About

Robert Kozinets is the Jayne and Hans Hufschmid Chair of Strategic Public Relations at USC Annenberg, a position he shares with the USC Marshall School of Business. He has previously held faculty positions at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business, and York University’s Schulich School of Business. Kozinets is widely recognized as an educator, having received the Sidney Levy Teaching Award at Kellogg and the Seymour Schulich Teaching Award in Canada. His teaching experience extends internationally, including courses and classes in Sydney, Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro, Dublin, Bergen, Glasgow, Paris, Geneva, Auckland, and Tokyo. His research focuses on consumer behavior, marketing, and strategic public relations, with an emphasis on boundary-breaking, impactful consumer research that influences both academic disciplines and marketplace actors.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• World Wide Web
• Marketing
• Human–computer interaction
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Law
• Cognitive psychology
• Business
• Advertising
• Knowledge management
• Public relations

Selected publications

• Meta-Education: Reimagining how—and What—we Teach in Business Schools

  Journal of Macromarketing · 2025-01-23 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This paper comments on Wided Batat's thought provoking article on holixec education. Batat's framework offers numerous insights about the integration of holistic practices with execution-oriented strategies and I praise its innovation, iconoclasm, and broad scope. However, my commentary raises concerns about the potential limitations of neglecting theoretical knowledge and the significant demands placed on both instructors and students. Furthermore, my commentary questions the emphasis on secular humanism as a pedagogical philosophy, particularly in the context of spiritual development and individual empowerment. It explores the implications of the Dunning-Kruger Effect for self-directed learning and the potential for incorporating hybrid models that blend theory and practice. Finally, my commentary calls for an increased critical engagement with the broader social and environmental context of business education, advocating for “meta-education” that challenges the status quo and empowers future leaders to address pressing global challenges.

  PublisherDOI

• Passionate Publics

  Public Relations Review · 2025-10-05

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction to the Minitrack on Netnography in System Sciences Research

  Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Introduction to the Minitrack on Netnography in System Sciences Research

  ScholarSpace (University of Hawaii at Manoa) · 2025-12-23

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Abject Visualization: A Duo Auto-netnography in the Legal Online Adult Entertainment Generative AI Cyborg Context

  Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Auto-netnography provides a nuanced understanding of human interactions with a generative visual AI platform, through an in-depth analysis of over 900 AI-generated cyborg adult entertainment images collected by a two-person netnographer team during a 15-month period of immersive engagement. After describing and developing the method and findings, including positioning the two researchers’ perspectives and queering the method, the research introduces, unpacks, and then inverts "abject visualization" to describe how AI images transgress and provoke. Likening concerns over humanity in the age of AI to LGBTQ threats to heteronormativity, this study challenges a range of dominant positions prevalent in the system sciences by emphasizing the need for research that delves deeply and longitudinally into the affective responses to technological systems and the complex intersection of human and artificial desires they inhabit.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Editorial: Netnography and qualitative digital methods to advance service theory and practice

