European Journal of Marketing

Who's who in brand communities – and why?

Hans Ouwersloot Gaby Odekerken-Schröder
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Hans Ouwersloot Gaby Odekerken-Schröder, (2008),"Who's who in brand communities – and why?",
European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 42 Iss 5/6 pp. 571 - 585
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Who’s who
Who’s who in brand communities in brand
– and why? communities?
Hans Ouwersloot and Gaby Odekerken-Schröder
University Maastricht, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, 571
Department of Marketing, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Received May 2006
Revised November 2006
Abstract Accepted January 2007
Purpose – Brand communities may manifest the ultimate degree of connectedness between a
consumer and a brand. Research typically approaches such communities as collections of highly
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homogenous members but generally fails to recognize them as individual persons with their own
idiosyncratic backgrounds and reasons to join the community. This article aims to explore whether a
community population can be meaningfully segmented on the basis of different motivations to join.
Design/methodology/approach – Information from two communities is collected, following the
customer-centric model of brand community of McAlexander et al.. The relationship variables in this
model are used as a segmentation basis in cluster analysis to identify various segments. Different kind
of motivations can be identified with the relationship variables of the McAlexander et al. model.
Findings – Multiple segments based on different consumption motivations exist. Two investigated
communities show significant overlap in the identified segments. Furthermore, the findings suggest
that segments evolve in relation to the lifecycle stage of the community.
Practical implications – Segmentation is important for fine-tuning marketing efforts, particularly
for brand communities. Members of communities share dedication to the brand but are heterogeneous
in many respects.
Originality/value – Treating a brand community as a marketing tool requires an understanding of
the composition of its population. This study explores how to achieve this understanding and links
community characteristics to theoretical concepts surrounding consumer behaviour.
Keywords Brands, Brand management, Community behaviour, Market segmentation, Cluster analysis,
Motivation (psychology)
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
In recent branding literature, Keller (2001, 2003) has argued that the highest level of
connectedness a brand can achieve with its customers is characterized by a state of
resonance. In this state, consumers interact with the brand, are highly loyal, and feel
connected. Furthermore, they experience strong relationships with the brand, which
causes them to recommend it to others, feel emotionally inclined toward it, and perceive
themselves as part of it.
Concurrent with this more management-oriented literature, brand communities
have entered the academic consumer research agenda. Initially the topic emerged in the
realm of sociologically oriented research, inspired by the notion of postmodernity (Firat
and Venkatesh, 1995; Cova, 1997; Kozinets, 1997, 2001; Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001; Holt,
2002; Schau and Muniz, 2002; Brown et al., 2003; Giesler and Pohlmann, 2003; Muniz European Journal of Marketing
Vol. 42 No. 5/6, 2008
and Schau, 2005). For example, Muniz and O’Guinn (2001, p. 428) contest that brand pp. 571-585
communities exist, in line with the spirit of modernism (Berman, 1988), which involves q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0309-0566
“open[ing] oneself to the immense variety and richness of things, materials and ideas DOI 10.1108/03090560810862516
 EJM that the modern world inexhaustibly brought forth”. More recently the brand
42,5/6 community concept has made its appearance in more traditional marketing research
(McAlexander et al., 2002, 2003; Algesheimer et al., 2005; Andersen, 2005; Piller et al.,
2005; Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006). A milestone in this development was McAlexander
et al.’s (2002) study on Harley Davidson and Jeep brand communities and brandfests, in
which literally the dominant ethnographic approach of the original researchers was
572 combined with typical market research endeavours like scale development and
hypothesis testing. This article elaborates on McAlexander et al.’s (2002) work by
taking brand community research to new areas (product categories) as well as by
validating their newly developed measurement scales.
The concepts of brand community and virtual communities (e.g. Wiertz, 2005; Füller
et al., 2005; Piller et al., 2005) overlap, but are not synonyms. Brand communities are
often supported by internet-based technology, but the concept is broader and
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essentially encompasses everyone who feels connected to the brand, online or offline.
Virtual communities in contrast by definition are only defined in the virtual world. A
definition given by Wiertz (2005) further emphasizes the different scope of online
communities. She defines virtual communities as “company-endorsed online
aggregations of customers who collectively co-produce and consume content about a
commercial activity that is central to their interest by exchanging informational and
social resources” (p. 6). And although virtual communities may be centered round a
brand, this is not necessarily the case. This paper therefore explicitly adopts the
concept of brand communities as defined and introduced below.

