Let’s take a leap into the 1990s. Imagine how was the Internet like. How did you use it? Feels kind of a vague of a task, doesn’t it? Blogs and forums have been around for decades but e.g. YouTube was established just five years ago. And in e-business five years feels like an eternity - just enough time to forget and start taking the services and applications available today for granted.
Against this scenery, Robert V. Kozinets perceptions of virtual communities seem rather fresh to a person who just started high-school in 1999. In his article “E-Tribalized Marketing? The Strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption” in European Management Journal (17/1999) he criticizes data-based marketing’s status by analyzing ways how to target, segment and approach virtual communities. Even though Web 2.0 exploded during the past decade, a breeze from the past can help us reflect how have we gone along.
Kozinets noted that most of virtual communities are structured around consumption activities and thus being important source of knowledge of what products/services are consumed and how. Virtual communities of consumption, or e-tribes, include common social spaces where people with shared interest and enthusiasm create group-specific meanings and norms, which serve to organize interaction to maintain certain ambiance and order. How could a marketer gain understanding of these complex social communities? Kozinets suggests interaction- and fragmentation-based segmentation to target the most important virtual communities and community members.
Segmentation through interaction
Motives to go online are e.g. searching for information, reading the news and learning from products/services. We also may do all these things in a virtual community and even produce our own content. According to Kozinets, whether a person actually takes part in an e-tribe or not depends on the formation of identification: the relationship to the consumption activity as well as the intensity of relationship to the community. The more important the product/service is to a person’s psychological self-image, chances are that (s)he will pursue for a membership in that community. Usually a member of virtual community will progress from a visitor to an insider as (s)he gains online experience and discovers a group that meets her/his needs.
For segmenting members of virtual community, Kozinets distinguishes four different member types which are later used to analyze the interaction modes of each. Tourist lacks strong social ties to the group and has only a superficial or passing interest in the consumption activity. Minglers, too, have light interest to the consumption activity but have strong social ties to the community. Devotees have few social ties but on the other hand have strong enthusiasm about the subject. Insiders are both socially and factually interested in the community of consumption.
A member’s social orientation in this classification can thus be seen as individualistic (short-term personal gains) or relational (longer-term cooperation). Devotees and insiders which both have strong personal interest to the consumption activity are the most important targets of marketing. They are so called heavy users that within the community can upgrade tourists and minglers to their own level.
Member types are related interaction modes, which are informational, transformational, recreational and relational mode. Minglers and tourists whose factual interest is on superficial level tend to pursue recreational mode for their primarily selfish gains. Usually member’s interaction moves from factual information type of exchange to one that easily mixes factual and relational information in the social context.
Interaction-based segmentation is used to better recognize different opportunities and needs of each mode group. Analysis may help to pinpoint the virtual communities with the highest potential for positive consumer response.
Segmentation through fragmentation
Kozinets approaches segmentation and targeting mainly through the concept of loyalty, which is largely the criterion behind data-based and relationship marketing. Fragmentation-based segmentation attempts to bring more dynamic understanding of the member loyalty of virtual communities of consumption. Contrary to economic terms of retention and switching, Kozinets considers customer involvement in the consumption activity as the basis of consumer loyalty. Thus loyalty should be taken as cultural and experimental terms of depth of experience and emotional devotion.
Fragmentation-based segmentation is based upon the observation that even a unified community will always include important divisions and micro-segment. Basically groups are arranged by members who share certain media forms, social communication modes and consumption tastes. But as virtual communities of consumption become more mainstream, communities differentiate through active re-articulation and spread into new factions which necessarily do not retain ties to old group.
According to Kozinets, effective marketing should account for this changing and politicizing nature of virtual communities. By following these different tastes of virtual community factions, marketers can find new product enhancements and ideas, differentiate new customer segments and gain richer understanding of how product/service is given meaning and appreciated in consumption.
Another loyalty feature of virtual consumption communities is that loyalty is two-dimensional. A member can be loyal to a particular product/service but disloyal to the community and vice versa. In marketing’s perspective it is crucial to recognize the influencers which can create group switching according their own tastes.
Virtual communal marketing
Internet provides B2C, C2C, one-to-many and many to many communications. Online consumers are not only influenced by virtual communities but they’re also a part of their virtual reference groups. Thus, even though Kozinets type and interaction mode analysis is based on individual behavior, he sees that marketing to an entire community is more realistic that one-to-one.