  Journal of Service Theory and Practice · 2025-11-27

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In a world now filled with avatars, platform-mediated interactions, artificial intelligence (AI) assistants, virtual influencers and metaverse showrooms, the once seemingly stable notion of “service” has become deeply unsettled. Service today is no longer confined to transactional encounters between clearly bounded human subjects and service-providing organizations. Instead, it unfolds through dynamic, culturally embedded, emotionally resonant and technologically mediated experiences, and these experiences are distributed across manifold touchpoints and timeframes and often involve multiple agents, both human and non-human, various national and political environments, numerous platforms or mobile applications and different types of corporations or individuals offering gig or sharing economy services. As these many complex shifts in the real-world service environment unfold, it is clear that our research methods must evolve to keep pace with them.In this special issue, we seek to contribute to a greater understanding of these transformations in the world of service by advocating for a richer, more flexible, digitally savvy and culturally attuned understanding of service, one that can be achieved through the creative and rigorous use of qualitative digital methods, particularly netnography (a technique that the first author developed 30 years ago and has been refining, with lots of help, ever since). For the past three decades, netnography has demonstrated the ability to adapt to emerging digital environments while maintaining a commitment to interpretive depth, reflexive rigor and the human experience of meaning (Kozinets, 2019). As a repertoire of methods grounded in ethnography and cultural analysis, netnography brings dedication to contextual understanding and a focus on researcher immersion to the investigation of consumer and employee service experiences (Kozinets, 2023). It provides service researchers with a valuable toolkit for accessing the often-overlooked social, emotional, cultural and symbolic dimensions of service.Despite this promise, netnography remains vastly underutilized in service research, design and management. Viewing the field retrospectively, Heinonen and Medberg (2017) concluded that netnography had already proven its value for services research and practice, and yet there were numerous unexploited areas and uses for netnography. We completely agree that the potential of netnography to understand service-related aspects is only beginning to be realized. In this special issue, we seek to showcase netnography as a qualitative digital research method for service theory and practice – one capable of reshaping it to better reflect the realities of today's digitally entangled service work and consumption lives.Service is often treated as an interaction between a customer and a firm, a buyer and a provider or a user and a system. However, it is crucial to recognize that this interaction is never neutral nor is it purely instrumental. The relationship is shaped by cultural narratives, media representations, social roles, emotional undercurrents and the rich panoply of meanings that we assign to institutions, brands and ourselves. Service experiences, whether they are delivered by a barista, a healthcare app, or an autonomous airport kiosk, are imbued with symbols and significance. They often are contexts in which meaningful encounters occur, and thus, we cannot assume that they are always simply functional exchanges. Service experiences are part of how we experience our lives and how we imagine ourselves, perform our identities and negotiate power relations. Increasingly, as our lives involve more and more interactions with devices and through applications, these experiential and performative contexts include an array of digital elements.This is where netnography, as a method attuned to the symbolic, affective and mediated elements of these experiences, becomes invaluable. Its capacity to foreground contextual meaning allows service researchers to explore the broader cultural ecologies within which service encounters are embedded. Service does not occur in a vacuum. It is shaped by cultural discourses, for example, those relating to efficiency, care, gender, labor, race and technology. A checkout interaction at Amazon Go, for instance, is not simply a matter of convenience; it is also an expression of post-human automation, of trust in algorithmic surveillance and of the shifting of burden from commercial to consumer labor.Netnography allows us to study these multilayered meanings not through abstraction or assumption, but through the researcher's deep engagement with the context and their own immersion in the field. Like a character stepping out of the movie to address the camera, the contemporary netnographer is a character within the research, a service player who enters the very worlds in which the research unfolds before reporting on them. Netnographers, for example, are the ones using their avatar to dance on a branded Fortnite island to gain discount codes for real-world sneakers. The effect of this can at first be somewhat shocking, for most fields are used to their researchers staying cloaked behind a screen of objective language. However, by taking the “researcher-as-instrument” ethos of qualitative research (Pezalla et al., 2012) seriously, netnography requires more than just simply passive observation, interview or organizing focus groups.Instead, netnographers engage with the fields they study. This engagement can involve intellectual, cultural, historical, emotional or social engagement strategies (Kozinets, 2019). The goal of the engagement is a deep understanding of the conditions surrounding how digital traces and experiences originate and what meanings might be vested within them. Netnographers are part of the action, engaging with the service context and immersing themselves as a service provider or consumer who can trace the threads of their experiences back into the social imaginaries that have given them the form they exhibit. Examining services from an embedded, humanistic perspective, netnography offers a phenomenologically rich lens on service, one that honors the particularity, depth and texture of service as it is lived, not just as it is observed from a distance. It reveals how service is turned into narrative, how it is felt, how it is remembered and how it is resisted. It shows us how value is not just co-created but also co-experienced through shared language, visuals, rituals, interfaces and emotional resonances. And it does so by placing the researcher into those experiences, not having them stand above or outside of them.One reason netnography is sometimes misunderstood is that it refuses to conform to the idea of a fixed, technical procedure. It is not a plug-and-play method but a repertoire of movements – a structured but flexible practice that adapts to specific contexts and unfolds through iterative engagement (Kozinets and Gretzel, 2024). There are six movements in the netnographer's toolbox: initiation, immersion, investigation, interaction, integration and incarnation. They are not linear steps but building blocks that represent overlapping modes of attention and activity. They are designed to guide researchers through the evolving contours of digital cultural life, helping them make sense of fragmented signals, ephemeral content, complex discourse and networked interaction. Familiarity with this sense of what we call flexibility within a framework is crucial to understanding netnography's power.Unlike traditional ethnography, which often depends on a bounded field site and prolonged physical presence, netnography is attuned to the discontinuous, multi-sited and performative nature of digital This is what it to for example, the service experiences in virtual or (Kozinets, 2023). And many or digital methods, it does not to or Instead, it on the interpretive of the researcher as and rigor from this researcher immersion and is grounded in and It is the interpretive that the method its The researcher is not just a passive or but a in the digital deeply of the of and As the researcher must themselves to what is or as as to how it how it and how it within the six movements the netnographer to research on – where shared identities or and were of the and for researcher immersion, and they were in the of the social and cultural meanings were and the of the has social and interaction is often than it in the more across by and into the of digital not only in the more but also in the and across social media platforms of many and and in the or on or mobile has in to these (Kozinets and Gretzel, 2024). 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digital service as back where service provider identities are and The study our understanding of the employee and provider experience by for the and are often service transactional with they also and The traditional netnography by and to and the offering a for the yet often identities of service in the digital is also to explore contexts where service becomes or is In have service or to are in threads and where they use digital media to or from service of digital often and with emotional They involve affective and For example, et used netnography to how on a used the power of and to a form of researchers to trace the cultural of movements by how how how is and how service can into et focus and netnography and that netnography more contextual customer than focus traditional analysis, which often remains and netnography on the experience and emotional of and is often both and can how trust is not through technical but through or It how service meaning in the digital is in in and through 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Netnographers a that is and This researcher becomes a of and helping to and cultural are to this foreground contextual and emotional particularly enters into of or The of digital environments traditional researchers to to shifting of and In their work on in digital et the for that within environments can and and that researchers must to these et attention to the specific to field are have and across valuable on the for and flexible that evolve with the digital has in qualitative digital research, must be treated as an part of the method than a and et this the This as of not only what is in a netnography but also how meaning is by it is and how those of are or In the reflexive of netnography, are always entangled with of emotional and This also for interpretive and researchers to engage with than to and the of service, these become more In their work on netnography, et a of and for research in environments that are mediated by algorithmic study as in content, in interactions and the interpretive by We these to be particularly for service researchers in how algorithmic emotional labor, and within digital et work not only the of but also how netnography's and work in the study of technologically mediated service of and what might be a a that and interpretive as both a structured and a flexible technique within a is to this Its offers a while for in to shifting cultural and As service becomes distributed and must not only to what service is but to how it is and on deep cultural and flexibility offers service researchers a and evolving repertoire for this more service We that this special a an cultural and digitally field of service theory and It netnography as an in this It that understanding service today understanding not only what but also what they what they what they and how they which is often in across media and our to this special with a service is now mediated by avatars, in in and remembered in our methods must to that is one to address the that from the digital and of services. It is flexible, attuned and to immersion in the of digital We that we have service researchers to and their experience with netnography, to its and to use it to the experiences and that the world of service