Brand communities
Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) describe a brand community as a “specialized,
non-geographically bound community that is based on a structured set of social
relations among admirers of a brand” (p. 412), a definition that is generally accepted by
other researchers (e.g. McAlexander et al., 2002, 2003; Andersen, 2005; Algesheimer
et al., 2005; Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006). Their study employs mainly a sociological
perspective and uses ethnographic research and a deductive approach. McAlexander
et al. (2002) build on their study and introduce a customer-centric model of brand
community. These preliminary research efforts indicated that the study of brand
communities offers promising research avenues, including that which we investigate –
namely, why people join communities. Moreover, we extend the scope of brand
community research beyond the prototypical examples of car (Jeep, Saab as in Muniz
and O’Guinn, 2001; McAlexander et al. 2002; Algesheimer et al. 2005; Bagozzi and
Dholakia, 2006), motorcycle (Harley-Davidson as in McAlexander et al. 2002) and
computer (Apple as in Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001; Muniz and Schau, 2005) brands with
our choice of brand communities.
The definition of brand communities tend to suggest some degree of homogeneity
among members; for example, Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) write that “Like other
communities, it is marked by a shared consciousness, rituals and traditions” (Muniz
and O’Guinn, 2001, p. 412). McAlexander et al. (2002) say that “Communities tend to be
identified on the basis of commonality or identification among their members”
(McAlexander et al., 2002, p. 38). Even brand community “became a common
understanding of a shared identity”, according to Muniz and O’Guinn (2001, p. 413) and
their discussion of core community commonalities. Algesheimer et al. (2005) use the
 strength of the consumer’s integrations with the community as their core independent Who’s who
variable, recognizing that members can differ, but only in this one dimension: “In
contrast to other identities, which may render a person unique and separate, this is a
in brand
shared or collective identity” (p. 20). communities?
Despite this appearance of homogeneity, it seems worthwhile to study the
population of a community from a heterogeneous perspective that recognizes that
persons within a community are unique. In this respect, it becomes particularly 573
important to understand why consumers join brand communities, a question that
directly refers to the issue of satisfying needs and wants and thus is central to
marketing. Recognizing that brand communities can become important marketing
instruments and understanding who joins a community for what reasons may have
potentially powerful managerial implications.
It is important to realize that from an organization’s perspective brand community
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is a loose concept. Any admirer that has a relationship with another admirer is part of a
community. It seems useful to make a distinction between two types of communities,
however. On the one hand there are communities that have clear and established links
with the brand involved. In other words, one of the relationships community members
have explicitly is with the brand. This is most clear when the brand or company is in
fact the administrator of the community (e.g. the car clubs in Algesheimer et al., 2005),
or the organizer of community events like brandfests (e.g. the Jeep Camps in
McAlexander et al., 2002). On the other hand there are brand communities in which the
brand is not explicitly involved. An extreme example is the Newton club studied by
Muniz and Schau (2005), which is characterized as an “abandoned” community.
Like most brand community research so far, with the notable exception of Muniz
and Schau (2006), this research will use company-moderated communities. The
implications of our research for non-company moderated communities will be touched
upon in the Discussion section.

