Corporate India logs on to blogs

MUMBAI: While as a netizen you have been evolving from e-mailing to chatting and finally to become a confident and prolific blogger, your efforts have not gone quite unnoticed as the corporate India finds a new forum for consumer feedback.

Recently, Nokia India, through its research partner AC Nielsen ORG MARG, conducted web-ethnography (webnography) based on blogging sites and online discussion forum to get a feedback on its fashion series models.

“Based on our findings of our regular market research on the fashion series models of Nokia and insights on youth, we tried to validate it with the qualitative research conducted through the content found on online blogging sites and discussion forums,” said Anjali Puri, director, Winsights AC Nielsen ORG MARG.

“Largely the findings were validated and that too at a much lesser cost. So, now we are taking the research methodology of webnography to other clients too,” said Puri.

Through web search engines, the research firm used a simple methodology of finding relevant content in a natural context on online blogging sites and discussion forums. As these contents occurred naturally on the web, it was real consumer context as opposed to the contrived/constructed contexts of focus groups used in qualitative research.

After the content was collected, it was processed through the regular marketing research methodology. Then the respondents were identified and informed about their opinions expressed being used for analysis. But there were no questionnaire put up before them to maintain original views.

The pilot project research conducted by the research firm validated Nokia’s earlier findings on the functionality of its mobile phone model 7260 and 7280. Similarly, webnography also validated youth insights such as growing social consciousness found in earlier research.  Ruchika Gupta, consumer insights manager, Nokia India said, “Webnography could work as an early warning system and identified issues can be further taken forward for traditional research.”