Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
UTPAL M. DHOLAKIA
Rice University
RENÉ ALGESHEIMER
University of Zurich
* Utpal M. Dholakia is the William S. Mackey, Jr. and Verne F. Simons Distinguished Associate
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making processes, shaped by socially constructed and shared information, and governed by
social norms, influences, rituals, traditions, and taboos. Over the last decade, consumer
researchers have increasingly turned their attention to social processes. Among other things, they
have studied family and couples decision making, social influences on consumer decision
making and self-regulation, consumer sub-cultures, and the effects of community on consumer
choices, attitudes and behaviors.
consumer behavior is that of a consumer collective called a “brand community”. The brand
community concept is powerful because it reflects both social process and cultural meaning,
stems from a number of converging environmental trends such as the ascendance of the internet,
the decline of traditional family and community, and the growing power of individual consumers
and elaborate on different types of brand communities, and examine the consequences of
consumer participation in them.
consumers, brand communities act as conduits of information, channels for solving product-
related problems and learning how to use its features, places for finding new friends for social
support and for meeting existing friends, and as a means for self-expression through creation and
sharing of symbolic content. For firms, brand communities are low-cost, high-efficacy marketing
programs which can achieve a number of different marketing objectives simultaneously: the
abilities to conduct quick and low cost marketing research with the target audience, deliver
prompt customer service at low expense, educate and socialize new customers, strengthen
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particular brand, which is sustained through repeated online and/or offline social interactions
and communication amongst its members who possess a consciousness of kind, feel moral
responsibility toward one another, and embrace and propagate the collective's rituals and
traditions". Several aspects of this definition are important and worth elaborating on.
organized around one particular brand, which means that the collective comprises of consumers
who have at least some heightened enduring interest in that brand. Such an interest may stem
from an attachment to the brand itself, from a more general interest in the product category to
which the brand belongs, or (more likely) both. In the prototypical example of a brand
community involving Harley Davidson Motorcycle owners, the so-called HOG (Harley Owners
Group), many members have a fanatical devotion to the Harley Davidson brand, and view the
biker lifestyle symbolized by the brand in idealistic terms. Generally speaking, brand community
members are among the most ardent enthusiasts of the brand. Consumer researchers have found
brand communities comprised of enthusiasts to exist across a range of product categories, from
highly complex technological products like enterprise software (e.g., Oracle and Hewlett
Packard) and construction equipment (e.g., John Deere), to consumer durables like virtually all
brands of cars, motorcycles, and video game consoles, to low-cost consumable food brands like
the Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread, Coca-Cola, and Starburst candy.
Role of communication in brand community. The second part of the definition explains
the process by which the brand community sustains itself. Regular social interactions and
and gatherings, is essential not only for the community’s business to be conducted, but perhaps
more importantly, for the relationships between community members to form and strengthen. It
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is through timely and convenient communication ability that the brand community is able to
solve the problems of individual members, deliver technical service and support to them,
generate consumer feedback and new product ideas, and deepen participants’ knowledge of one
another and the strength of their relationships. For individual participants, communicating with
others within the brand community serves specific functional purposes such as solving a
particular product-related problem or learning how to use a product feature, or may simply
provide the means to have a pleasant and enjoyable communal experience.
The essential markers of brand community. The remaining part of our brand community
definition describes the three markers that sociologists stipulate as essential for any social
collective to be truly considered a community: (1) a consciousness of kind, (2) a sense of moral
responsibility, and (3) the knowledge and acceptance of the collective’s rituals and traditions.
The first core marker of community, the so-called consciousness of kind, refers to the
intrinsic connection that community members feel toward one another through a sense of
belonging to the group, and a sense of difference or separation from those who are non-members.
Consciousness of kind is the force driving the cognitive categorization of in-groups and out-
groups and biased behavior favoring the in-groups by consumers, and a primary reason why
brand communities are such effective marketing programs. Compared to advertising or direct
marketing, brand communities muster the consumers’ intrinsic interests and motivations in
support of the brand, and in opposition to competing brands. For example, Harley Davidson
riders belonging to a HOG believe that they share similar attributes, values, and views of life,
and thus feel intrinsically connected to each other. At the same time, they may view riders of
other brands such as those who own Honda or Suzuki motorcycles in a negative light. Such
As Cova (1997) points out in introducing the notion of “linking value”, even if brand
community members have never met before in a face-to-face setting (as is often the case with
brand community participants), they can still experience the connection and the feeling that they
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know one another. The common social link shared with other members through their interest in
the brand sustains the community, even without actual physical interaction amongst its members.