Consumer motives to participate in a brand community

The question of what needs and wants community members seek to fulfill by joining a
community has been grossly neglected. The ethnographic paradigm employed by
Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) and many other researchers simply observes that
communities exist and investigates its characteristics and markers but does not ask
why people acknowledge themselves (implicitly or explicitly) to a community. The
questions marketing researchers have asked are varied. Some examples are:
.
the impact of brandfests on the integration into the brand community
(McAlexander et al. 2002);
.
co-design in (online) communities (Piller et al. 2005);
.
how far brand communities exhibit religious characteristics (Muniz and Schau,
2005);
.
the predictive ability of community membership on intentions and behaviors
(Algesheimer et al., 2005);
.
the role of brand community integration on loyalty (McAlexander et al. 2003);
and
.
the role of brand communities in establishing and maintaining relationships in a
B2B context (Andersen, 2005).
 EJM In all these studies the existence of the community was the starting point. However,
42,5/6 communities are made up of persons, consumers. The question for what reason
consumers will acknowledge themselves to be a member of a community has, to our
knowledge, not been addressed.
This question is particularly important for company-moderated communities,
which we investigate here. Participation in these communities often requires some kind
574 of an offer by consumers, for example a membership fee, or provision of some key
personal data. So what leads consumers to bring this offer to participate in the
community? Without pretending to be exhaustive, we will identify and discuss a few
possible reasons for this decision.
We propose four motivations consumers might have to join a community, which we
base on various notions in consumer behavior literature:
(1) reassurance of quality for products with significant credence attributes (Nelson,
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1970);
(2) high involvement with the branded product category (Quester and Lim, 2003;
Taylor, 1981);
(3) opportunity for joint consumption; and
(4) the brand’s symbolic function (Aaker, 1996).

Communities thus might be classified according to whether and to what extent they
help customers reach these objectives. We explicitly recognize that a community can
serve multiple objectives simultaneously for different consumers. Similarly, one
consumer may seek multiple objectives from one community.
First, consumers may participate in a brand community because of their need for
quality reassurance. On the basis of how information about the quality of products can
be obtained, Nelson (1970) proposes a classification of products into goods with search,
experience, and credence qualities. Quality assessments of search goods can be made
on the basis of visible cues that can be inferred a priori, whereas experience goods
allow for assessment immediately after consumption. For credence goods, however,
quality may be assessed only after continued consumption. In line with this distinction,
brand communities may function as groups of consumers that provide reassurance
about a credence product’s quality. Furthermore, the link a community provides to the
company may reduce consumer uncertainty. On a more practical level, the community
may serve as a platform for exchanging experiences regarding the maintenance, repair,
adaptation, or even basic usage of the product. Within a community, members feel a
responsibility (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001) to share this knowledge (Schau and Muniz,
2002). Although prior research has investigated search goods (e.g. Jeep vehicles, Apple
computers; McAlexander et al., 2002), investigations of communities surrounding
experience and credence goods remain scarce or nonexistent.
Second, consumers may participate in a community to express their involvement
with the branded product. High-involvement product categories typically are those
with which the consumer wants to feel connected (Zaichkowsky, 1985) even beyond the
moment of consumption. Consumers generally search extensively for
high-involvement products (Arnould et al., 2002) and then feel a need to share the
consumption experience in retrospect. Online communities are extremely well suited to
this aspect (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2002), but brand communities in general can help
 consumers share their experiences with high-involvement products. In this sense, the Who’s who
community serves to intensify or elongate the consumption experience.
Third, consumers may require joint consumption and therefore join a brand
in brand
community. In line with Muniz and O’Guinn’s (2001) contention that communities are communities?
more likely for publicly consumed goods, we note that some products must be
consumed jointly rather than individually (Hogg and Michell, 1997). More precisely,
when the utility derived from consumption involves synergistic effects, the product is 575
preferably consumed jointly (Marmolo, 1999). Typical examples include board games,
plays, and sports contests. Products that are consumed jointly are typically suitable to
build a community (Schau and Muniz, 2002), which serves as a meeting place where
members can consume the product together.
Fourth, consumers may decide to participate in a brand community because they
want to live up to the brand’s symbolic function. The concept of brand identity, as
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proposed by Aaker (1996), suggests that one dimension pertains to symbolic meaning.
This identity goes beyond a basic set of associations, in that some brands, such as
Nike, reach iconic status. For brands with important symbolic meanings, such as
Harley-Davidson, a community may strengthen that meaning and offer a meeting place
where members can express their devotion to the symbol.
These different motives to join a brand community may lead to different levels of
appreciation of the aspects of community life. The customer-centric community model,
which proposes four relationships consumers may have with a brand community –
product, brand, organization, and other consumers – provides an effective means to
understand and measure key aspects of communities (McAlexander et al., 2002). We
measure the strength of these relationships to investigate whether all bonds are equally
strong for every community member. That is, we investigate whether differences exist
among community members with respect to the importance they attach to the four
links. For example, consumers who join a community for the possibility of joint
consumption are more likely to emphasize inter-customer relationships. However,
those who see the brand primarily as a symbol likely will be most interested in the
relationships with the brand or the organization. Finally, consumers whose main
motives center on their high involvement with the product should be mostly concerned
with their relationship with the product.
When a community serves multiple objectives, we expect segments within the
community for which the relative importance of these relationships varies. In turn, we
propose segmenting the community population on the basis of the importance the
members attach to the four relationships of the customer-centric brand community
model (McAlexander et al., 2002). We contend that such differences originate in the
different motives consumers have to join communities. In Table I, we demonstrate the
relatively strong correspondence between motives and the type of relationship.

