Managerial implications
a brand with a powerful sense of community would generally have greater value
to a marketer than a brand with a weak sense of community. However, it should
also be recognized that a strong brand community can be a threat to a marketer
should a community collectively reject marketing efforts or product change, and
then use communal communications channels to disseminate this rejection.
(Muñiz and O’Guinn 2001, p. 427)Community consumers can be a source of immense brand loyalty: they tend to serve
as brand missionaries, they are forgiving, extremely loyal and less apt to switch brand
than others. Brand community members provide important feedback to the corpo-
ration about the brand; even ‘grass-roots R&D’ can be one of the benefits of having
engaged consumers in a brand community. The emotional bond between the brand
and community members makes consumers eager to contribute to the success of the
brand. Brand loyalty (to a product brand) tends to ‘spill over’ (to the corporate brand).
In the case of cars, many sponsored brand communities represent the corporate brand
(such as Volkswagen or Ford clubs) while the majority of consumers seem to identify
with their particular car model, e.g. a Volkswagen Passat or a Ford Bronco. The
membership of the corporate-level brand community seems to activate a sense of
belonging to the corporate brand, building grounds for future repeat purchases.
However, there are also downsides to an active brand community. Besides the
collective rejection mentioned in the quotation above, rumour control in
computer-mediated environments is another potentially serious problem.
Consumers may also ‘hijack’ the brand and collectively take the brand in other
directions than the marketer had in mind (as in the case of the Apple Newton).
There are basically two ways of managing a brand community: one is as an
observer, the other is as a facilitator. In the latter sections we have introduced how
the assumption of a social brand is reflected in the theoretical constructs and how
these constructs imply the use of ethnographic research methods for the gathering
of information about brand communities. Now the managerial implications of
these three layers are provided along with managerial guidelines on how to act as
a marketer when observing or facilitating a brand community.
Observing brand communities
Community members are diehard fans. They choose to spend leisure time on a
brand, cultivating profound brand meaning. A marketer can gain a deep insight
into these layers of meaning simply by observing the community. This insight can
be valuable in the marketing of the brand to more mainstream consumers.
Observations can take place in the face-to-face venues as well as in the virtual
communities. A brand manager may enrol in clubs, join rallies or subscribe to user
groups, to name a few possibilities. The social interaction in the brand community
should be observed applying the appropriate ethnographic (and ‘nethnographic’)
data collection techniques in order to deduct brand meaning.
The community approach 197