Why is netnography useful for Restaurants?

 

Welcome back!

I am glad to write you another note as important as the previous ones. We are continuing, with relevant issues about implementing new knowledge, as it was during the last article about knowledge management and how to apply it to our restaurant.

Now I leave you a note about the detailed and bespoke study of the buyer persona for your business through online social interaction.

Do you want to know about Netnography in restaurants? Or in other words, we will learn how to find the ideal client in the digital area. Today we are immersed in a digital world where many businesses need a vision. But unfortunately, finding the perfect client on the web was not accessible until Netnography appeared on the scene.

Knowing customers’ preferences has been an extreme challenge, and understanding them is a specific role within the world of marketing. It has been becoming a big challenge for all brands and businesses today. However, I will tell you how it can be achieved. Let’s start!

History of Netnography

About history, ethnographic enquiry has traditionally been used to gain a deep understanding of marketplace cultures and actors. However, the internet has created unprecedented opportunities for customer insights. For instance,  Kozinets (1997, 1998) developed netnography in the 1990s; customers’ online presence was limited to virtual communities of enthusiasts discussing common interests and forming their cybercultures.

Understanding customers is a key aim of service marketing research and an important requirement for successful business practices. Customers interact with service providers daily, such as retailers, restaurants, retail banks, healthcare providers, government services, non-profit organizations, and telecommunications companies. 

However, due to rapid advancements, especially in information technology, the context in which service is delivered, experienced and evaluated is changing. As a result, today’s service customers are increasingly active online before, during and after interactions with service providers, creating large masses of information about their activities and experiences. (Heinonen, 2018)

In today’s environment of digitalization, netnography is more relevant than ever before. Even though netnography has already been used for some service-related research, the method has much more to offer service researchers. The development of new technology creates new digital forms of service and affects customers’ current service usage. Through netnographic inquiry, researchers can gain new perspectives on traditional service or explore new types of digital service (e.g. online streaming of entertainment, online storage space or online gaming).

Source: Google.com

What is Netnography?

Netnography is a specific approach for studying online social interaction and experience from a human perspective. Found helpful in a range of studies in the business and management fields, but particularly in marketing, netnography is founded in anthropological techniques of participant-observation and axiologies of cultural understanding. 

Netnography builds on the practices of traditional anthropology but adds specific methods that include locating sites and topics using search engines handling large digital datasets with a combination of automated and manual techniques.

Analyzing digital data through contextualization and providing specific guidelines for handling online ethics questions and research procedures. 

Recent developments emphasize research websites, social networking sites, the role of the researcher, critical and complementary approaches, and personal academic branding. The new system has gained wide acceptance within business research and is spreading to other social science fields. (Kozinets, 2015)

Source: www.youtube.com

There are four types of netnography, and these are: 

Sources: Reasearchgate.com

Positioned in the bottom left quadrant is Auto-netnography. “Auto-netnography” is an adaptation of auto-ethnography (Hayano 1981). It is a form of netnography where data collection is filtered through the self and thus concerns a mainly “local” site: one’s own identity and story.

In the bottom right quadrant is the Symbolic Netnography. The Symbolic Netnography grew out of the need for netnography to provide valuable insights to managers, particularly managers in marketing. Like commercial ethnography, Symbolic Netnographies attempt to help managers and others decode people’s everyday worlds or consumers. Symbolic Netnographies are also helpful for theory building and understanding. 

They are the most common type of netnography by far. Social media information and interaction are used to build a portrait of particular people or sites that can inform decision-making. The Symbolic Netnography tends to stay local, focusing on a specific group or field site and attempting to discern and explain their practices, meanings, and values, painting a portrait that can further a more purposeful understanding of them.

Digital Netnographies occupy the intersection of complementary axiology and a global focus. Digital Netnographies are a more recent development that bridges statistically-based data analytic techniques with cultural understandings. They produce descriptive reports and results that provide knowledge but do not usually question or critique with much force. As a result, they, like Symbolic Netnographies, tend to help reinforce or improve an existing business, management, and social practices.

