Brand community

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A brand community is a community formed on the basis of attachment to a product or marque. Recent developments in marketing and in research in consumer behavior result in stressing the connection between brand, individual identity and culture. Among the concepts developed to explain the behavior of consumers, the concept of a brand community focuses on the connections between consumers. A brand community can be defined as an enduring self-selected group of actors sharing a system of values, standards and representations (a culture) and recognizing bonds of membership with each other and with the whole.

The term "brand community" was first presented by Albert Muniz Jr. and Thomas C. O'Guinn in a 1995 paper for the Association for Consumer Research Annual Conference in Minneapolis, MN. In a 2001 article titled " Brand Community", published in the Journal of Consumer Research (SSCI), they defined the concept as "a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand." This 2001 paper recently has been acknowledged by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare to be one of the most cited papers in the field of economics and business.

Brands which are used as examples of brand communities include Apple Inc. (Macintosh, iPod, iPhone), Ford Bronco, Holga and Lomo cameras, Jeep, Lego, Miata, Mini Cooper, Palm, PocketPC, Royal Enfield motocycles, Saab, Saturn automobiles and Subaru, and Harley Davidson. Brand communities are characterized in shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of moral responsibility.

[edit] References

Algesheimer René, Utpal M. Dholakia et Andreas Hermann (2005), The Social Influence of Brand Community: Evidence from European Car Clubs, Journal of Marketing, 69 (July), 19-34.
Amine Abdelmajid and Lionel Sitz (2004), How Does a Brand Community Emerge? Some implications for marketing research, Marketing: Where Science Meets Practice , Esomar Conference, Warsaw.
Brown Stephen, Robert V. Kozinets and John F. Jr. Sherry (2003), Teaching Old Brands New Tricks: Retro Branding and the Revival of Brand Meaning, Journal of Marketing, 67 (July), 19-33.
Kalman David M. (2005), Brand Communities, Marketing, and Media, [1]
Mullins Ran (2003), Giving New Meaning to Branding, BusinessWeek Online, (January)[2]
Muniz Albert M. Jr. and Thomas C. O’Guinn (2001), Brand Community, Journal of Consumer Research, 27 (March), 412-32.
Muniz Albert M. Jr. and Thomas C. O’Guinn (1995), Brand Community and the Sociology of Brands in Kim P. Corfman and John G. Lynch (eds), Advances in Consumer Research, 1996, Volume 23, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, pages 265-266.
Muniz Albert M. Jr. and Hope Jensen Schau (2005), Religiosity in the Abandoned Apple Newton Brand Community, Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (March), 737-47.