| Summary: | The proliferation of make-up tutorials generated by both consumers and global industry players online presents an interesting phenomenon for researchers and industry players to delve into. Online communities are seemingly ‘market-places’ where the transactions of knowledge sharing and acquisition take place. The knowledge contents, usually in forms of make-up tutorials, are usually generated by experienced and involved consumers. These motivated consumers take the extra effort to produce make-up tutorials to teach and share experiences. Their knowledge and deep involvement within the online communities make them potentially influential to other members. This niche group of make-up tutorial generators (MTGs) thus comes under the spotlight, drawing the attention of the make-up industry players. This study hence aims to fill the information gap for make-up industry players to uncover the characteristics and behaviours of these MTG and translate these findings into possible managerial implications for them.
The Netnography approach, an unobtrusive methodology, is adopted to observe online make-up tutorials from two online forums. Netnography is chosen for its appropriate fit for this study in terms of its ability to observe naturalistic behavior of MTGs and collect extensive and timely data. The findings of this study unveil three main characteristics of MTGs. MTGs are found to express individuality, conceptualized to be proactive consumers and display a need for their expertise and skills to be recognized. Through focusing on the MTG, this study provides a new perspective from other literature and sheds light on their behavioural characteristics.
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