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It goes without saying that with the advent of Digital Media and a huge sprawl of social networking websites marketers have their hands full. A social network such as Facebook has come as a golden staircase so as to bridge the gap between the customers and the firms. Kevin Curran, Sarah Graham, Christopher Temple (2011), reflect as to how the changing face of mass media and the advent of new media has dawned upon in advertising. Facebook is the place to be for organizations since it facilitates demographic targeting and segmenting better. Using techniques such as content mining, netnography and aligning GPS with Facebook, marketers have been able to determine the customer likes and dislikes. Also, electronic word of mouth that is peer to peer interaction will help the consumers make purchase decisions. A smart marketer will leave no stone unturned to make sure it is in their favour. Robert V. Kozinets (2010), highlights importance of netnography and how it can be leveraged so as to gauge the customer insights and customer receptivity towards the brand and its activities. It demonstrates how insights can be used to inform marketing activities including brand perceptions, brand positioning and repositioning, segmentation studies, new product development and innovation, trend identification, new service models for co-creation of value, social media usage and opportunities for marketing campaign activation. By leveraging the power of netnography, marketers can make better business decisions, giving companies a unique competitive advantage.
Robert V. Kozinets (2002), also delves into the importance of netnography as a research tool in the online marketing domain. He has suggested that netnography can be a useful, flexible, ethically sensitive and unobtrusive method adapted to the purpose of studying the language, motivation and consumption linkages. He throws light on this in the context of a coffee shop’s online community.