Digital practices tracing: studying consumer lurking in digital environments

The aim of this article is to offer a methodological framework for a systematic capture and analysis of consumer lurking practices in digital environments. Despite the prevalence of lurking, it is still an understudied topic in marketing and consumer research due to methodological constraints. To remedy this, we introduce Digital Practices Tracing (DPT), a novel methodological framework integrating digital methods and post-phenomenological inquiry. This combination allows capturing naturally occuring digital lurking practices and uncovering their underlying motivations. The article’s contribution is threefold. First, it provides a detailed research protocol that can be easily applied and further scaled. Second, it applies the methodology to make invisible lurking practices on social media visible. Third, it introduces an ad hoc taxonomy of digital lurking practices useful to trace and measure them.