partnerships. TTV has
expertise in qualitative research and also in web writing and community management.
The co-founder, L. Giuliana, is an expert in semiotics, and was a qualitative researcher
at OTO Research and a web strategist at Fullsix. In sync with their company’s
principles, Giuliana and Flavia have espoused the netnographic approach since “[y] it
 Qualitative Monitoring Social Training Workshop BrandVillage
Netnography
The first step for an effective TTV is not only online, but Effective
approach
conversation is listening. For this reason participates in training activities in Conversations require time
we help companies that have or do not collaboration with institutions and and continuity. For this
have a track of their online reputation, universities because it wants to help reason The Talking Village
to carry out qualitative and semiotic create a digital culture in Italy. For encourages its customers to
analyses which result in the businesses, TTV offers training to bring continue the relationship with
identification of the most relevant issues.
On these issues TTV, together with
management at various levels close to
collaborative communication tools. The
users through
"permanent sites" dedicated
695
companies, then builds plans of workshop is the tool we use for the to a broader project or to the
conversation. “kickoff” of our projects; we share goals brand.
and ideas with agencies, clients, and
consumers, all physically around the
ActiVillage same table. Surveys

Some tools of conversation On some basic

(group blogs, diaries, interactions about questions or
The Lab
initiatives companies launch) are used specific topics, we carry out
to evaluate and choose the best An area of free and short quantitative or
directions for the development of an permanent conversation on The Talking qualitative surveys. The
idea: a product, a communication, a Village site, where conversations can be opinions of the users reach
promotional campaign, etc. We call stimulated or proposed by the users of well beyond where they can
them ACTIVillage. the site. The goal is to have a constant make a difference.
view on the issues relevant to users and
their opinions about them.
Figure 1.
TTV tools
Source: TTV material, January 2012

allows not looking behind the glass of an aquarium, but together we swim offshore.
Only a continuous presence in the network allows a true understanding of codes and
social dynamics” (R. Flavia).

4.2 Dash-P&G and the project background

Dash is one of the main brands of P&G in Italy, and in its marketing it has always been
close to Italian women. Since 1987 Dash has been involved in social responsibility
projects and is currently committed to Italian mothers with its latest project for
mothers Più mamma non si può (Being a more caring mother would be impossible),
a variation of the traditional slogan Più bianco non si può (Any whiter would be
impossible), which aims at renewing its support for mothers, highlighting their needs
and offering them practical help. This initiative is part of the campaign Fieri di
sostenere tutte le mamme (Proud to support all mothers), through which P&G
sponsored the official 2012 Olympic Games in London.
Aware of the increasing relevance of social network activities for moms, P&G
developed a further scheme called Idee per le Mamme (Ideas for Moms), which aims
at giving visibility and financial support to 15 non-profit initiatives, whose goal is to
offer parenthood support. The research we present and discuss in this paper is part
of the Idee per le Mamme project and aims to identify and assess the emergent needs
in the everyday life of Italian mothers. The External Relations Manager of P&G,
D.P. Francesca, explains that “the complexity, difficulties and risks for the brand to
enter as [an] outsider in online communities that have a long story and specific social
and cultural dynamics have led us to commission the project to specialized external
figures”. The purpose of the research project was to explore in depth the needs and
feelings related to motherhood/parenthood support and, in particular, to bring to light
all the non-profit services and project ideas that parents and mothers above all –
discuss and develop to support each other.
MD 4.2.1 Project design and methods. The actual project was developed in four phases.
52,4 In the preliminary phase, in November 2011, the project was discussed between P&G,
the PR agency, TTV, the academic team and a few selected bloggers. Decisions about
the methodology were made in a close collaboration between all parties involved.
In particular, some of the most active bloggers were involved not only in the
interpretation of data and results, but also in a workshop discussion on the methods to
696 be adopted. The field research, described in Figure 2, was designed as a two-step study.
An important premise in explaining the project design was the extensive previous
involvement of TTV in virtual places where motherhood was a dominant issue. TTV
did not start from scratch as it has been an active participant in the motherhood
network since 2008, when Flavia created her blog. The time to complete the field study
was therefore relatively short.
In the first phase (November-December 2011) of the field study, TTV mapped the
network through listening/monitoring techniques and participant observation. The
monitoring activity (partially based on quantitative and semi-automatic analysis of the
content of social media) had the goal of mapping the relevant conversations and issues.
This was performed partly by the academic researchers and partly by TTV. The
participant observation phase was “immersive” as TTV was part of the community of
moms for three years, and due to the collaboration with the manager of the web site Il
Paese delle Mamme (Land of Mothers) that comprises a large number of associations
supporting motherhood. This facilitated identifying the “places” of conversation,
which were subsequently monitored. The “places” identified and explored were many
and varied: sites such as portals, mom channels, web radio, web television and local
sites, forums, generic and thematic blogs and social networks such as Twitter,
Facebook/groups, Linked In and Youtube. The purpose was twofold: first, to listen to
conversations online and then to interact with the community with the aim of
identifying the main needs, understanding how the main issues are related to the
media, describing the behaviours and emotional experiences of people, identifying the
trends and gathering information on existing support initiatives. The approach used in
this phase was a mix of data analysis, “divergent” thought, clues, intuition and creative
synthesis. Members of the communities were also asked to react openly to the aims of
the research and the company. The first phase was “concluded” by an intermediary
report discussed with P&G at the end of December.
In the second phase ( January 2012) of the field study, the aim was to deepen and
probe the insights from the first phase. In all, 33 in-depth interviews of one to two
hours mainly face to face (three online) were carried out by researchers, including the

