Expanding the boundaries of brand communities: the case of Fairtrade Towns (original) (raw)
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Creating and managing participative brand communities: The roles members perform
Journal of Business Research, 2020
The success of brand communities as social structures that facilitate the co-creation of brands depends on the nature of their members' participation. Existing research provides limited insights into the roles brand community members perform. In response, this study, using role theory as its theoretical foundations, explores the roles members play. Ethnographic data were collected primarily from a brand community where highly involved working consumers interacted both off and online. The analysis reveals that there are categories of roles performed which are necessary for the development and long term prosperity of the community; it also identifies specific roles within each category and elucidates how these structure and manage the community as an entity. The study contributes to knowledge and practice by elucidating the variety and complexity of roles members need to play in order to secure an active and healthy brand community and develops further evidence to support that brand communities are primarily self-managed entities.
Community As Brand: An Exploratory Investigation
Journal of Business & Economics Research (JBER), 2012
This research investigates how community affects consumer marketing and brand equity management. Community is a ubiquitous concept with many definitions in social sciences, ranging from urban neighborhoods and small towns to brand communities. Firms utilize the power of brands to support premium prices, sustain product value in difficult circumstances, and persuade consumers to purchase a brand repeatedly and loyally. Brand scholarship has also ranged widely, from tangible product or service characteristics to the intangible influence of its symbols and meanings on consumers. This study describes how the complicated sets of meanings embedded in the terms community and brand lead to a phenomenon called naturally occurring brands (NOBs). The paper combines the anthropology, sociology and marketing perspectives to describe the NOB phenomenon and explores its validity using survey research.
Healy Jason C a Grounded Theory of Football Fan Community Identity and Co Production Consumer Roles in Brand Culture Meaning and Value Co Creation in Virtual Communities Phd Thesis Dublin City University, 2012
This study attempts to theorize why and how consumers consume. Using a combined methodology, drawing upon Netnography and Grounded Theory, to study an online fan forum, a Virtual Community (VC) called RedAndWhiteKop, this thesis considers brand culture/meaning and value co-creation. The research site is a VC containing football fans who are viewed as stakeholders of the organisation Liverpool Football Club. Following emergent fit occurring with woven in literature streams found in managerial marketing as service-dominant logic (SDL) and the consumer research field known as consumer culture theory (CCT), analysis is conducted on fan consumer behaviour leading to the submission of a Typology of Seven Consumer Community Cultural Co-creative Roles. The author reflects on existing theoretical consumer responses to market offerings of exit, voice, loyalty, and twist, found in extant literature; adopting these as four co-creative roles. This study contributes three new consumer co-creative roles of entry, re-entry, and non-entry. This study's findings are intended to follow an interpretive cultural anthropological axiology, attempting to provide context and time bounded interpretations of this setting rather than immutable laws or truths. Managerial implications of the typology are discussed. A key challenge for managers and marketers is awareness of these roles. This is potentially achievable through listening to online VCs, seeking ways to enhance brand value and service provision. This study finds that fans are continuously co-creating/co-producing Liverpool FC brand community culture together on places like the VC RedAndWhiteKop (RAWK). This appears to be occurring largely in separation from the brand company itself and is referred to in this study as 'Coincidental Co-creation'. However, this study finds agreement with much CCT and SDL that encourages greater interaction and dialogical relations between suppliers and consumers. This is possible through better online engagement or virtual dialogue, with stakeholders such as consumers, pursuing the management-role of 'Collaborative Co-creation.'
This paper examines stakeholder communication and interaction dynamics in place branding processes in order to inform alternative participatory place branding models. The paper draws from critical communications and branding theory to argue that place brand identities are the result of mediated messages in the public sphere. Consequently, place branding processes need to be observed as communicative exchanges. Through a case study of Australia's southern and only island state of Tasmania, the research employs participatory action research combined with the method of sociological intervention to explore stakeholders' communicative interaction patterns and engagement in place branding processes. Participants representing formal and informal stakeholders engaged in communicating meaning about places were invited to participate in a series of interviews and focus group discussions that allowed a unique self-reflective process and analysis of practices and power-geometries. The proposed quasi-real scenario led to an understanding of the impediments for communication and to scoping alternative modes of engagement towards effective stakeholder communication to support the development of resilient place brand identities. The findings of the exploration contribute to theoretical development of the field by providing an analysis of the nature of stakeholder interactions and communication patterns, impediments and opportunities for greater communication and collaboration towards a common purpose. On a practical level, the study can also inform the development of participatory models of place brand development. Finally, the method proposed here can serve as a practical tool to foster stakeholder engagement in processes of co-creation of place brand identities.
