Affinity-Group Management - Capturing Elusive Scene Markets: Kitesurf Market Research and Analysis of Consumer Behaviour

Web 2.0 is the young generation's window on the world, but the associated well-informed and interacting customers, group-individualism, and a multi-optional society challenge existing management and marketing structures. Nevertheless, Web 2.0 communities provide an insight into elusive scenes and the affinity groups and markets based on them. Strategic Affinity-Group Management offers a new approach to identify, segment, and address specific scene markets which goes beyond classic market segmentation criteria. This work relies on the first independent empirical market survey on kitesurfing and includes numerous graphics and spreadsheets. Kiteboarding, as it is also called, serves as a vivid illustration of the Affinity-Group Management concept and proves its applicability in practice. This concept points out the importance of (virtual) opinion leaders and information brokers within scene markets for the information diffusion and buying decision process. The key to understanding a scene market is to understand its participants and their highest common the shared passion for their affinity object.