The social benefits experienced by consumers in brand communities add signif-
icantly to brand loyalty. Community consumers are extremely loyal and enthusi-
astic consumers, but at the same time, communities of consumers are also
autonomous consumers capable of collectivelyrejecting marketing actions. Many
of the advantages associated with consuming the brand are created or enhanced
amongthe community members, leaving the marketer with limited options of
influencing brand meaning. This shift in negotiation power influences the creation
of brand meaning and brand equity as the negotiation of brand meaning primarily
takes place on consumers’ terms.
Due to the shift in negotiation power, communities are difficult to manage.
Consumers are able to ‘hijack’ a brand (Wipperfürth 2005) and endow it with
brand meaning very far from that intended by the marketer or choose to overrule
management decisions as in the case of the Apple Newton brand.
Besides providing social benefits to consumers, brand communities serve as
important information sources. The sharing of brand information can benefit both
consumers and marketers.
Brand management from the community approach perspective is complex, and the
autonomous groups of consumers can be hard to deal with. But the levels of brand
loyalty and the depths of brand meaning found in communities can be priceless,
making it worth while knowing the basic mechanisms ruling this approach.
The socio-cultural perspective
The social brand perspective put forward in the community approach draws on the
scientific tradition of ethnography. This tradition represents an intellectual
Box 9.1 Who owns the Apple brand now?
Apple introduced a handheld personal computer – the Apple Newton – in- In 1998 Apple chose to discontinue the Newton and take the Apple
brand in new directions with, among other things, the iMac and the iPod.
Even though Apple chose to manage the brand differently, ‘autonomous’
consumers keep the Apple Newton brand alive in a vibrant grass-roots
brand community. Dedicated Newton users have taken over the responsibil-
ities of the marketer and are now running a web-based brand community
that has at least 22,000 daily users. Offering technical support, software
development and the cultivation of brand meaning, the brand community
keeps the abandoned product and brand alive and kicking. Mythical and
supernatural narratives are part of the Newton brand community ethos and
are used for telling tales of miraculous performance and the survival of the
brand, investing the brand with powerful brand meaning.
SourceMuñiz and Schau (2005)
184 Seven brand approaches