We did not interfere in any post or participate in it.

People at Reddit have their identity already

hidden hence all posts and comments collected were automatically anonymous. It was a public
platform so the need to ask before observing wasn’t a requirement.

Netnography was used to conduct the study. Netnography is a qualitative research technique that
studies cultures, communities, and trends in an online community. Reddit was chosen as the venue
for netnography, and a sub-reddit called "r/apple" was studied for a total of 8 weeks. This Reddit
group has 3.9 million members in total. This was the sole virtual platform utilised to carry out
netnography. Every day, according to their convenience, all team members took time out to observe
the group: all new postings were evaluated, and the focus was on the comments, through which
important observations were made. We saw postings on new product releases, member
experiences, awareness articles, general discussions, and different advices.

Once the data was collected, each member assessed their immersion journal entries on an excel
sheet: a thematic analysis of each member's immersion diary was performed by each member. The
fixed themes that were used to code the immersion entries were functional, emotional, social, and
psychological. The important findings were examined once the theme analysis was completed, and
discussions were held to gain consensus on significant findings. Based on the findings, guidelines for
businesses who aim to establish brand loyalty like Apple were developed.