Reaction Paper: Wisdom of Consumer Crowds

Let’s begin this post by something else.  A couple of days ago I attended a seminar where Coca Cola’s marketing manager in Northern Europe gave a presentation about building the brand around Coca Cola Zero. He told that the main theme is “making the impossible possible”. The slogans they’ve used are for example “Why not girlfriends with zero drama?” and “Why not bras with zero fumbling?”.  The audience was told that the brand creates a fantasy world where all this exists. The article “The Wisdom of Consumer Crowds” by Kozinets, Hemesberger and Schau touches on a similar topic: Why not to combine “work and play, passion and profit, adult-like rules and the childlike wonder to play”. These things don’t occur in a fantasy world. These happen in consumer crowds. I’ve been looking for the ultimate reason why do people participate in online communities and create content out there. The fantasy-like combination described above must be close to the profound answer to that. No need to say, I kind of got excited about this article and the topic dealt with.

Somehow I don’t feel like going through the article in general, summarizing it and stuff. At once I have my own thoughts on the subject so I’ll concentrate on those. As I will be doing research around the topic “Collaboration in Social Networks”, processing the thoughts in depth and writing the down is extremely useful.

When picking the topic for the research I tried to define what it includes. There would be enough of work to do already when defining the words “social network” and “collaboration”. Social network is tried to be defined all over again. In my opinion it is not even all that interesting to define it in detail. More interesting is “collaboration”. What is collaboration? What makes social networks collaborative? If thought in a wide perspective, all social networks are collaborative, in my opinion. Simply put, the network is not social without collaboration. Social networks are based on the interaction between users. Each comment written, each click clicked and each article tagged is creating content in a way. As Kozinets et al. suggest there is an extremely thin line between consuming and producing media content. Collaboration in social networks could be defined somewhat “creating media content by utilizing knowledge pools”, but in the end of the day it is not meaningful to stamp a narrow definition on it. I’m sure that the ways people collaborate in social networks are endless and unstable. Thus, one should be open minded towards the term and take nothing as given. Too narrow of a definition easily only takes the “heavy” content creators in consideration. It is told that only a fraction of the users do create actual media content around which the others’ participation happens. Those “others” are a significant part when building a dynamic social network. Their participation, that could be called collaboration, must also be counted in.

Probably the most significant part of the article is matrix of online creative consumer communities. The communities are placed on the axis of collective innovation orientation and collective innovation concentration. The two axes form four fields: crowds, hives, mobs and swarms.

In the previous idea report I came up with a couple of thoughts on reasons why people tend to create content online. The article gives a support to those reasons by suggesting similar propositions: the social need for belonging, differentiation and identification, and mix in an ongoing quest for relevant and interesting content. It is also mentioned that the communities have ability to keep one another motivated. It would be an interesting research question whether these drivers could be placed on the same matrix as the communities themselves. This would suggest whether there are different dominant drivers to participate in each type of innovation-oriented online consumer community. I will take this question in consider when making further research.

The most interesting aspect in the reasons to participate is what the bobos are driven by. Kozinets et al write that bohemian bourgeoisies use their educational abilities that they are not able to use in real life online. They have ambitious projects in which they test their skills, build abilities and, as an important factor, socialize. The implication of the social aspect in hives (“centers of skills and excellence”) is significant. Not only the users want to get acknowledged as I previously suggested, but they are there to build a reputation. A good example of this is Stack Overflow which is a Q&A-site for programmers. The answers and questions are rated by the other users. These ratings form a ranking system that gives credit for the users. Stack Overflow has become such a massive phenomenon that it is widely recognized. The user ranks are even used in real life CV. The reasons stated above, including the attendance to the fantasy-like world described in the opening paragraphs, are building the grounds for the need to collaborate. A service that would provide compensate these needs would turn out successful. To me it appears that the factor that really could increase stickiness exponentially is the real life benefits. These kinds of things would be for example monetary rewards and reputation. A successful media service must provide a platform for gaining benefits that could be taken back to real life.

The article in hand will provide me a whole lot of useful information and I will get back to it in the future. Reading the article gave me many new insights to the consumer crowds. By applying the information in the article will make it easier to understand the consumer communities. There is always a reason why people do what they do. I have a feeling that Homer Simpson was wrong when saying that people do everything just because they are stupid.

Media Service Idea - Struggles part.....well, there's been way too many of these already

Just when I was about to get my thoughts clarified, I found an existing media service that would overlap my idea heavily. Not entirely, but the core idea is exactly the same that I had in my mind. Please check, www.kompoz.com.

A positive sight to this is that the idea is actually working. There are some quality musicians collaborating with each other, composing, discussing, creating some nice pieces of music…And the finished projects aren’t all that bad either. I’ll congratulate myself for the idea that I had, which actually would work, but at the same time I’ll dump it and stomp on it.

I thought that a collaborative media service would have been the niche looked for, but it obviously wasn’t. How to move on? I’ve been thinking to forget brainstorming the form or concept of the final service. Instead, I will be researching the phenomena in hand. The research will be the journey that will lead me to the eventual media service.

What’s the phenomenon then? It has something to do with the motivation to share and participate online. Which especially fascinates me is the sharing of creative work that users do online. Why people want to share their creations, show their talent and participate in collaborations? I haven’t conducted almost any research at all yet, but my intuition says that there is some kind of underlying need to express oneself and eventually be acknowledged for that. This doesn’t have anything to do with the absolute skills or talent. No matter how good or bad one is, the need to show off one’s talent is strong. Actually, it seems that the more shaky and unsure one is with the talent, the stronger the need. At this stage, this multi-talented guy is enough of a proof. Previously the step to show one’s talent has been extremely high. It’s a big step to take the guitar and attend the open-mic session at the local bar. It’s way easier, and actually quite anonymous too, to record some finger picking in own bedroom and post the video online. 