Place Brand Co-Creation through Storytelling: Benefits, Risks and Preconditions
2021
Co-creation in place branding is used as an umbrella term for the complex brand meaning emerging through stakeholders’ participation in place activities, their contribution, collaborations and interchange of ideas and resources. Co-creation is often an aspiration for places to create and promote their brands collectively. In this context, storytelling—an old technique used in corporate marketing to instigate brand stakeholders’ participation—serves as a method which facilitates place brand co-creation through shared place stories. With the rise of online interactions, the chances of place stakeholders’ participation in brand meaning creation increase, and place stories are effective in allowing diverse place meanings to emerge from various stakeholders. However, when storytelling emerges as a marketing tactic, mostly from a top-down campaign, the stories are not always accepted by all place stakeholders, and they create contrasting brand meanings. The paper aims to investigate the benefits and risks of participation in “Many Voices One Town” (2018), a top-down campaign from Luton, UK, which used storytelling to instigate place brand co-creation. The campaign was created by the Luton Council with an external advertising agency. The campaign attempted to tackle the town’s segregation issues and foster community cohesion through the promotion of seven selected Lutonians’ stories about their diverse and multicultural experiences of living in Luton. The study employs a qualitative methodology to analyse the MVOT case study. Interviews with the council and participants in the campaign and netnographic data from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were used to gain an insight into residents’ participation in a top-down approach and examine the outcomes of co-creation. Residents’ participation in such a campaign shows numerous benefits but also risks for the place brand. The findings show that participation can sometimes intensify disputes about the town if people’s needs are not properly addressed. The study highlights the importance of open communication between all parties involved in the process, bringing into focus the need for careful coordination of top-down initiatives in line with stakeholders’ needs. It also demonstrates the ‘power of the people’ in the sense that stakeholder engagement with the shared stories led to negative outcomes that were not predicted by the Council.
Places where people matter: The marketing dynamics of Fairtrade Towns
Social Business, 2015
The purpose of this study was to understand how Fairtrade Towns, a relatively new but rapidly expanding phenomenon that promotes social business in terms of the consumption of Fairtrade products, operate as a form of place-based marketing network. This paper, which underpinned a Keynote Address delivered at the Second Biannual Social Business Conference, explores how Fairtrade Towns combine the 'people' dimension of Fairtrade marketing with a place-based perspective. Methodology This project applied grounded theory and gathered data through long-term ethnographic involvement in one Fairtrade Town initiative, and interviews with 29 key participants across 11 other Fairtrade Towns. Contribution This study demonstrates the need to understand phenomena such as Fairtrade Towns, not as abstract marketing systems, but as activities and processes driven by, and concerned about, real people in real places. It contributes to the growing appreciation of the need to understand particular aspects of social business from a multidisciplinary perspective.
The Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 2011
Brand community research has gained prominence over the past decade due to the increasing complexities of modern business and the goal of remaining profitable. As a result, "more and more companies are attempting to build deep, meaningful, long-term relationships with their customers" (Bhattacharya and Sen 2003, p. 76). In an effort to foster such relationships, researchers have proposed a communal approach to consumption (Cova and Pace 2006). A classic example of this community-based consumption is the subculture formed by Harley-Davidson devotees . were drawn to the thought that a single product (i.e., the Harley-Davidson motorcycle) defined a distinctive, homogeneous, and enduring subculture. The behavior of consumers driven by similar passions to form a group has come to the forefront as an object of study with relevance for marketing researchers (Cova and Pace 2006). The study of brand communities has revealed (in the aggregate) that these specialized subcultures enable an organization to better communicate, establish, and foster rich consumer relationships. Moreover, such relationships have been found to significantly and positively affect consumer behavior (e.g., .
