There are over tens of thousands of specialist Usenet newsgroups, to which millions of messages are posted each day. Usenet provides discussion forums or electronic bulletin boards used by communities of interest. For example, I may read uk.rec.climbing, which has questions posted about rock climbing. Questions or statements are posted by one person who is looking for further information and others will reply, and lists of related questions will be held together in what is known as a thread . Usenet is mainly used by special-interest groups such as people discussing their favourite pastime. They are not used much by businesses, unless it is as a means of studying consumer behaviour. There are some newsgroups for announcing the introduction of new products or staff vacancies. Newsgroups tend not to be used extensively by business people or consumers, since they have to be aware of them and have the technical know-how to set them up. Setup can be difficult because a special piece of software known as a newsreader used to be required to read and contribute to newsgroups. When web browsers were developed, additional newsreaders were developed as extra modules; however, it was less clear how to access these in comparison with a web browser. Today, it is much easier to access newsgroups, since specialist web sites and search engines such as Google (www.google.com) enable users to access newsgroups without the need for special software.

The marketing applications of newsgroups usually involve obtaining ad hoc marketing research in the form...