Phase 1: Monitoring/listening and

Participation Phase 2: In-depth research offline
nclusion
Intermediary Report

Workshop with Key

In-depth Interviews
hop

Elaboration of a
Questionnaire
identification

Interpretation
Key Sources
identification

Key Actors

participation
Kick off Works

Immersive

Debrief and Co
actors

Figure 2.
Project design and
November February–March
activity flow 2011 November–December 2011 December 2011 January 2012 2012
authors, with front figures in the Motherhood Support conversation. Questions Netnography
regarded: first, their involvement in parenthood support; second, support needs and approach
relative weight; third, reasons for the support needs; fourth, services and activities
used to satisfy the needs identified (mapping existing services both in the local area
where they live and online, and highlighting gaps in the offering); fifth, the ways moms
help each other and aggregate; sixth, different attitudes to motherhood; and finally, the
role of the social network in carrying out their support activity. 697
TTV simultaneously continued to monitor the network on the same issues, with a
focus on sites of associations. In addition, through relationships created with interviewees,
a map of associations interested in submitting a project for support within the Idee per le
mamme scheme was developed.
The final phase (February-March 2012) of the project was the analysis of the material
collected, preparation of the report, its presentation to P&G and subsequent meetings to
clarify the implications of the findings. In this phase TTV involved the researchers and
several bloggers in the analysis and interpretation of material gathered.
4.2.2 Motherhood and support: insights from the netnography . The participant
observation of the web context and the daily interactions on the theme of motherhood
reveals a highly varied landscape, and a feeling of profound change taking place.
A new figure of mother is emerging one that is not afraid to accept her own limits or
shortcomings as a mother and also able to share the dark side of her experiences.
The picture that emerges includes so much plurality of attitudes and personal
experiences, that any attempt to reduce maternity to one single interpretation becomes
impossible and useless. The change taking place is more than a shift from an almost
sacred, fixed and immutable image of mom to that of a complex woman with a
plurality of roles to be reconciled. There is no reference model, except for those imposed
by established social conventions, which are perceived as backward, and mothers’ roles
are being painstakingly redefined in each mother’s search for their own ideal balance.
Mothers often ascribe a negative valence to common perceptions of motherhood; e.g.
“Ecomoms” vs “consumerist moms”. This suggests that the description of motherhood,
with respect to some fundamental traits, is dichotomous: it is defined by negation and
opposition towards a style perceived (by extremists) as an enemy to be defeated.
Participant observation of the web context also reveals differences among the place
of conversations, in particular sites, blogs and social networks. Thematic sites on
motherhood, primarily related to pregnancy, health, children’s education and early
childhood, reflect magazine style with numerous rich sections that are frequently
updated. In Italy there are about 2,000 active blogs managed by women on topics
related to family life and motherhood. Certainly, blogs express a strong, personal and
emotional dimension, but the social dimension is relevant as well; parenthood becomes
an opportunity for growth through relations with others. Blogs are used to construct
shared meaning in a moment marked by a profound personal transformation – that of
becoming parents. Finally, there are social networks with their specificities. While in
Facebook groups, aggregation is based on a defined need for sharing, in private
profiles each person communicates his/her individual point of view, ups and downs
and personal intellectual curiosity, so that conversation takes an individual tone,
avoiding the norm of “socially acceptable”. Even if Twitter, fast and one way, does not
have the narrative of the blog or the conversation of Facebook, it offers emotional value
to mothers who are active on the web. The past three years have also witnessed the
birth and growth of the active presence of working mothers in professional networks
such as Linked In. Such a presence seems to break an Italian taboo that conceives