Humanist Netnographies are based on research questions that have social implications. Founded in notions of critical inquiry and critical theory, Humanist Netnographies are often oriented around social questions of profound import. They use social media data to attempt to answer them and have a social impact upon their discussion and solution. (Kozinets, 2015)

How to use netnography, and what is the main focus on? 

First, here are some statistics to help drive home the importance of using netnography to get your voice of the customer (VoC) intel on point.

• ·     it is critical that your brand messaging and target audiences are as precise as possible. For example, 59% of consumers will prefer a brand to friends and family, so it pays to ensure you’re targeting the right groups in the first place.
•          63% of customers are likely to feel more positively about a brand if their content is relevant or interesting. So, targeting specific interest groups within your consumer base with diversified messaging will make your brand more relatable.
•          Identifying the psychographic properties of consumers is a critical first step to finding new communities to target. Since 71% of marketers’ aims with influencer marketing is to reach new audiences, netnography will ensure you choose the right ones for the job. (Hayano 1981)

How  are brands, businesses & marketers using
netnography at a restaurant?

Brands

Netnography can help your business dig into the customer’s voice to determine precisely how different targets feel about your branding. And you can have a discussion with them about it on their turf. So it’s a two-for-one because you strengthen relationships with your consumers and learn how to keep your brand in touch with the times.

On the one hand, the volume of online conversations concerning your brand means you always have to have your guard up on every front. But, on the other hand, whatever review is a gold mine of consumer intelligence on the other side of the coin. They help to understand what your customer thinks so you can adjust to meet their needs and their expectations.

Business

The moves at the speed of social, and there’s no going back. But, of course, the one consolation is that every one of your competitors is in the same boat. But netnography gives your brand an edge if you have the discipline to use it to its total capacity.

Marketers

Your marketing is your brand voice. It is at the most risk of running afoul of consumer perception. Your social media team is constantly creating messaging and interacting with consumers, so they must keep their fingers to the pulse of consumer opinion.

When crafting your social media posts or marketing campaigns, you want the wealthiest consumer intelligence that you can get.

Source: The Seo Media Blog

Social Media and Netnography

Netnography is also used to study the phenomenon of online sociability – a result of the online exchange of information.

Social media traffic generally occurs without mediation. As such, this free behaviour expressing honest perceptions and frank opinions provides a stream of data that can be followed over the long term, enabling researchers to track and quantify changes over time and use analytic tools and methods to generate insights. 

Just as ethnographic research includes an analysis of communication patterns and content within the online social contexts, this activity is also a netnographic technique. According to Kozinets (1990, p. 366), “these social groups have a ‘real’ existence for their participants, and thus have consequential effects on many aspects of behaviour, including consumer behaviour.”

Social media networking communities offer many opportunities for participants to influence and inform one another about products, services, and brands.

Consumer advocacy strongly supports brand equity, a factor not lost on companies seeking a brand lift. Netnography is uniquely positioned among social media research methods to generate cultural insights from contextualized rather than quantified data. (DeVault, 2020)

To conclude the note, if you wish to have a successful result for your brand or business. It is helpful to check different online consumer behaviour and cultural aspects to notice whatever change from your target.

Author: Fiorella Orellana

Keywords used in this note:

#marketingforrestaurant

#datavisualisation

#digitalmarketing #whatisnetnography

#Digital

#fintech

#KnowledgeManagement

#whatisnetnographyresearch

#netnographyrefer

References

DeVault, G., 2020. Pacific Lutheran University. [Online]

Available at: https://www.plu.edu/msma/blog/netnography-obtaining-social-media-insight/

[Accessed on: 7 March 2022].

Heinonen, K. a. M. G., 2018. Emerald -Journal of Services Marketing,. [Online]

Available at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JSM-08-2017-0294/full/html

[Accessed on: 26 February 2022].

Kozinets, R. V., 2015. ResearchGate. [Online]

Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/THE-FOUR-TYPES-OF-NETNOGRAPHY_fig1_284282873

[Accessed on: 26 February 2022].