Motive Dominant relationship

Table I.
Assurance for credence good Customer-company relationship Correspondence of
High involvement in product category Customer-product relationship motives to dominant
Joint consumption Customer-customer relationship relationships in
Brand symbol Customer-brand relationship community
 EJM Research design
42,5/6 We investigate two communities to determine whether different segments might be
identified within them and whether these segments can be understood in terms of the
consumers’ motives for joining. We purposefully choose two communities that differ in
many respects, including their product categories, geographic scopes, and states of
development, among other things. This choice helps us increase and broaden our
576 knowledge of the phenomenon under investigation, and we focus specifically on the
differences in development stages. In our first study, we investigate the community of
players of the board game Settlers of Catan, which is in its incubation stage. The
publisher of the game organizes brandfests, or tournaments, and tries to establish a
community based on participation in these tournaments. In contrast, for our second
study, we study Swatch, a well-established watch brand with a long history, a
professional, company-moderated website, and international scope.
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Sample
For study 1, we distributed self-administered questionnaires to 128 participants of
Settlers of Catan tournaments at the end of the gathering. These tournaments were
organized in 12 Dutch cities, of which we selected four to attain maximal geographical
spread. We visited these four tournaments and asked participants to complete the
self-administered questionnaires; we received 104 useable questionnaires, for a
response rate of 81 percent.
In study 2, we sent 568 Belgian and Dutch members of “Swatch the Club”
self-administered mail questionnaires. The French-speaking part of Belgium received a
carefully translated French version of the questionnaire. Swatch raffled a Christmas
special as an incentive for members to complete the questionnaire. Respondents could
choose to complete the questionnaire and return it via regular mail or go to a web link
noted in the cover letter of the questionnaire and complete it online. This sample
consisted of 125 observations, for a response rate of 22 percent.

Measurement instrument
The questionnaires consisted of 16 items that relate to the four relationship constructs
described by McAlexander et al. (2002). However, for those of their items that are kept
proprietary, we substitute items we believe relate closely to the investigated construct.
(For the constructs and their items, see the Appendix.) We use seven-point Likert
scales, ranging from “completely disagree” to “completely agree”, to measure all items,
and include several socio-demographic variables.
We report the Cronbach’s alphas for the four relationship constructs in both
samples in Table II. In general, the scales measure the four relationship constructs
reliably; the alphas vary from 0.652 to 0.880. The customer-product relationship
construct seems under-developed; in both samples, items had to be removed.
Nevertheless, in the Swatch sample, the reliabilities are good, and in the Settlers of
Catan sample, we find a sufficient degree of reliability. Therefore, we calculate the four
relationship constructs as the averages of the scale items.

Results
Our Swatch sample is slightly dominated by men (58 percent). The average age is 39
and most respondents report memberships – measured by interval data – of more
 than four years (58 percent). The dominance of men in the Settlers of Catan sample is Who’s who
more pronounced (78 percent). Almost half of the respondents are in the 21-30 age in brand
category (49 percent) and since the adjacent intervals make up 18 percent (, 20 years)
and 26 percent (31-40 years), it is clear that this sample is significantly younger than communities?
the Swatch sample.
Next, we used the four relationship variables to cluster analyze both data sets. We
applied Ward’s method (Aaker et al., 2001) with the constructed relationship scores as 577
the basis for segmentation and find that the agglomeration schedules suggest a
four-cluster solution for the Settlers of Catan community and a six-cluster solution in
the Swatch study.
We refine both solutions by applying a K-means clustering procedure, with the
centers of the four or six identified clusters from Ward’s method as starting points
(Punji and Stewart, 1983). This procedure led to a reallocation of 13 percent of the
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observations in the Settlers of Catan sample. In the Swatch sample, we reassigned 9

