The role of virtual communities in purchasing decision making : a netnographic approach

Abstract EN

Since the advent of the internet, consumers have been using this web to communicate with each other.

Cyberspace has become a new kind of social terrain, cluttered with "virtual communities".

Our research aims to show the importance and the role of virtual communities of brands on the decision-making of Internet users.

In order to achieve this objective, we based on a Netnographic approach to analyze the opinions shared by members of the virtual community of Sephora.

Then a thematic analysis was carried out in order to reorganize the verbatim into different themes.

The results show that virtual communities have a very important impact in decision-making among Internet users, and this at each stage of the purchasing decision-making process