I have been thinking about the reasons why creativity is such a big factor in online posting. Here are my thoughts of the needs in couple of bullet points:

• -          to express oneself
• -          to feel unique
• -          to get attention
• -          to be acknowledged for the skills
• -          to find people with similar interests
• -          to make use of the talent

 These points are quite broad and need to be specified. Maybe these reasons might even be disproved after some researching is done. Actually I wish that those will be disproven and more interesting points would be risen. I’ll do some lurking, send some questionnaires to the users of some communities and so on. I’ll let the research to guide itself for now.

Reaction Paper: Arnould & Prince - Market Oriented Ethnography Revisited

As the title of the article “Market-Oriented Ethnography Revisited” (Journal of Advertising Research, Sep  2006) suggests, the journal post by E. Arnould and L. Prince continues where Arnould’s and Wallendorf’s article “Market-Oriented Ethnography” (Journal of Advertising Research, Nov 1994) left. After going through the theoretical part the subject is illustrated by an example of homemade food.

As a difference to the earlier article the viewpoints the subject is examined from are now divided to micro- and macro-levels.  However, the main argument is that the best results are reached when ethnography is conducted with a meso-level approach. According to the authors the weakness of macro-level approach is that it abstracts the practices of relatedness and social life when forming broad cultural templates. In the other hand, in micro-level approach the setting is seen way too static and the results are poorly transferable to wider contexts. Instead of trying to get inside consumer’s head or concentrating to the relationship between the brand and consumer meso-level approach intends to understand the setting holistically as a cultural field. From this perspective the products, services and brands are tools through which consumers live their every-day life and reflect their ideology.

Frankly said, it feels like the fundamental idea behind meso-level approach is left unfolded. The methods and insights are clearly explained, but somehow the result feels a little messy. The approach is combining the best sides of both micro- and macro-level methods, but by doing this the focus is left blurry. Instead of focusing properly to a specific problem the meso-level approach has an ambitious goal of nailing the whole wide setting. Arnould and Prince write that the methodological focus is on what people do rather than what they say. Leaning to my knowledge the observational research methods provide that aspect to ethnography, no matter whether the approach is micro-, macro- or meso-level. Despite the critic, I believe that in optimal circumstances it is possible to reach the glorious and ambitious goals of meso-level approach. However, this demands even more work than the traditional approaches to ethnography. Over the time the entire research method of ethnography is questioned and criticized due to its massive workload. With this in mind, I assume that gaining a proper understanding of the whole setting by using meso-level approach is not all that realistic.

One of the most interesting parts of the article was when the authors discussed about the research teams. Actually it was a single word that stood out: ’bigendered’. When viewing the entire research method of ethnography, it is fascinating to think what kind disjuncture would occur between the interpretations of male and female researchers. Would a bigendered research team produce more accurate results than unigendered? Would the differing insights cause collisions that would affect the final outcomes? This issue might not be the most essential part in the article in hand, but without a doubt it provides an interesting path for further studies.

To me a new view of point was the role of iconic brands when consumers are trying to mediate the dynamic tensions in cultural templates. If the brand is able to help the consumer to articulate and identify these tensions success cannot be a far away. In my opinion this all comes down to the power of juxtapositioning. It is always easier for one to build an identity when seeing whom one is against. Differentiating is easier than integrating. Iconic brands exploit this chance by pointing out the tension and offering a deal: whether to be with them or us. This kind of strategy surely builds long lasting and valuable relationship between a consumer and the company.

Reaction Paper: R. Elliot & N. Janckel- Elliot - Using ethnography in strategic consumer research

In their journal article Richard Elliot and Nick Jankel-Elliot discuss about ethnography on an extremely basic level. This is why “Using ethnography in strategic consumer research” (Qualitative Market Research, num.1 2003) would fit really well for the introduction to the subject. No groundbreaking innovations are introduced, no new interpretations or viewpoints either. The basics of ethnography are well presented and illustrated by real life research examples. The authors do not go too deep into details when different features are introduced. This means that some of the characteristics are left quite hollow. For example width of the research is not discussed at all: is the research conducted on micro-level concentrating on the relationship between a consumer and the brand or in the macro-level trying to generalize the setting by identifying cultural patterns. However, the article provides a fair and good view over the topic. The authors write about the benefits and advantages of ethnography but they also list fairly the limitations and weaknesses in the end of the article.

An interesting point of view that the authors had was ‘modes of consumption’. Many other texts have taught the dynamic nature of consumer behavior and suggested that by ethnographic research the issue may be nailed. However, no other articles have put it into words as well as this one. The same consumer might have different ways of consumption when responding to marketing activity. This issue could be acknowledged by ethnographic interpretation and further the information exploited when positioning the product and segmenting the customers.

To me the article introduced a new quasi-ethnographical method, ‘audience ethnogpahy’. The bottom line of the method is not revealed and the nature of it is left extremely hazy. As a rapid reaction, it feels that the combination of small discussions and personal interviews would not give all that detailed description as a result. To make my mind about this quasi-ethnography, further study must be done.

As the article did not provide almost any new insights at all, the nature of it was left a little impersonal. There were no in-depth discussion or pondering that would have would have stimulated big thoughts. I would suggest this article as the first introduction to the subject. The more fundamental journal releases around ethnography have the discussion on a deeper level which distracts the learner from identifying the key points and ground rules.