percent of the observations. In both samples, the reallocations mainly occurred in
relation to the cluster that we subsequently identify as representative of average
community members. That is, the relocation appears to move average members out of
otherwise specific clusters or specifically profiled members out of the average cluster;
in both cases, the result was that the profiles of the clusters became more distinct. In
Tables III and IV, we report these cluster profiles. With regard simply to the sheer size
of clusters, we note that the Settlers of Catan community encompasses significant
clusters, the smallest of which constitutes 16 percent of the total community. The
Swatch community consists of two relatively small clusters, but they represent
meaningful segments.
Interpreting the results of a cluster analysis is based on three inferences. First the
absolute scores on each of the relationships is taken into account. A score around the

Relationship Settlers of Catan Swatch

a
Customer-company relationship 0.663 0.871a
Customer-product relationship 0.700b 0.766c
Customer-customer relationship 0.652d 0.866d
Customer-brand relationship 0.880e 0.815e
Notes: aBased on both items. bBased on two of the original four items: “I am proud of my product” and Table II.
“Among my favorite possessions”. cBased on three of the four original items: “I love my Swatch”, “I am Reliability of relationship
proud of my Swatch” and “Among my favorite possessions”. dBased on all three items. eBased on all measurement for both
seven items samples

Consumer relationship with Enthusiasts Behind the scenes Users Not me Community

Company 5.05 3.81 3.95 2.38 4.00

Product 5.75 2.07 5.37 4.41 4.66 Table III.
Customer 5.42 3.05 4.27 3.13 4.18 Segments in the Settlers
Brand 5.87 4.31 4.78 3.90 4.87 of Catan community
Relative size (percent) 29 20 36 15 100 (n ¼ 104)
 EJM mid-point of the seven-point scale (i.e. 4) is indicative of the relationship being neither
42,5/6 important/relevant nor unimportant/irrelevant. High scores mean the relationship is
valuable, low scores imply that the relationship is not regarded valuable. Second, the
scores on a relationship for an identified cluster is compared to the average for the
whole sample. Third within a cluster the scores on the four relationships are compared.
This may lead to inferences such as for cluster “X” one type of relationship is more
578 important than another relationship. Finally, the score on a relationship is compared
across clusters. Inferences drawn from this comparison read like: for cluster “Y”
relationship A is more important than for cluster “Z”. The interpretation of the cluster
analysis is typically summarized by given names to the clusters that capture their most
distinctive features.
We refer to the first cluster in the Settlers of Catan group as the “enthusiasts”.
Invariably, these members have the highest scores on the four relationships constructs,
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which means they assess all four relationships elements as important, valuable, or
appreciated. Enthusiasts thus are the ideal community members, in that they like
everything related to the brand – the product, the brand, the company behind the
brand, and other community members. The principle motive for enthusiasts to join the
community is unclear, but because they are positive about every aspect of their
community relationships, we deduce that all motives apply to them.
The second identified cluster has average ratings on three of the four relationship
constructs but scores quite high on the product dimensions; we refer to them as players
or, more generally, “users”. Because the Settlers of Catan board game requires high
involvement, any consumer of it needs other players (joint consumption), which
explains the positive rating this group gives to its relationships with other customers.
We call the third group the “behind-the-scenes” segment. These customers indicate
very low ratings of relationships with the product and other customers but average
values for the brand and company. In other words, they are not interested in the social
dimensions of the community or product information but rather are attracted by the
more abstract realities that lie behind the product and its users.
The final group is called the “not-me” segment. This group is characterized by low
scores on all constructs and therefore is not really interested in the community.
Because we gathered data about this community during a tournament, which might be
regarded as an inaugural event for a community in its incubation stage, we posit that
some tournament attendees came out of curiosity but found themselves uninterested in
the community upon further consideration.
Concerning the socio-demographic characteristics of the cluster, we observe that,
compared to the sample, man are over represented in the “users” segment (87 percent
versus 78 percent for the sample), while we find more women in the “enthusiasts”

