Webethnography: towards a typology for quality in research design
Daniel D. Prior
University of New South Wales
Lucy M. Miller
Macquarie University
Introduction
Internet-based research is a relatively new approach to market research and to empirical social science more broadly. Advantages include timely and inexpensive access to data, particularly from internet-savvy consumers, as well as access to a broad range of potential research participants. Disadvantages include potentially inaccurate representations of user thoughts and feelings, and difficulty in interpreting non-contextualised data (Kozinets 2002). Despite the identified drawbacks of this approach, there is at present an overwhelming trend in favour of internet-based...