The second core community marker is a feeling or sense of moral responsibility or
obligation towards the community itself and other brand community members, and may include
a concern for their well-being as expressed through acts of help or social support such as by
teaching newer members how to use the product, and educating them about the practices and
norms of the community. The sense of moral responsibility can extend to the community as a
whole, and is evident when members make the effort to enforce communal rules and shared
values such as fairness, and go out of their way to recruit new members to the community.
Usually, such a sense of responsibility is cultivated over time as a member participates in, and
comes to identify with the community. It deepens with the consumer’s experience and tenure in
communities of limited liability in the sense that for individual consumers they are intentional,
voluntary, and partial in the level of involvement they engender, yet are vital to contemporary
community, it develops various rituals and traditions. In an important way, it is these rituals and
traditions, which may include such things as narratives of the brand’s origins and history,
celebrations, brand stories and myths, and ritualistic utterances and actions, which create the
sense of the in-group and affirm the cohesiveness of brand community members. For example, it
is customary for members of eBay’s brand community to recount personal acts of devotion to the
eBay site in its chat forums, and instances where they converted a friend or a loved one from use
of a competing site such as Amazon.com.
The fourth core community marker is the dynamics of the collectivity. Rather than being
nor reactive individuals that only behave in accordance to internal, e.g. compliance or self-
esteem, or external forces, e.g. group norms, or peer pressure, of the community. Members
actively choose their community, or even leave the community. Furthermore, ongoing
interactions between and activities of community members shape and change the appearance and
structure of the community itself. How rituals and traditions are for example celebrated in the
community influence the emergence of cultural symbols of that community. On the other hand,
the brand communities’ structure, its norms and set of rules, its rituals and traditions influence
individual’s future activities, social interaction and consumption patterns. Overall, one can say
that brand communities are “produced” by their members, but also “reproduced” by social
interactions between their members that reinforce the community (Latour 2005). Thus, brand
brand communities that are comprised of consumer networks and those that consist primarily of
small friendship groups, and (2) brand communities that are centrally managed by the firm’s
managers versus those that often decentrally are organized and managed through grassroots
bounded, densely knit groups with strong relationships between members, and social networks,
which are loosely bounded, sparsely knit networks of members sharing weak and narrowly
variety of social support, social networks are usually geographically dispersed groups that
interact with one another for a specific reason, without prior planning.
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Social psychologists similarly distinguish between common bond and common identity
groups. Whereas the bond between members is the glue holding the group together in common
bond groups, the attachment depends on identification to the whole group, in common identity
groups. Common bond groups correspond to neighborhood solidarities and common identity
groups to social networks. These distinctions, of viewing the community as either more-or-less
the same small group of individuals with each of whom the consumer has relationships, or
viewing it as a venue where numerous, dynamically changing people (strangers or
acquaintances) with shared interests or goals meet, is useful in classifying brand communities.
In some instances, the consumer thinks of the brand community primarily as a venue, and
only superficially associates it with any particular individual(s) within it. For instance, a
consumer may log into the bulletin-board of a software company because he has a problem that
needs solving. In this case, his main interest is in solving the problem; there is no expectation or
inclination to meet, chat, or socialize with any particular community member. Likewise, an
engaged yelp.com or amazon.com consumer may read and benefit from reviews offered by
others, without personal knowledge of, or relationships with, the reviewers. A brand community
defined this way, i.e., as “a network of relationships among consumers organized around a
shared interest in the brand and promoted mainly via online channels, where intellectual and
utilitarian support is primary and emotional support is secondary” is a “network-based brand
community.”
In other cases, the brand community’s member may identify primarily with a specific
small group (or groups) of consumers, rather than with the venue in which the community meets.