Consumer relationship Behind the Not

with Enthusiasts scenes Users me Socializers Average Community

Company 6.29 4.97 1.89 3.19 4.08 4.53 4.61

Product 6.82 6.00 6.59 4.25 6.23 6.24 6.24
Table IV. Customer 4.76 1.42 4.44 2.58 5.85 3.61 4.06
Segments in the Swatch Brand 6.79 6.33 5.92 4.57 6.19 6.08 6.18
community (n ¼ 123) Relative size (percent) 23 12 7 7 20 31 100
 segment (37 percent compared to 22 percent for the sample). The age variable reveals Who’s who
no interpretable patterns, which means that all segments follow more or less the in brand
distribution of the sample.
Shifting our attention to the Swatch community, a first and most relevant finding is communities?
that all four labels that were assigned for the Settlers of Catan community also can be
applied to the Swatch community. That is, the first Swatch cluster consists of
enthusiasts, who like every aspect of the community, and the second comprises users 579
who are highly interested in the product as such. Note that for these users, the score for
the company relationship construct is remarkably low. The third group, the
behind-the-scenes consumers, is not interested in other customers but neither are they
negative toward the product. Note that the interest in the product of behind-the-scenes
is much less closer to average than was the case in the Settlers community. Finally, we
again find a not-me category whose members score low on all dimensions.
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In addition to these four, the Swatch case offers two further groups that, in this case,
are among the largest we find. The first and largest is a cluster we label “average”,
which has low to average scores on all constructs. However, we use this “average” label
in comparison with the means of the complete sample on the constructs. For the sample
in total the score on the relationships with the product and the brand are quite high, so
we also might infer that the four constructs reveal the greater importance of the
consumers’ relationship with the product and brand. That is, on average, the most
important motives for joining a community are the brand and the product.
The final group we identify is the “socializers”, who appreciate the community in all
four aspects but appear to prioritize the customer-to-customer aspect most.
Further analysis of the socio-demographic profiles of the clusters reveals that 68
percent of the “socializers” are male (cf. 58 percent for the sample). “Users” (78 percent)
and “not-mes” (75 percent) are even more male dominated, but these findings have to
be interpreted with caution given the small absolute numbers in these segments – 9
and 8, respectively. The segments called “average” and “enthusiasts” in contrast count
relatively many women (50 percent in both). Concerning the ages within the segments,
again the two smaller ones (“users” and “not-me”) are relatively old (43 and 48,
respectively) whereas “behind the scenes” is the young segment. Finally, it is found
that “socializers” have longest memberships, while the “behind the scene” segment and
especially the “enthusiasts” are the newcomers.