A brand community from a customer-experiential perspective is a fabric of relationships in which the customer is situated. Crucial relationships include those between the customer and the brand, between the customer and the firm, between the customer and the product in use, and among fellow customers. The authors delve ethnographically into a brand community and test key findings through quantitative methods. Conceptually, the study reveals insights that differ from prior research in four important ways: First, it expands the definition of a brand community to entities and relationships neglected by previous research. Second, it treats vital characteristics of brand communities, such as geotemporal concentrations and the richness of social context, as dynamic rather than static phenomena. Third, it demonstrates that marketers can strengthen brand communities by facilitating shared customer experiences in ways that alter those dynamic characteristics. Fourth, it yields a new and richer conceptualization of customer loyalty as integration in a brand community.
Co-creating corporate brand identity with online brand communities: A managerial perspective
Journal of Business Research, 2019
Contemporary branding literature views brand identity as socially constructed through complex interactions between multiple stakeholders. Despite extant work on how brand communities and individuals contribute towards brand identity formation, our understanding of management-led processes constituting part of the wider process of a socially constructed brand identity is still underdeveloped. Drawing on in-depth interviews with senior executives of a luxury automotive company and a netnography of its online brand community, we develop a process model of corporate brand identity co-creation, comprising three management-led processes: 'nurturing brand passion', 'bridging' corporate brand identity meanings and 'partnering', and associated activities through which management contribute to the wider process of corporate brand identity formation with community members and other stakeholders. By highlighting the interlinked and recursive nature of these processes and activities in the resulting model, the study offers a deeper understanding of the ways in which management are involved in co-creating corporate brand identity. Keywords: Corporate branding; brand identity; co-creation; online brand communities stakeholders in relation to their individual and collective identities. The concept of cocreation, which is viewed as the process by which firms and consumers collaborate and participate in value creation (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004), thus becomes critical to our theorisation of the brand identity as "meanings" (Csaba and Bengtsson 2006; da Silveira et al. 2013; Lucarelli and Hallin 2014; von Wallpach 2017). However, the relevance of the cocreation process in brand building remains under-theorised (Ramaswamy and Ozcan 2016; Csaba and Bengttson 2006). So far, only a few studies within the stakeholder-and processoriented branding literatures have offered empirical insights into the reciprocal co-creation of brand and stakeholder identities (von Wallpach et al. 2017; Black and Veloutsou 2017; Kornum et al. 2017; Vallaster and von Wallpach 2013). Nevertheless, more is known about how consumers and brand communities engage in co-creating brand identity compared to brand managers. Consequently, the nature and implications of how managers interact with other stakeholders in this dynamic social process of nested meanings of brand identity remains unclear. Therefore, this study aims to explore how brand managers contribute to the process of corporate brand identity co-creation with members of brand communities. The study is based on a single case study (Yin 2009) of Aston Martin, an iconic luxury automotive manufacturer with a strong corporate brand. Five in-depth interviews with senior marketing managers and netnographic data collected from the firm-hosted online brand community over a period of six months, resulting in 215 posts and 35,000 aggregated comments including replies, form the basis for our analysis. The key contribution of this paper is the development of a process model, which demonstrates the dialectical relationship between managers and the brand community, by systemising processes and inherent activities managers engage in to contribute to the wider process of corporate brand identity formation. The paper proceeds by reviewing extant branding literature from a process perspective.
This is a conceptual paper and is an attempt to explore transitional effect of brand building in the era of new area. Transition and mobility has been the law of nature and has been witnessed from the time immemorial. However the current and the future generation are going to witness a transformation which redefines the idea of space and geographical territory. The prime mover of this transformation will been new media. To understand this transition well and to be in sync with the nuances of mobility will be crucial to organizational success in the 21st century. In this paper, I will discuss how organizations can form brand communities on the lines of Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities. The paper will also highlight the fact that the phenomenon of mobility seen today is not just a consequence of an information explosion but also a result of the nature of new media (internet and mobile) and its impact on social constructs.