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Smartphone society: the role of consumer video in an age of ubiquitous platforms and devices

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2024-09-10 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Transformative Netnography: Combining Representation, Social Media, and Participatory Action Research

  Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences · 2024-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  How can systems science researchers leverage qualitative social media research methods to address cultural and social issues in a way that involves participants and researchers working together? To address this question, this paper proposes transformative netnography, an adaptation of netnography that combines social media representational affordances with participatory action research techniques to offer unique communication benefits for transformational research. It examines some of the practical and theoretical underpinnings that have guided various forms of action research and links them to representational concerns and qualitative social media research. The paper proceeds to present a detailed example of transformative netnography that pioneers the use of social media’s accessibility, organizational, and consciousness-raising affordances, combining them with collaborative ethnography to create a novel and digitally enabled form of representative advocacy research. The paper concludes with some implications for further transformative research using social media affordances and the ongoing development of transformative netnography.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Researching AI chatbots, platforms and the metaverse: understanding today’s netnography

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2024-09-10 · 10 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Gift Giving in Enduring Dyadic Relationships: The Micropolitics of Mother–Daughter Gift Exchange

  Journal of Consumer Research · 2024-01-09 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract This article investigates the dynamics of long-term gift exchange between British mothers and their adult daughters, delving into the processes behind dyadic gift giving. Through 54 comprehensive interviews, we elaborate the micropolitics that characterize these dynamics. Micropolitics refers to the subtle, everyday interactions, including gift exchange, that shape the ongoing negotiation of roles and the management of conflict or consensus within relationships. The study uncovers how these micropolitics manifest through four distinct processes of gift exchange: confirming, endorsing, connoting, and commanding. Gifts emerge as key instruments in this negotiation, serving as a medium for the reciprocal regulation of role behavior concerning gender, identity, and both endo-dyadic (within the dyad) and exo-dyadic (outside the dyad) roles. In contrast to previous research that adopts a synchronic (snapshot) approach to gift giving, our diachronic (over time) perspective emphasizes how power dynamics, intent, and identity politics evolve to sustain and transform relationships. Our findings illustrate the important communicative and power-laden processes of gift exchange in enduring relations, explaining why even unwanted gifts can have significant bonding value. Our study offers fresh perspectives on the continuous evolution of relationship and role dynamics, as viewed through the practices of gift exchange.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Deborah J. MacInnis

  41 shared

• Donna L. Hoffman

  39 shared

• John Lynch

  39 shared

• Donald R. Lehmann

  39 shared

• Simona Botti

  London Business School

  39 shared

• Vicki G. Morwitz

  Columbia University

  39 shared

• Cornelia Pechmann

  University of California, Irvine

  38 shared

• John F. Sherry

  University of Notre Dame

  20 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Marketing

  University of Southern California

• M.A., Marketing

  University of Southern California

• B.A., Marketing

  University of Southern California

• Ph.D., Marketing

  University of Alberta

• M.A., Marketing

  University of Alberta

• B.A., Marketing

  University of Alberta

Awards & honors

• Sidney Levy Teaching Award at Kellogg School
• Seymour Schulich Teaching Award in Canada