Discussion
Both the commonality and the differences between Studies 1 and 2 shed some
interesting light on the brand community phenomenon, especially in relation to the
differences in their development stages (i.e. incubation versus mature).
In both communities, relationships with the product and the brand obtain the
highest respondent scores. Despite the notion that a community is a set of social
relationships, the brand communities we investigate emphasize truly brand-related
aspects, not more socially oriented concepts like the company or other consumers.
In addition, all identified segments in the Settlers of Catan community appear in the
Swatch community. The presence in both communities of a group of “enthusiasts”
comes as no surprise, in that brand enthusiasts may be the very raison d’être of brand
communities. We note that the size of this group does not differ significantly in either
community. In contrast, the existence of a “user” group seems obvious for the Settlers
 EJM of Catan but rather more surprising for the Swatch community, even considering its
42,5/6 smaller size. Despite their community involvement, this group does not develop
broader interest in the brand over time but instead limits its interest to the product.
Thus, it would be a waste of resources to try to gain the interest of “users” in other
aspects of the brand; it simply is not why they join the community.
Furthermore, we did not expect to uncover a “not-me” group in the Swatch
580 community, though their presence in the Settlers of Catan case makes sense, as we
explained previously. “Not-me” members of the Swatch community should have had
sufficient opportunity to leave the community; that they have not done so means that
either the exit barriers are too high or a sufficient incentive to take the action to leave
the community does not exist. However, companies, especially those with mature
brand communities, must acknowledge the existence of this group that otherwise
might be perceived as similar to the rest of the community in their dedication to the
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brand; in the Swatch case, 7 percent of the community is not so dedicated. The good
news for companies, however, is the small size of this group.
The final common group, the “behind-the-scenes” consumers, admittedly differs
across our two communities in qualitative terms. In the Settlers of Catan case, the
group is hard to understand, characterized as it is by comparably high interest in the
brand and company but not the product or other customers. This result is particularly
puzzling because we collected data during a Settlers of Catan tournament whose
central focus is the product and playing the game with other customers. However, in
the Swatch case, the picture is clearer, in that the “behind-the-scenes” group displays
relatively significant interest in all aspects of the community except for other
customers. In this sense, they might be perceived as the opposites of “socializers”.
Our finding of “socializers” among the Swatch community is not unexpected,
because the entire community concept is grounded in the idea that people like to form
social bonds (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001). However, we highlight that this group’s
interest is not limited to other members; even though they regard the community
primarily as a social network, socializers’ interest in other aspects of the community is
significant enough to call them dedicated to the brand as well. Furthermore, we note
the lack of socializers in the Settlers of Catan community. This may be due to the way
in which the customer-customer relationship was constructed, which referred explicitly
to the respondents’ past within the community (e.g. “I have met wonderful people in the
community”).
We created this study with the idea that heterogeneity within communities might
exist, and the results generally support this claim. However, our analysis of the Swatch
community reveals that the largest segment (the “average” group, at 31 percent)
follows an average pattern of interest. Socializers also follow this pattern, except that
they have a much greater interest in fellow consumers. Hence, we acknowledge that a
large part of the community displays some homogeneity.

Managerial implications
Brand community members constitute a specific group of customers, but treating them
as a single, homogenous group may be a serious mistake. Community members share a
reasonably strong commitment to the brand, but the brand concept is so complex
(Mühlbacher et al., 2006) that members can and do differ in many respects. The
managerial implications of this fundamental observation are manifold.
 Specifically, communication with members should be differentiated. For example, Who’s who
incentives to encourage members to share information with the company might be in brand
tailored to the principal motives for joining that members display. A member who most
appreciates contact with the organization might be offered a company visit, whereas communities?
one who puts the most emphasis on relationships with other customers should be
offered a free ticket to a tournament or brand gathering.
When the community exists via the internet, the company website should reflect the 581
dominant trend regarding what community members appreciate. Alternatively, the
company could design various parts of its site to reflect specific customer preferences.
The communication strategy used to promote the community also should be
adapted to the prime purpose for which the community is built. Swatch offers a nice
example, in that the community name itself – Swatch the Club – reflects
inter-customer relationships. Alternatively, a name like “Swatch-watchers” would
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appeal to consumers’ relationship with the product link, “Swatch Inside” could play on
their connection to the organization, and “What’s Swatch” might attract those
customers who prioritize their relationship with the brand.
Ultimately, the recommended steps depend on what managers hope to achieve with
their community, which means that any managerial implications are contingent on the
way the company’s management deals with the community. Assuming that the
community functions as a management tool, understanding its membership
composition can help fine-tune management actions, in support of the importance of
knowing who’s who in brand communities.

