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-J and the British Journal of Educational Research on the ways these can enhance the learning experience. Pauline Maclaranis 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.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.

Most qualitative data analysis programs include a code and retrieve function. We argue that on-screen coding and the retrieval of coded segments, or snapshots, can result in researchers missing important process elements in focus group data, the moving picture. We review the literature on the analysis of focus group data and conclude that the focus group is not simply a data gathering technique where data collected are analyzed for their specific content such as all text relating to a particular theme. Important and potentially insightful communication and learning processes occur in focus groups as a result of participant interaction. These processes in the data can only be identified by several readings of the whole transcript and tracing an individual's text in the context of other participants' text; this is difficult to effect on-screen. Thus, we recommend that transcripts are coded on-screen for content and off-screen for process.

This article examines how we can encourage students to engage critically with marketing ideas and activities. Critical marketing studies are currently on the margins of the discipline, and the ideas and challenges to conventional marketing studies posed by critical scholars are rarely tested or implemented in the marketing classroom. Often these are perceived as too academic and elitist to be relevant to the modern business environment. Drawing largely from debates in the management education literature, this article discusses the problems and possibilities of introducing critical reflection into the marketing curriculum and describes some strategies for encouraging critique in the marketing classroom.

This paper argues that, by focusing on the use of the Internet for one‐to‐one communications, marketers are in danger of ignoring the many‐to‐many communications that are taking place as consumers interact with one another. The authors explore the increasing proliferation of Internet discussion groups and chat rooms that are often market‐orientated in their focus and discuss how the study of virtual communities can provide rich insights for marketers. Detailing how ethnographic research methods can assist the understanding of such online environments, they consider the theoretical and methodological differences between offline and online ethnographic research.

Projective techniques are unusual and often intriguing for respondents to complete, permitting them to express thoughts and feelings which can be difficult to access by direct and structured questioning. This is achieved by presenting respondents with ambiguous verbal or visual stimulus materials, such as bubble cartoons, which they need to make sense of by drawing from their own experiences, thoughts, feelings and imagination before they can offer a response. Importantly, projective techniques can be fun and engaging for respondents, especially when they become involved in their analysis and interpretation. The various types of projective techniques are described and their benefits and drawbacks examined. A project involving students completing a range of projective techniques is used to illustrate these benefits and drawbacks.