For example, a software developer may log on to the community chat-room specifically to chat
with her geographically distant buddy group of kindred software developers every week to trade
ideas, learn new concepts, and to socialize with them. Here, the developer’s focus is on
communication with her peer group that she knows personally, rather than on the brand
community venue. Such a brand community, “constituted by individuals with a dense web of
relationships and a consciously shared social identity interacting together as a group, in order to
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accomplish a wider range of jointly conceived and held goals, to express mutual sentiments and
communities. First, not surprisingly, the specific group with which the consumer interacts holds
greater importance for members of small-group-based when compared to network-based brand
communities. This is because the individual knows everyone else personally, and in many cases,
may have shared histories and close personal relationships with them. As a result, relationships
between community members are stronger, more resilient, and more stable than those in
network-based brand communities, where members participate primarily to achieve functional
goals (e.g., to trouble-shoot a problem) and have tenuous, short-lived, and easily severed ties.
Accentuating the group’s importance for small-group-based brand community members
is also the fact that the brand community venue is often only one of a number of places where
such groups meet. Online social interactions are supplemented by face-to-face and other offline
forms of interactions. For instance, a small group of HOG members may not only chat online
with one another periodically in the course of a week, but meet on weekdays for coffee and
fellowship, and on weekends for group outings. In contrast, network-based community members
are more likely to interact with each other exclusively through the brand community venue.
The two brand communities also differ in the range of activities its members engage in.
Network-based community members are likely to engage primarily in narrow, instrumental,
based activities. For Harley riders belonging to small group brand communities, for example,
social interactions occur through group rides for purely recreational purposes or for more formal
goals such as fundraising (e.g., a rally for raising funds for the victims of an earthquake or a
hurricane), competitions, political protests (e.g., anti-helmet law rallies), or community service.
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Even more frequently, small group members come together to meet at a pub or restaurant or to
loyal to a particular venue offered to them by the firm to interact in than members of network-
based brand communities; yet, at the same time, small-group-based brand community members
are more likely to be influenced by the social interactions with other members in the venue when
they do participate than those belonging to network-based brand communities. Thus, loyalty to
the brand community is inversely correlated with its influence on its members.
The distinctions between network-based and small-group-based brand communities also
have implications for managers of these communities. Whereas the primary managerial objective
case of small-group-based brand communities, the main goal is to satisfy the motivations of
group members to socialize with one another by providing them various applications that
facilitate social interactions. Thus, tools and applications such as buddy lists, instant messaging,
providing status updates, and sharing of personal history are likely to be more valued in small-
group-based brand communities. In contrast, applications that allow specific functional goals to
and a reputation system which rewards problem-solving of other members are more useful in
network-based brand communities. The differences also mean that the marketers’ role is starkly
different in the two cases: to be active information providers and problem solvers in the case of
network-based brand communities, but to be more passive and indirect -- in the background -- in
managed brand communities. Many popular brands have many established brand communities,
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some organized and managed by the firm’s professional marketing managers, and others that are
grassroots organizations founded and run independently by customer enthusiasts. For example,
Microsoft XBOX 360, the leading video gaming console, has an established brand community
managers. Concurrently, there are dozens of XBOX brand communities, founded and managed
by its fans such as the Brotherhood of the Box (www.bob.com.sg/forum) and Planetxbox360
(forums.planetxbox360.com).
communities. First, both communities are comprised of customers who are fans of the brand.
Some participants may even have overlapping memberships within the two communities.