MD motherhood as an obstacle and nuisance in the workplace. This web presence also
52,4 serves to promote debates that denounce bad practices and promote best practices, and
create networks based on common interests (e.g. entrepreneurs and freelancers).
Concerning the most important areas of support, there is a substantial agreement
among respondents on the pre-eminence of physical and psychological health and of
reconciling work and family. Mothers need affection and support, combined with a
698 need to socialize, especially in the critical post-partum phase. Moms also admit they
need support in the area of physical health: professional assistance, such as that of a
midwife or so-called doula, is particularly important during the first weeks of an
infant’s life to help moms with their daily tasks and breastfeeding. Another major issue
is reintegration at work. The majority of women experience serious difficulties in their
attempts to be re-employed in their original position and are often victims of mobbing.
In the context of the workplace, mothers often feel victims of an ancient cultural
heritage. There is strong social pressure towards the culture of family, which hinders
flexibility and makes motherhood an individual rather than a collective issue.
5. Case discussion and conclusion
The Dash-P&G research project on Motherhood Support is an example of a best
practice for companies that are about to foster positive engagement with emergent
communities. The programme has been considered successful, with more than 400
projects submitted so far, and P&G has decided to double the original endowment
funding 30 projects instead of the 15 initially planned. However, not everything went
smoothly. During and after the presentation of research findings to the press and to the
mom bloggers, the organization of the project was also criticized by several mom
bloggers. One of the issues was related to the involvement of a mom celebrity in Italy,
which was found by some in contrast with the communitarian culture of digital
motherhood. The post below is emblematic of this critique:
At the end of the event, comes a question from the net: Was it necessary to have a celebrity (in
this case, Ms. C.) to present a good project like this? The answer that emerged surprised me.
[y] Dash will finance non-profit projects for parenthood support but, as pointed out several
times, “good ideas and useful projects should then be sustained by politicians”. Here the
potential value of using a celebrity like C., who declared her willingness personally meet
politicians in order to ensure they will take the appropriate decisions. The politician will take
decisions [y] not because research reveals a need, or maybe [y] because 100 thousand
people show a clear desire, but thanks to the target visit of a Hollywood star, defined ‘a public
woman’. The proposed mechanism leaves me wondering![1].
P&G was also criticized because, while experimenting with new models of relationships
and representations of motherhood, it launched, at the same time, an advertising
campaign for Dash Più mamma non si può based (according to these criticisms) on old
stereotypes and motherhood models, which contradicted the innovative core spirit of Idee
per le mamme. Such a critique was expressed for instance in occasion of a popular Italian
music contest:
It’s nice to know [irony] that in a country where: women are discouraged 4 times more than in
the rest of Europe in searching a job, earn much less than men, and according to the national
office of statistics in 71.3% of cases the family burden is on women’s shoulders, a brand
[P&G]- established to the extent of being present at the famous Sanremo Festival with a series
of infomercials – testifies a truly backward cultural situation, one in which woman is seen as
the home angel who cares about children and washes underwear. This picture of moms leaves
little space to social innovation, which would be so much needed in Italy and in which women
could be the driving force[2].
While the project has been considered successful by the actors involved, the tensions Netnography
underlying the above reactions signify that the use of netnography cannot be separated approach
from the strategy that the client business pursues with respect to their branding and
social media communication in general (Wilson et al., 2011). It also means that acquiring
specific social media capabilities is crucial for the success of such projects (Kane et al.,
2009). This warrants the recommendation that the “virtual world marketing should