Conclusion and suggestions for further research

First, our study supports the applicability of the customer-centric model of brand
communities (McAlexander et al., 2002). In particular, the four relationships that define
the model appear in the communities we investigate, which offers a validation of the
model in new domains. However, further confirmation of its validity in even more
domains still is required.
Second, we find evidence of heterogeneity among community members. We have
sought to find the basis of this heterogeneity in consumers’ different
consumption-related motives to join a community. This approach has been partly
successful, in that we confirm the presence of heterogeneity, but our findings cannot be
interpreted easily in terms of the motives that likely lead to heterogeneity. That is,
consumption characteristics cannot clearly and unequivocally define the characteristics
of the segments in either community. Further research might elaborate on this idea, but
it may be equally, if not more, valid to scrutinize other sources of heterogeneity.
Third, we find that segments may differ with respect to the community’s
development stage. However, because the communities we investigate differ in many
other respects as well, we cannot attribute our finding of heterogeneity only to the
development stage, though the results indicate this proposition is not without merit.
Given the potential managerial impacts of this point, we strongly urge further,
preferably longitudinal research.
We acknowledge that our study offers little scope for generalization. Two
idiosyncratic brand communities have been researched, and although the concepts
presumably apply in general to brand communities, the findings require further
research on more communities, before general conclusions can be drawn.
 EJM The current study also neglects the role of involvement. It seems obvious that
42,5/6 community members are involved, but involvement is a multi faceted concept. Also our
finding of segments that seem not interested in the community (the “not-mes”) shows
that involvement is perhaps less obvious than expected. The role of involvement in its
various dimensions is likely to contribute to a deeper understanding of the
characterizations of segments within a community.
582 Another issue this study does not address also is of paramount importance. The
Swatch community we investigate is moderated by the company, and Settlers of Catan
tournaments are organized by the company. Although it is tempting to execute
community research using clearly identifiable, well-administered, and clearly
delineated communities, the brand community concept as defined by Muniz and
O’Guinn (2001) and which seemed to have gained wide acceptance in the literature (see
our introductory sections) encompasses a much broader scope. Communities may
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consist of consumers who mentally admire a brand but are not administratively
connected to an organization of any kind. That is, researchers cannot assume that
communities consist of “members only”.
This limitation offers several extremely challenging research avenues. How
relevant are communities in this looser sense? What is the role of brand communities,
in this broad perspective, for brand marketing? What is their influence on building
brand equity? Mühlbacher et al. (2006) argue that brands are complex, social
phenomena that cannot be managed, but brand managers can try to influence the
concept of the brand. Understanding brand communities and thus structuring the
socially complex phenomenon of a brand may help managers effectively influence the
development of their brands and thus put them in reasonable control of one of their
most valuable assets.

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Appendix
We measure the four relationship constructs of the customer-centric brand community model,
using seven-point Likert scales anchored at completely disagree and completely agree, with the
following items.

Customer-company relationship
(1) The [brand] company understands my needs.
(2) The [brand] company cares about my opinions.

Customer-product relationship
(1) I love my [brand] [product].
(2) I am proud of my [brand] [product].
(3) My [brand] [product] is one of my favorite possessions.
(4) My [brand] [product] is fun to wear/play.

Customer-customer relationship
(1) I have met wonderful people because of my [brand] [product].
(2) I feel a sense of kinship with other [brand] owners.
(3) I have an interest in more interpersonal contact with other members of the [brand]
community.

Customer-brand relationship
(1) I value the [brand] heritage.
(2) I consider my [brand] as my number 1 choice of [product].
(3) I say positive things about [brand] to other people.
(4) I would recommend [brand] to my friends.
(5) If I were to replace a [brand] I would by another [brand].
(6) [brand] is of the highest quality.
(7) [brand] is the ultimate [product].
 For each item, [brand] refers to either Swatch or Settlers of Catan and [product] to a watch or Who’s who
board game, respectively. The wording may have been adjusted slightly to make the statements
logical and meaningful. in brand
In the customer-brand relationship scale, items 2 and 3 were kept proprietary by communities?
McAlexander et al. (2002); we therefore complemented them with the two items above that we
took from the behavioral intention battery of Zeithaml et al. (1996).

585
About the authors
Hans Ouwersloot is Associate Professor of Marketing at Maastricht University. His research
centers around brand management and includes the areas of consumer behavior, integrated
marketing communications and advertising and marketing research. He has published in
European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Services Research, Industrial Marketing Management,
and International Journal of Service Industry Management. Hans Ouwersloot is the
Downloaded by CARDIFF UNIVERSITY At 05:11 09 January 2015 (PT)

corresponding author and can be contacted at: h.ouwersloot@mw.unimaas.nl

Gaby Odekerken-Schröder is an Associate Professor in Marketing at Maastricht University.
Her main research interests are related to the domains of relationship marketing, services
marketing, customer (e-)loyalty, and consumer behavior. She is a member of the editorial board
of Journal of Relationship Marketing and ad hoc reviewer for International Journal of Service
Industry Management. Her research has been published in Journal of Marketing, Journal of
Business Research, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services,
Journal of Consumer Marketing, and many other international journals.

To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.com

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