Virtual communal marketing model (VCM), which rationale lays on naturalistic observation of online consumers in social interaction and the principles of network economies, could be seen as a solution that combines the customization of single node marketing approaches to the appreciation of communal consumption concerns that multiple nodes evoke. VCM’s focus is underlined in its assumptions that 1) consumers are active creators 2) marketing company-customer-relationship is a multimodal network and 3) the value of online data gathering of consumers lies in its multidimensional potentialities in addition to sales and demographics.
Communal consumption means that consumers create and negotiate their tastes; moderate product meanings; brand and re-brand together. To understand customer needs, consumption must be seen from this social context that encompasses multimodal relations. A portrait of community, factions or unique consumers’ interests can weave together different forms of consumption patterns and explain customer (dis)satisfaction.
Marketer’s goal is to use information in order to build long-lasting relationships between consumer and product/brand. In virtual communities of consumption the information is readily available thus offering an excellent venue for the marketing research that underlies the understanding that builds these relationships. VCM also offers a basis for pursuing a subscription or membership type of relationship.
How to approach e-tribes?
With VCM in mind, in addition to interaction-based and fragmentation-based segmentation, strategies for efficiently targeting desirable types of virtual communities and community members include opting, paying-for-attention and building networks by giving product away.
Online marketers should speak to a group and co-opt communities by sharing important information. Kozinets proposes to treat virtual community members as partners in promotion and distribution. Virtual communities of consumption have implicated their own identities profoundly with the consumption object and its symbols. By linking marketing information to symbols that provide meaning and gather attention in virtual consumption communities, can provoke insiders and devotees to share what it is that makes consumption especially special to them. The more marketers can provide members with the meaning and sense of purpose that is related to their shared consumption identities, the more those consumers would become and remain loyal.
Kozinets saw pay-for-attention marketing as a transitional strategy that could bridge one-to-one approach and communal online marketing by considering the active nature of online consumption. In practice this could mean offering incentives such as games, contests and prizes in exchange for a person’s permission to tell them more about a product/service. Traditional marketing trend emerging in the digital economy already in 1990s was also the importance of networks and that networks are often created by giving things away. Even though morally and socially biased, giving things away could also be seen as building loyalty.
Conclusions and critique
The question at hand was - and still is - how to approach the unstable marketing medium that we know as social media today. Virtual communities have truly become mainstream in Western countries, and an important arena where people interact as citizens, community members and as consumers. What makes Kozinets views most outdated is the diverging and expanding landscape of these communities. Where Kozinets doubted that online interactions would replace physical encounters or information from traditional media, in reality being online is changing consumption patterns as well as the ways we keep in touch with our friends and family. Online presence is becoming everyday complement rather than occasional supplement.
On the other hand, it is still true that certain mediums and segments of virtual consumption communities are more suitable for marketing than others. Whereas the fleeting nature of interaction was seen as prevalent community feature in the 1990s, the name of the game today is increasing velocity of information. Even though Internet provides an archive of marketing information of online consumers, the question is whether the data is up-to-date, relevant and popular. The world of virtual communities is so extensive and complex today that companies find themselves in trouble trying to focus and target their (potential) customers. Without social media metrics is can be hard to follow the crucial flow of customer interests.
Another dimension lacking from the analysis was group dynamics. A community cannot just be the sum of its individuals as social interaction arouses experiences that are not only personal. Thus you can distinguish different layers of interaction: personal, interpersonal, inter-groups and between groups and the mass. As the goal is to provide symbols and meanings to which the consumer relates to, all these layers play important role in how meaning develops within consumer’s life. Therefore the level of sociality must be measured also with other criterion in addition to the amount of interaction. Also, the changing nature of communities involves other power dynamics than the ones deriving from opinion leaders and dispersing.
As for the approaching methods, many of Kozinets suggestions can still be seen in today’s online communities. Social media can be an opting channel if you just know how to use it. A fresh example of opting consumers to share their brand meanings could be Marimekko’s Minun Marimekkoni –campaign for Indiedays blog platform. The paying-for-attention, on the other hand, is coming to its end in brassy online advertizing, but otherwise still commonly used in polls and competitions. The network focus is obvious but taking another course from giving things away as the Virtual Wild West is taking steps to social and legal codes of conduct. Discussed methods by Kozinets are really for targeting and segmenting tools, and the analysis should be taken as such. He doesn’t discuss about how to position one’s self between different communities and factions. Nor does he give profound approaching suggestions e.g. by analyzing examples what kind of reactions the proposed means initiate within the communities. Customer segmentation analysis through qualitative data is still called for but should have more broad approach than amount of communication and motivation type. As Kozinets notes, when qualitative and quantitative online information work in concert, it becomes to possible to understand thoroughly how consumers view the products within the entire lived experience.