1 A REVIEW OF CYBER ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH: A RESEARCH TECHNIQUE TO ANALYZE VIRTUAL CONSUMER COMMUNITIES

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the cyber ethnography- also called netnography- as a research tool in understanding and developing insights about virtual consumer communities. First of all, the “community, ” “virtual community, ” and the “virtual consumer communities ” concepts are described. Following them, cyber ethnographic research is examined and the process of a cyber ethnographic research is discussed in details. In this section several research articles using cyber ethnographic method are presented in order to illustrate the research process and to develop a common point of view. In the conclusion, the pros and cons of cyber ethnographic research are discussed