Digital etnography and text mining: an intersectorial quali-quantitative method to leverage marketing and management studies

Qualitative research is generally defined in terms of understanding the “meaning of behaviour: understanding why individuals and groups think and behave the way they do lies at the heart of qualitative research” (Keegan 2009, p.11). From our research we see that qualitative research in recent years has more and more become almost synonymous with the word “insight”: its aim is to gain insight into human behavior. It derives its complexity and its strong interdisciplinary. Qualitative research is more and more the result of a combination of different disciplines and an integrated quantitative approach is nowadays needed and possible thanks to the new communications technologies. In our approach, we demonstrate how qualitative and quantitative research can provide very powerful tools of investigation for researchers and practitioners.