Second, participants of both communities are interested in the same subject matter, namely news
and information about the brand and its competitors. Finally, although consumers ultimately
decide which community to join, there is at least some degree of targeting by community
managers. For instance, it is quite common to offer referral rewards in cash, kind, or recognition,
to existing members to recruit friends, and to use direct marketing approaches such as email
communities. Perhaps the most important distinction has to do with the community manager’s
loyalty to their products and brands, and to increase their purchase behaviors. Consequently,
customers are recruited to join the community through targeted approaches, and the facilities and
affordances provided to participants are designed to reach these objectives. It is not uncommon
for firms to use established segmentation variables, in particular, demographic variables for
recruiting community participants. This professional recruitment of fans into communities often
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contradicts with the social motives of the brand’s enthusiasts. This may be the reason, why
Instead, the community managers seek to express their love and admiration for the brand through
organizing and managing the community. Participants, too, self-select and join the customer-
managed brand community because of a shared passion for the brand, which often overlaps with
common values, hobbies, and lifestyles. These differences indicate that customers in firm-
The second difference between the two brand communities has to do with managers’
constraints in the two cases. As noted earlier, professional managers of firm-managed brand
communities are dictated by the firm’s marketing objectives and therefore strive for consistency
with its other marketing programs. Consequently, their emphasis is on a fit between the tone and
content of the communications of the brand community members and the other marketing
communications being sent by the firm. For example, a discussion in the brand community
criticizing a newly introduced product and discussing its weaknesses will be viewed as
inconsistent with the firm’s ongoing advertising campaign that extols its virtues. Likewise,
managers have an ingrained discomfort with giving customers free reign because of the
possibility of unbridled and/or prolonged criticism by them regarding the firm. On the other
hand, members of a customer-managed community do trust other members and their opinions
more, because the firm’s influence is not emergent. Practitioners and researchers are only now
beginning to recognize and study these and other differences between firm-managed and
customer-managed communities. This is one research area of great future potential, promising to
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Consequences of consumer participation in brand communities
Perhaps the most important reason for the success and growing importance of brand
communities stems from the significant, multi-faceted and long-lasting effects that participation
in brand communities has on consumers. Consumer researchers have found that a key
psychological process that occurs due to brand community participation is that the consumer
psychologically identifies with the community, which in turn, mediates a number of important
Identification with the brand community. Brand community identification captures the
strength of the consumer’s relationship with the brand community, whereby the person construes
himself or herself to be a member— that is, as “belonging” to the brand community. In contrast
to other personal identities which may render a person unique and separate, this is a shared or
collective identity. The consumer’s self-esteem is also boosted to the extent that his or her ego-
ideal overlaps with that of the others, and acting as the other acts or wants one to act reinforces
one’s self-esteem. Identification resembles aspects of normative and informational influence, as
well as referent power, and is characterized by the community member’s social identity. Several
studies suggest that social identity, defined in terms of a valued group, such as a brand
involves categorization processes, whereby the consumer formulates and maintains a self-
awareness of his or her membership within the community (e.g., “I see myself as part of the
community”), emphasizing his or her perceived similarities with other community members and
terms of the relevant group prototype. The cognitive component of identification captures the
with the group, which social psychologists have characterized as an affective commitment to the
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group and which can also be viewed as kinship between members. Organizational researchers
have shown that affective identification influences in-group favoritism and citizenship behaviors
towards the organization. Identification means that the consumer agrees (or strives to agree) with
the community’s norms, traditions, rituals, and objectives and promotes its well-being. Third, the
positive or negative value connotation attached to brand community membership, and arises
from evaluations of self-worth derived from membership. Group-based self-esteem has been
community members. It also produces a number of interesting and important outcomes. Among
the consequences of identification with the brand community are brand relationship quality,
consumers’ integration within the brand community is a function of their relationships with the
brand, other community members, the product, and the firm as a whole. Brand relationship
quality is the customer’s psychological attachment to the brand and its assessment as a
satisfactory partner in an ongoing relationship, and is consistent with the idea that consumers
frequently view brands, especially well-liked or beloved ones, in human terms, assigning
animate characteristics to them. Brand relationship quality captures the extent to which the
consumer identifies with the brand and views his or her self-image as close to or overlapping
with the brand’s image. It involves cognitive aspects such as the degree to which the consumer
believes that the brand’s image overlaps with his or her self-image, and emotional elements such
as the degree of the consumer’s emotional attachment to the brand.
relationship with one another. For some consumers, the consumer’s relationship with the brand
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precedes and contributes to his or her relationship with the brand community. Many consumers
first discover and value the brand for the functional and symbolic benefits it provides. A
harmonious relationship with the brand can lead consumers to seek out and interact with like-
minded consumers who share their enthusiasm. Moreover, an existing identification with the
brand facilitates integration and identification with the brand community. For example, even
when traditions, such as greeting other brand users, appear peculiar to the consumer, a strong
relationship with the brand may help the person accept them and intrinsically endorse these
practices.