be integrated with other marketing channels” and that “campaigns should be cross- 699
promoted or entirely integrated” (Tikkanen et al., 2009).
The case highlights in particular four aspects of applying netnography as a tool of
marketing research. The first regards the need to take part in the life of the community
studied. In order to gain a deep understanding of the community it is not enough to
observe and monitor online practices from a distance and to identify and classify
the themes of aggregation (Puri, 2007), rather an immersive approach is required.
First-hand experience and understanding the processes and dynamics of aggregation
of the community requires living as a community member and being accepted as a
trusted member. Being a member is a condition for TTV to activate relationships
related to the parenthood project and to engage in conversation. Yet, being an actor in
mother-related social channels is not a guarantee for obtaining collaboration in the
community. Gaining the status of trusted community member requires continuity of
engagement and methodological competence, which cannot be gained within the time
span of a single research project such as Motherhood Support. Indeed, TTV was able
to apply the experience it acquired over time to identify the driving actors and engage
in the on-going conversations.
The second aspect is related to the role played by TTV as mediator of P&G
participation and involvement with the community. Commercial-communal tension in
community-related projects (Kozinets, 2010a) cannot be solved, but a way to address it
is to use mediating and translating bodies, like TTV, that have acquired community
member status (Kane et al., 2009). Taking on such a role requires considerable
sensibility, competence and awareness of the co-production of meaning in interaction
within the community, which develops gradually with the experience of participating
in the social space. In the Motherhood Support case, the TTV agency takes on the role
of a translator and mediator who is aware of the need for transparency and who sides
clearly with the community rather than with the client company. Indeed, TTV’s core
competence is linked to the community in which it participates, and TTV uses it for
projects with different company clients.
The third aspect that comes to the fore in the project, in line with what is suggested
in the literature, is the need to go beyond observing and monitoring online activities
and to include offline activities if we are to understand the community culture. This
turn involves deploying a set of different methods for the analysis of online and offline
activities. Netnography becomes “a powerful practice by the switching among different
techniques” (Xun and Reynolds, 2010, p. 281) that can be leveraged when deeper
inquiry is needed into people’s motivations, myths and reported experiences, and also
into relationships with the other consumers and companies involved. Observation
and discourse-based methods of inquiry require specific techniques of data collection;
for instance, in-depth face-to-face interviews for gaining insights into individual
psychological processes and social network analysis to map the structuring of
influence in communities.
Finally, an important aspect of the case is the emergence of a network-formed
organization consequent to the need to deploy a variety of techniques that require
MD specific skills. More or less continuous collaborations tend to emerge among actors
52,4 who have specific competences and different backgrounds. In the Motherhood Support
project, it was a deliberate choice to involve a variety of research figures from the very
beginning. In a collaborative spirit the various team members played different roles,
sharing ideas, confronting experiences and developing analytical concepts. What has
emerged is similar to a community of practice because it groups “people who share a
700 concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge
and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis” (Wenger et al., 2002, p. 4).
P&G approached the project seeking feasible solutions with an “entrepreneurial”
rather than a “bureaucratic” mindset towards research (Gummesson, 2001). As a result,
the company’s professional decision makers adopted informal, personal and
non-standardized investigative procedures (Guercini, 2004). Such use of netnography
for market research has implications for client-organizations that we will discuss in the
following section.

