Digital Traces Representing Online Consumer Practices : A Methodological Guidance for Exploratory Retailing Research

Abstract

Digital traces representing online consumer practices: A methodological
guidance for exploratory retailing research
Patrik Stoopendahl1
1 Stockholm School of Economics Institute for Research (SIR)
Extended abstract
Digital devices, such as the smartphone, enable an array of tasks in consumers’ daily lives; searching for
products, soliciting advice from friends, interacting with communities or retailers, taking pictures, or
simply browsing online. In the process of using—for example the smartphone—traces of digital data in
the form of search history or browsing historyare left on commercial platforms such as social media
networking like Facebook (Gangneux, 2023), in text messaging applications, or even stored in retailer’s
platforms to be analyzed for marketing and sales optimization. At a glance, such traces may look
bewildering for the qualitative researcher, but in actuality, these traces represent the activities of the
continuous mundane everyday activities performed by consumers and mirrors the multifold nature of
daily consumer life (Geiger & Ribes, 2011; Stoopendahl, 2024).
Collecting and analyzing the traces left behind by consumers can provide detailed insight in the microactions
a consumer perform on the device; what practices they engage in, sites they visit and
interactions they have with social others. Trace data has in a broader sense also shown to be salient for
inquiries within retailing, for example the nature of customer journeys (Stoopendahl, 2024). Besides
customer journeys, also consumer taste (Airoldi, 2021) has been fruitfully explored by collecting digital
trace data. Despite the promising use of this type of data, still, few seem to consider it an option; the
output of studies within retailing and consumer research utilizing digital trace data in qualitative research
remain limited. This paper aims to develop a methodological exploratory approach in collecting and
analyzing digital data traces; thereby providing a guidance that demonstrates the potential in such
research practice and enable others to begin collecting it. This paper is especially relevant for
researchers who consider such data alien in exploratory research.
In a qualitative approach digital traces should be combined with other sources of data, generated by for
example interviews or observations. This mixed empirical data approach is beneficial for several
reasons. For one, the risk of recall bias—a biased recalling of a chain of events—is mitigated in
interviews with consumers (Audy Martínek, Caliandro, & Denegri-Knott, 2022). If the activities performed
on the device have been accurately registered, the researcher has the possibility to check what
happened (Ekström, 2022). Secondly, traces of data offer a fuller contextual description, both in terms of
specific locations and the routes and pattern of activities performed. Therefore, digital trace data should
not be secluded to the disciplines usually engaging in large sets of data, but put to use to inform
qualitative studies.
Three studies will serve as examples of the use of trace data, all within retailing and consumer research.
The first study employs passive phone metering to explore in what ways consumers perform customer
journeys on the smartphone over time (Stoopendahl, 2024); the second study traces the way consumers
navigate on e-commerce stores or social media when they do not actively input information on the
platform—argued as a form of online lurking—by using a simple application that records the screen of
the smartphone (Audy Martínek et al., 2022). Lastly, a pilot study in the form of a bachelor’s thesis in
marketing at Lund university–supervised by the author of this paper–demonstrates a simple, yet creative
powerful tactic: The authors developed a method in which informants were asked to search for specific
keywords in their chat history and share screenshots of text conversations that illustrated decisionmaking
processes (Andersson, Edblad, & Erbing, 2024). Together, these studies show what type of
trace data can be easily collected using ready-to-use solutions or simply by considering in what way
representations of consumer practices are stored in users’ smart devices waiting to be collected and
explored.
When collecting and analyzing trace data the following aspects are important to consider: Ethical
dilemmas regarding passively collecting trace data, using commercial platforms for scientific purpose
and data quality and reliability. When analyzing, trace data invites the qualitative researcher to engage
in an alien style data; even if it may be rich in detail and capture how events unfold when using a smart
device, it also needs to be contextualized. Trace data needs to be paired with other tools, such as
interviews in which the informant needs to be engaged to make sense of the traces. This means that
trace data blurs the lines between researcher and researched–between the difference of emic and etic–
and instead highlight the collaborative nature in analyzing trace data. These considerations demonstrate
that trace data is coupled with its own challenges, but also opportunities for elucidation new findings that
can inform the expansion of theory.
Based on these three above-mentioned studies the paper will discuss ways of collecting trace data. It
will also address the analytical approaches and potential ethical dilemmas in conjunction with the
method. The aim is that this work will provide a much-needed exploration of how to incorporate trace
data in exploratory studies, investigating the contemporary device-enabled consumer.
Selected references
Andersson, H., Edblad, K., Erbing. (2024). Den sociala kundresan - hur sociala plattformar formar unga konsumenters köpbeteenden. Lund: Lund
University School of Economics and Management. (Bachelor’s thesis).
Airoldi, M. (2021). Digital traces of taste: methodological pathways for consumer research. Consumption Markets and Culture, 24(1), 97-117.
doi:10.1080/10253866.2019.1690998
Audy Martínek, P., Caliandro, A., & Denegri-Knott, J. (2022). Digital practices tracing: studying consumer lurking in digital environments. Journal of
Marketing Management, 1-31. doi:10.1080/0267257X.2022.2105385
Ekström, B. (2022). Trace data visualisation enquiry: a methodological coupling for studying information practices in relation to information systems.
Journal of Documentation, 78(7), 141-159. doi:10.1108/JD-04-2021-0082
Gangneux, J. (2019). Rethinking social media for qualitative research: The use of Facebook Activity Logs and Search History in interview settings.
Sociological Review, 67(6), 1249-1264. doi:10.1177/0038026119859742
Geiger, R. S., & Ribes, D. (2011). Trace Ethnography: Following Coordination through Documentary Practices. In (pp. 1-10): IEEE.
Stoopendahl, P. (2024). Tracing Smartphone-Enabled Customer Journeys : A Socio-Material Approach. Borås: Högskolan i Borås.

• author: Stoopendahl, Patrik
• organization: Marketing
• publishing date: 2024-11-07
• type: Contribution to conference
• publication status: published
• subject: Business Administration
• conference name: Nordic Retail and Wholesale Conference
• conference location: Helsingborg, Sweden
• conference dates: 2024-11-05 - 2024-11-07
• language: English
• LU publication?: yes
• id: 9cdc7dcc-d60b-413a-af0b-b99f51463d08
• date added to LUP: 2025-03-28 15:20:16
• date last changed: 2025-05-26 13:24:11