Thanks to the rise of social media, a whole new stream of consumer information has become available and our industry is embracing it as the new Walhalla. By using methods such as ‘social media netnography’ in which online conversations and stories are observed, researchers learn from online sources of textual and visual information that are freely available (Verhaeghe, Van den Berge, Schillewaert, 2009). Instead of asking new input from research participants, existing information is recycled. Because consumers are free to talk about whatever they like, social media netnography does not only provide answers on research questions one already had, but it also gives answers to questions they did not ask and answers without asking questions.
User-generated content is a welcome new source of information for researchers. But unlike our research panels, we should treat this new ecosystem with caution and preserve it while we still can.