6. Implications for management and research

The outcomes of the Motherhood Support research project have been positive for the
corporate client as the project answered the question commissioned by Dash-P&G
(“What are the main support needs for parenthood and how can P&G participate in
meeting them?”), but also produced a deeper understanding of the community where
motherhood is a key issue and offered compelling insights about the potential of
netnography as a tool for marketing research.
Looking at how the project was carried out it stands out that using netnography as
a market research approach entails greater organizational complexity, and that coping
with such complexity requires particular skills. The network organization emerging
from the use of netnography has features of a “distributed knowledge system”
(Tsoukas, 1996). Coping effectively within it, so as to exploit the “power of collective
intelligence”, requires managing the emerging network organization (Bonabeau, 2009).
This has two main implications for management that are entwined with the
implications of using the netnography approach for research.
The first implication is that a set of diverse and special skills is required to carry out
and coordinate projects that involve netnography (Hanna et al., 2011). These
concern listening/monitoring the web, analysing the content of the social network
structures, performing in-depth motivational analysis, participating in online
community communications and dialogue. While the availability of such specialized
skills – often similar to what TTV provides – is growing fast, it is still limited and not
embodied in one single organization. Developing specific skills takes time and
requires continuity as these develop through experience and experimenting with
different methodologies and solutions (Gannon-Leary et al., 2011). Skills that need
to be assembled for a netnography project can be internal to the client organization
but part of these will always be external because of the need to involve figures that
are full and trusted members of the online communities and not identified with
business interests.
The second implication concerns assembling the necessary skills: it is not about
combining readymade elements but rather about relating a set of actors who possess
the required skills and engaging these in collaborative relationships. The involvement
of multiple roles means that a network-like organization emerges around and for the
project, and the project outcomes will depend on how well the various roles perform
together. For the client organization, it implies experimenting with a non-hierarchical
decision process in managing the project network. Loose network-like organizations Netnography
can never be fully controlled and directed by one of the parties, for instance the client approach
organization. The roles are always negotiated and re-negotiated between the parties.
While such an organization/network is in many ways self-regulated, a certain amount
of coordination and integration is needed and for better performance the distributed
competences need to be orchestrated (Dhanaraj and Parkhe, 2006). The client
organization can take an active role in orchestrating the activities but, since managing 701
the project network cannot be based solely on centralized control, the client must
develop distinctive managerial skills in communicating, motivating and mediating
between the parties (Mangold and Faulds, 2009).
Companies could foster an itinerant leadership that “goes not to the person whose
‘turn’ is next, but to the person most skilled” in the required research phase; in doing so
“everyone in effect ‘has the pen’ at some point in time, and is respected as leader for
that point in time when his or her skills are most needed” (Beckman and Barry, 2007,
p. 53). In this vein, every participant in the project “is in their own right a potential
facilitator of the group’s process” (Tosey, 1999). The success factor becomes, therefore,
assembling the right mix of people on the team and providing a leader for it who
understands the on-going process and who is able to smoothly leverage and integrate
the diverse ways of thinking within the team, a diversity that has been identified as a
driver of innovative projects (Beckman and Barry, 2007).
Past research has produced a wealth of insights regarding the scope and principles
of netnographic studies, and such research is still going strong and stimulates the
growing interest of companies in the netnographic approach. Given such interest,
further research reporting on the experience and practices of companies in creating a
network organization around netnography projects and in orchestrating their activities
is bound to yield valuable insight.

Notes
1. yenibelqis.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/una-donna-pubblica/
2. francescasanzo.net/2012/02/15/le-migliori-amiche-del-detersivo-le-mamme/#more

