Alperen Karaca

Consumer Culture & Digital Markets

Alperen KaracaMSc

I study how markets are made around community and belonging in the digital economy.

Research profile

My research asks how belonging is produced and sold in digital markets. My MSc thesis at WU Vienna, supervised by Prof. Marius Lüdicke, is an immersive netnographic and interview study of a large paid online community, showing how a creator-entrepreneur engineers belonging and sells access to it as a subscription. I work with ethnographic and interpretive methods, and my doctoral project develops this comparatively, asking how belonging becomes a market object and what sustains such markets.

Research interests

  • Consumer Culture
  • Creator Economy
  • Digital Platforms
  • Market-Making
  • Community & Belonging
  • Netnography & Ethnography
  • MSc MarketingWU Vienna, with distinction
  • WU Best Thesis Award2026, 1st place
  • Based inVienna, Austria
Download CV Email me LinkedIn
Portrait of Alperen Karaca
Hello, I'mAlperen Karaca MScConsumer culture researcher

I study how markets are made around community and belonging in the digital economy.

Ask me about

  • #ConsumerCulture
  • #CreatorEconomy
  • #MarketMaking
  • #DigitalPlatforms
  • #Belonging
  • #Netnography
Vienna, AustriaClick to flip
ABOUT ME

My MSc thesis at WU Vienna, supervised by Prof. Marius Lüdicke, is an immersive netnographic and interview study of a large paid online community. It shows how a creator-entrepreneur engineers belonging and sells access to it as a subscription.

My doctoral project develops this comparatively, asking how belonging becomes a market object and what sustains such markets.

Click to flip

Research

Research in progress

Karaca, A. and Lüdicke, M. K. Developing the thesis into a manuscript targeted at the Journal of Consumer Research.Draft in preparation, 2026

Master's thesis

WU Best Thesis Award 2026
1st place, selected from the graduating cohort

MSc Thesis, WU Vienna
Institute for International Marketing Management
Defended July 2026, graded Excellent
Supervised by Prof. Marius Lüdicke

Toxic Charismatic Entrainment: How the Creator Economy Industrialises Ideological Radicalisation

Theorises how a creator-entrepreneur deliberately engineers a toxic community and sells belonging within it as a subscription, a mechanism read as part of a broader "paid belonging economy" at the intersection of technology and markets.

An immersive study of Andrew Tate's "The Real World", combining netnographic observation with interviews, analysed through iterative hermeneutic coding.

  • Consumer Culture
  • Creator Economy
  • Netnography
  • Monetised Communities

Where my work sits in Consumer Culture Theory

Arnould and Thompson (2005) map Consumer Culture Theory into four research programmes. My work on paid online communities speaks most directly to two of them.

01

Consumer identity projects

How people use the market to build and perform a sense of self.

02My work

Marketplace cultures

How consumption communities form, and how belonging is produced inside them.

Here: a creator-entrepreneur engineers a paid community and sells membership in it.

03

Sociohistoric patterning of consumption

How class, gender and other structures shape what and how people consume.

04My work

Mass-mediated marketplace ideologies

How markets circulate ideologies, and how consumers interpret and resist them.

Here: how the creator economy industrialises ideology and sells it as belonging.

How I work: netnography

  1. 1

    Immersion

    Netnographic observation inside the community, over time.

  2. 2

    Interviews

    In-depth conversations with members, to hear how belonging is lived.

  3. 3

    Hermeneutic coding

    Iterative back-and-forth between data and interpretation.

  4. 4

    Theorising

    From field to concept: the "paid belonging economy".

Academic experience

Research & Teaching Assistant

WU Vienna, Institute for International Marketing Management · Prof. Marius Lüdicke
Feb 2025 – Sep 2025
  • Contributed to research on consumer behaviour and consumer identity, including data collection, analysis and manuscript development.
  • Supported teaching and research seminars at master's level.

Teaching Assistant

Bilkent University, Department of Management · Prof. Eray Yücel · Statistics & Probability Theory
Sep 2020 – Jun 2021
  • Led weekly tutorial sessions for undergraduate students, reinforcing lecture content and addressing individual conceptual gaps.
  • Designed problem sets, managed grading and tracked student progress across the cohort.

Science Writer

Yakiniliskiler.com · with Prof. Dr. Gizem Sürenkök
Jan 2020 – Oct 2021
  • Synthesised peer-reviewed research in social and relationship psychology into accessible, evidence-based articles for a general audience.

Education

MSc Marketing

WU Vienna
Oct 2024 – Jul 2026

With distinction (mit Auszeichnung)

Consumer Culture, Interpretive Methods, Digital Markets

BSc Management

Bilkent University
Sep 2018 – Jul 2023

High Honours

Marketing, Decision Making, Consumer Behaviour

Minor in Psychology

Bilkent University
Sep 2020 – Jul 2023

Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Research Methods

Standardised tests

  • IELTS: C2 (Proficient)
  • GMAT: 93rd percentile
  • YKS 2018: 278th of 2.8 million

Languages

  • Turkish
  • English
  • German

Awards & honours

Skills

Qualitative

  • Netnography
  • Ethnography
  • In-depth Interviewing
  • Thematic Analysis
  • Hermeneutic Coding
  • Discourse Analysis
  • Participant Observation

Quantitative

  • Regression Analysis
  • Variance Analysis
  • Factor Analysis
  • Survey Design
  • Experimental Design
  • Data Mining

Technical

  • NVivo
  • R
  • Python
  • SPSS
  • Qualtrics
  • LaTeX

Teaching

  • Tutorial Delivery
  • Syllabus Development
  • Student Assessment
  • Undergraduate Mentoring

Contact

Open to PhD positions and research collaborations in consumer culture and digital markets.

k.alperenkaraca@gmail.com
Download CV LinkedIn