On the other side, integration with, and participation in the brand community, strengthens
the customer’s relationship with the brand. Not only does participation in the brand community
provide opportunities for learning about the product and the brand associations (as we discuss
below), but close contact with other brand devotees rubs off on the consumer, increasing the
strength of his or her emotional attachment to the brand. In today’s environment, many marketers
consider brand relationship quality to be the ultimate objective and metric of their marketing
actions.
Learning. For complex, frequently evolving products, customers must learn continuously
to keep abreast of changes and new developments and to take advantage of these advances.
Traditionally, companies have been responsible for educating their customers to fully leverage
the company’s service offerings. They have done so by getting customers to participate in firm-
education delivered through brand communities, wherein customers assist their peers in learning
about the products and their use. Customers thus take over service functions that are customarily
performed by employees and act as “partial employees” of the firm. In eBay’s Help Forums, for
example, many novice sellers are interested in learning about the efficacy of different decision
variables such as offering “buy-it-now” options, starting the auction with a low price vs. a high
price, etc. Experienced sellers who are Forum members provide this service, bypassing the eBay
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employees.
The knowledge that a firm’s customer possess regarding its products, in particular, how
to choose and use them, is a significant, valuable, and archivable resource, especially for
complex products. Many brand communities exist to tap into, and disseminate this knowledge
effectively to the participant base. For the individual member, this knowledge exchange
translates into learning, which is defined as the customer’s perceptions of increase in his or her
own product expertise. Often, customers come to these communities for the first time because of
the need to solve a specific problem. Once they receive the solution from the community, and
hence have learned, they are captivated by the experience and become and stay a member
themselves.
In brand communities, customers learn in vicarious and interactive ways, from the
anecdotes, suggestions, and ideas of other members. The created knowledge is thus dependant on
the members involved rather than on the pure truth. As members report not only short questions
and/or manual-like answers but also share information on the situation, intentions, and feelings
about an issue or action, they are able to convey context. The context information contributes
manuals, user guides, ‘hacks’ from other members, and archives of FAQs, that most
communities store. The community site constitutes a knowledge base of all past incidents to aid
the solutions of similar problems in the future and is therefore the collective memory of the
individual interactions.
Oppositional brand loyalty. Prior consumer research has shown that brand communities
strengthen a member’s devotion and loyalty to the brand. For many loyal customers, the most
important facet of this loyalty is derived from developing and expressing negative perceptions of
competing brands. In fact, some researchers argue that this phenomenon of opposition to another
brand and its community is the very defining feature of the brand community. Oppositional
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brand loyalty, which is defined here as “the participant’s perception that competing brands are
inferior to the target brand and should be avoided,” benefits the firm by reducing the likelihood
that members will purchase competing brand products, strengthening the possibility of future
For the brand community participant, the tendency to position the brand against the
competition arises from the perception of being threatened, along with a desire for the target
brand to maintain its superiority over the competition. Such an adversarial position is fostered by
the perceived normative pressure to conform to the brand community’s views and to signal this
inclination to conform explicitly to the world, and to dissociate from the disfavored brands
through means visible to the community.
Trust in firm. Trust in the firm is defined as “the brand community member’s willingness
to rely on the firm, stemming from a confidence in its benevolence, reliability and integrity.”
Trust in the firm is important from a managerial standpoint not only because it creates a
relationship that is highly valued by the customer, extending beyond the interactions with the
brand community, but also because it has been linked directly to organizational performance.
Research has shown that trust in the firm is affected positively by community
identification because the shared consciousness inherent in greater social identification supports
stronger convictions about the firm’s intentions and integrity, leading to greater trust in it. This
reasoning is consistent with the influential commitment-trust marketing theory which posits that
shared values between partners positively affect their trust perceptions. Trust in the community’s
manager and governance structure also contributes to the brand community member’s trust in the
firm. This is because the beliefs in the benevolence, reliability, and integrity of the brand
community manager, along with the discussions in the trusted community regarding the firm’s
products and brands elevate the participant’s beliefs in the good intentions and reliability about
the firm, leading to greater trust in it.
Conclusion
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Brand communities offer the promise of a marketing program that is synergistic with the
they represent avenues for marketers to generate a range of positive outcomes for the firm in
cost-effective ways. For consumer researchers, brand communities are venues to study a host of
psychological and social issues. Brand communities are certain to grow in research importance
and practical significance in the coming years.
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