Looking into nostalgia and the Boca Doce brand in online communications: a netnographic exploration of a Portuguese instant dessert.

Abstract

As in many other geographies, in the Portuguese context, especially in academic literature, qualitative methods in marketing research are clearly under-represented when compared with quantitative methods. This happens all the more as qualitative methods are used in isolation over mixed-methods approaches. It follows that in the Portuguese context, netnography, the ethnographic/qualitative study of social networks conceptualized and developed by Robert Kozinets (e.g. Kozinets, 2002, 2009, 2015) remains largely unused. The following research is a first attempt at bringing netnography to the Portuguese context by studying online communication around one of its most popular dessert brands, Boca Doce, an instant dessert produced by Kraft foods and distributed in Portugal by the AMD company. Netnography is herewith used as a qualitative method in isolation while the structure of the study follows other netnographic research examples, such as the study of Listerine (Kozinets, 2010). Results points to two major themes in online communication around the brand: emotions and feelings about Boca Doce (generally coupled with feelings of nostalgia) versus-consumer driven innovations. Some final considerations are given to possibilities of brand innovation that can unfold when cultural and netnographic views are brought into play.