The medium of research in anthropological aspects of marketing changes with the development in information technology. Online ethnography or virtual anthropology is a new and scientific study tool for market researchers and this new science has tremendous scope in marketing. This article discusses the definition, characteristics and conveniences of online ethnography. It also provides the features of diverse data sources, online societies and/or social groups, the various common media of field research, procedures and different features of application of ethnographical surveys through the Internet. The article also deals with the scope and benefits of online ethnography from the Indian point of view.

After the dissemination of the Internet across the world, marketers obtained a new and revolutionary instrument for market research in the field of ethnography. The researchers coined many terms for ethnographical studies through the Web. Wittel (2000) called the Internet-oriented anthropological research online ethnography. Kozinets coined a new term "netnography", Susan Crichton and Shelley Kinash (2003) called this technique of research as virtual ethnography and Trendwatch.com has been popularizing the same concept as virtual anthropology. From a marketing point of view, online ethnography, virtual anthropology or cyber-ethnography is a market research methodology, where the techniques of anthropological research are used for collecting, screening and sieving the data through cyberspace.

With the help of online ethnography, the marketers can have various kinds of virtual knowledge of the whole society or partial members of a particular cyber society.

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