The drivers and challenges within an online fitness and health community : a netnography study on the BBG online community

• Autor(a) principal: Ferreira, Bárbara Freitas
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/29238
• topic: Fitness; Health; Digital insights; Netnography; Accountability; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the drivers for people joining fitness and health online communities and the main adversities faced by its members. In specific, it explores the “Bikini Body Guide”, a fitness and health online community, and uses Netnography as a qualitative research method to gather insights on online consumer behaviors. The results of the research reveal accountability to be the main driver for members joining the community. However, it also shows that its meaning differs from the social sciences when applied to the fitness and health context. While some members participate searching to create connections, others are looking for motivation and to sharing information. On the other hand, results show that the main challenge faced by members is in terms of frustrations, which can arise from two different sources. The first one is due to members’ ability to meeting their expectations, while the second derives from some struggles that appear along the journey such as lack of confidence, commitment or procrastination. Furthermore, this dissertation explains the implications and limitations of this study, and based on the insights collected suggests managerial recommendations, useful from a marketing viewpoint, that lies in helping marketers in the retention and increase of traffic of the community.