References
Argyris, C., Putnam, R. and Smith, D. (1985), Action Science, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.
Armstrong, A. and Hagel, J. (1996), “The real value of on-line communities”, Harvard Business
Review, Vol. 74 No. 3, pp. 134-141.
Arnould, E.J. and Thompson, C.J. (2005), “Consumer culture theory (CCT): twenty years of
research”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 868-882.
Beckman, S. and Barry, M. (2007), “Innovation as a learning process: embedding design
thinking”, California Management Review, Vol. 50 No. 1, pp. 24-56.
Bilgram, V., Bart, M. and Biel, S. (2011), “Getting closer to the consumer – how Nivea co-creates
new products”, Marketing Review St Gallen, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 34-40.
Boje, D. (2001), Narrative Methods for Organizational & Communication Research, Sage, London.
Bonabeau, E. (2009), “Decisions 2.0: the power of collective intelligence”, MIT Sloan Management
Review, Vol. 50 No. 2, pp. 44-53.
Brown, S.L., Tilton, A. and Woodside, D.M. (2002), “The case for on-line communities”, The
McKinsey Quarterly, No. 1, available at: www.mckinsey.com/insights/mckinsey_quarterly
(accessed 28 March 2009).
MD Cova, B. and Cova, V. (2001), “Tribal aspects of postmodern consumption: the case of French
in-line roller skaters”, Journal of Consumer Behavior, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 67-76.
52,4
Cova, B. and Pace, S. (2006), “Brand community of convenience products: new forms of customer
empowerment – the case ‘my Nutella The Community’ ”, European Journal of Marketing,
Vol. 40 Nos 9/10, pp. 1087-1105.
Denzin, N. (1978), “The logic of naturalistic inquiry”, in Denzin, N. (Ed.), Sociological Methods, A
702 Sourcebook, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, pp. 54-73.
Dhanaraj, C. and Parkhe, A. (2006), “Orchestrating innovation networks”, Academy of
Management Review, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 659-669.
Dholakia, U.M., Bagozzi, R. and Pearo, L.K. (2004), “A social influence model of consumer
participation in network- and small-group-based virtual communities”, International
Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 21 No. 3, pp. 241-263.
Eisenhardt, K. (1989), “Building theories from case study research”, Academy of Management
Review, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 532-550.
Firat, F. and Dholakia, N. (2006), “Theoretical and philosophical implications of postmodern
debates: some challenges to modern marketing”, Marketing Theory, Vol. 6 No. 2,
pp. 123-162.
Gannon-Leary, P., Fontainha, E. and Moira Bent, M. (2011), “The loneliness of the long distance
researcher”, Library Hi Tech, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 455-469.
Geertz, C. (1973), “Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture”, in Geertz, C. (Ed.),
The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, Basic Books, New York, NY, pp. 3-30.
Guercini, S. (2004), “Developing the researcher-manager interface in the case analysis process”,
Management Decision, Vol. 42 Nos 3/4, pp. 464-472.
Gummesson, E. (2001), “Are current research approaches in marketing leading us astray?”,
Marketing Theory, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 27-48.
Hagel, J. and Armstrong, A.G. (1997), Net Gain: Expanding Markets through Virtual
Communities, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.
Hanna, R., Rohm, A. and Crittenden, V.L. (2011), “We’re all connected: the power of the social
media ecosystem”, Business Horizons, Vol. 54 No. 3, pp. 265-273.
Jones, S.G. (1995), “Understanding community in the information age”, in Jones, S.G. (Ed.),
Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community, Sage, Thousand Oaks,
CA, pp. 10-35.
Kane, G.C., Fichman, R.G., Gallaugher, J. and Glaser, J. (2009), “Community relations 2 2.0”,
Harvard Business Review, Vol. 87 No. 11, pp. 45-50.
Kozinets, R.V. (1997a), “I want to believe: a nethnography of the ‘X-Philes’ subculture of
consumption”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 24, pp. 470-475.
Kozinets, R.V. (1997b), “To boldly go: a hypermodern ethnography of star trek fans’ culture and
communities of consumption”, unpublished dissertation, Queen’s University, Kingston.
Kozinets, R.V. (1998), “On netnography: initial reflections on consumer research investigations of
cyberculture”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 366-371.
Kozinets, R.V. (1999), “E-Tribalized marketing? The strategic implications of virtual communities
of consumption”, European Management Journal, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 252-264.
Kozinets, R.V. (2002), “The field behind the screen: using netnography for marketing research in
online communities”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 39 No. 1, pp. 61-72.
Kozinets, R.V. (2010a), Netnography. Doing Ethnographic Research Online, Sage, London.
Kozinets, R.V. (2010b), “Netnography: the marketer’s secret weapon”, Netbase, available at: http://
info.netbase.com/rs/netbase/images/Netnography_WP.pdf (accessed 20 January 2012).
Kozinets, R.V., de Valck, K. and Wojnicki, A.C. (2010), “Networked narratives: understanding Netnography
word-of-mouth marketing in online communities”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 74 No. 2,
pp. 71-89. approach
Langer, R. and Beckman, S.C. (2005), “Sensitive research topics: netnography revisited”,
Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 189-203.
Lincoln, Y. and Guba, E. (1985), Naturalistic Inquiry, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
McAlexander, J.H., Schouten, J.W. and Koenig, H.F. (2002), “Building brand community”, Journal 703
of Marketing, Vol. 66 No. 1, pp. 38-54.
Mangold, W.G. and Faulds, D.J. (2009), “Social media: the new hybrid element of the promotion
mix”, Business Horizons, Vol. 52 No. 4, pp. 357-365.
Martin, D. and Woodside, A.G. (2011), “Storytelling research on international visitors.
Interpreting own experiences in Tokyo”, Qualitative Market Research: An International
Journal, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 27-54.
Muñiz, A. and Schau, H.J. (2005), “Religiosity in the abandoned apple newton brand community”,
Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 737-747.
Nelson, M.R. and Otnes, C.C. (2005), “Exploring cross-cultural ambivalence: a netnography
of intercultural wedding message boards”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 58 No. 1,
pp. 89-95.
Puri, A (2007), “The web of insights: the art and practice of webnography”, International Journal
of Market Research, Vol. 49 No. 3, pp. 387-408.
Quester, P.G. and Fleck, N. (2010), “Club Med: coping with corporate brand evolution”, The
Journal of Product and Brand Management, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 94-102.
Schouten, J.W. and McAlexander, J.H. (1995), “Subcultures of consumption: an ethnography of the
new bikers”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 43-61.
Sun, T., Youn, S., Wu, G. and Kuntaraporn, M. (2006), “Online word-of-mouth (or mouse): an
exploration of its antecedents and consequences”, Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 1104-1127.
Tikkanen, H., Hietanen, J., Henttonen, T. and Rokka, J. (2009), “Exploring virtual worlds:
success factors in virtual world marketing”, Management Decision, Vol. 47 No. 8,
pp. 1357-1381.
Tosey, P. (1999), “The peer learning community: a contextual design for learning?”, Management
Decision, Vol. 37 No. 5, pp. 403-410.
Tsoukas, H. (1996), “The firm as a distributed knowledge system: a constructionist approach”,
Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 17, Winter Special Issue, pp. 11-25.
Voss, C., Tsikriktsis, N. and Frohlich, M. (2002), “Case research in operation management”,
International Journal of Operations & Product ion Management, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 195-219.
Wallendorf, M. and Belk, R.W. (1989), “Assessing trustworthiness in naturalistic consumer
research”, in Hirschman, E. (Ed.), Interpretive Consumer Research, Association for
Consumer Research, Provo, UT, pp. 69-84.
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. and Snyder, W.M. (2002), Cultivating Communities of Practice: A
Guide to Managing Knowledge – Seven Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice,
Harvard Business Press, Cambridge.
Wilson, H.J., Guinan, P.J., Parise, S. and Weinberg, B.D. (2011), “What’s your social media
strategy?”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 89 Nos 7/8, pp. 23-25.
White, E. (1999), “Chatting a singer up the pop charts: how music marketers used the web to
generate buzz before an album debuted”, The Wall Street Journal, October 5, pp. B1, B4.
Won-Moo, H., Kwang-Ho, A. and Minsung, K. (2011), “Building brand loyalty through managing
brand community commitment”, Management Decision, Vol. 49 No. 7, pp. 1194-1213.
MD Xun, J. and Reynolds, J. (2010), “Applying netnography to market research: the case of the
online forum”, Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing, Vol. 18
52,4 No. 1, pp. 17-31.
Yin, R. (1994), Case Study Research. Design and Methods, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

About the authors

704 Dr Antonella La Rocca, PhD, is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Marketing and
Communication Management, USI – University of Lugano (Switzerland), where she received her
PhD with a dissertation on Actors’ Identities in Business Relationships. Her current research
interests are in business relationships and communication processes, with particular reference to
new business development in B2B markets. Dr Antonella La Rocca is the corresponding author
and can be contacted at: [email protected]
Dr Andreina Mandelli, PhD, is a Professor in Marketing at the School of Management at the
Bocconi University, in Milan, and an Adjunct Professor at the USI (Lugano) and the IE Business
School (Madrid). She received her PhD in Mass Communication at the Indiana University,
Bloomington (USA). Her current research interests focus on the phenomena of innovation in
communication, marketing and consumer behaviour, with particular reference to the changes
brought by new technologies and modes of communication network.
Ivan Snehota, PhD, is a Professor of Marketing at the USI – University of Lugano
(Switzerland). He has held positions at the Uppsala University and the Stockholm School of
Economics. His research interests focus on market strategy development and organization
in B2B markets. He is the co-author of several books on business networks and papers
in Scandinavian Journal of Management, Industrial Marketing Management and Journal of
Business Research.

To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected]

Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.