Researching consumers in virtual worlds: A cyberspace odyssey Received (in revised form): 17th July, 2001 Miriam Catterall is Senior Lecturer in Management at the Queen's University of Belfast. She has considerable business experience in the market research industry and in management consultancy. Her research interests lie in market research and feminist issues in marketing. She designs computer-based teaching and learning materials and publishes in such outlets as ALT-] and the British Journal of Educational Research on the ways these can enhance the learning experience. Pauline Maclaran is Professor of Marketing at De Montfort University, Leicester. Prior to becoming an academic she worked in industry for many years, initially in marketing positions and then as a founder partner in her own business, a design and marketing consultancy. Her main research interests are feminist perspectives and gender issues in marketing; and the Utopian dimensions of contemporary consumption, particularly in relation to the festival marketplace. Keywords: Brand communities, cyberethnography, discourse analysis, market research, virtual communities Abstract Following Belk's (1991) Consumer Behaviour Odyssey, the authors suggest the need for a new odyssey, one that focuses on consumers in virtual worlds. In this paper the authors discuss the relevance of virtual communities for marketers and how ethnographic research methods can be adapted to the online environment. The unique methodological problems, opportunities and ethical dilemmas for researchers are considered that online ethnography raises before an exploration of how discourse analysis can assist in the interpretation of data collected online. Dr Miriam Catterall School of Manage- ment and Economics, The Queen's Univer- sity of Belfast, Belfast BT71NN, Northern Ireland Tel: +44 (0)28 902 73205 Fax: +44 (0)28 902 48372 e-mail: m.catterall@ qub.ac.uk INTRODUCTION The influence of culture on consumer behaviour has long been recognised by both academic and commercial marketing researchers (Britt, 1950; Levy, 1958). However, it is only during the past two decades that marketing researchers have begun to more fully explore the role of culture in buying behaviour and apply associated ethnographic research methods. This has been as part of what Belk (1995) refers to as the 'new consumer behaviour', a perspective which moves away from the traditional focus on consumers as information processors to conceptualise consumers as socially connected beings. The emphasis is on how consumers actually behave in their everyday lives and on the subjective, emotional dimensions of consumption (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982; Hirschman, 1986). Ethnographic research methods are based on naturalist modes of enquiry, such as participant observation, within a predominantly inductivist framework (Gill and Johnson, 1997). Ethnographers seek to understand a particular group of people through immersion in the culture of the group over an extended period of observation and participation (Silverman, 2000). Touring America in a winnebago, Russell Belk and his colleagues set out to find the American consumer in a pathbreaking ethnographic study, the Consumer Behaviour Odyssey. Following on from 228 Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 1,3.228-237 «Henry Stewart Publications 1472-0817