Brand Community
Brand Community
Introduction
During the last fifteen years, there are many popular subjects: relationship marketing and brand building,etc.These hot subjects encourage interaction and speed up the incubation of new sources of disciplinary growth: Brand Relationship(the relationship between consumer and brand).In Brand Relationship theory sysytem,more scholars focus on the relationship between consumer and brand, but Muniz and O’Guinn(2001) did more research on the relationship among consumers, and put forward a new brand concept - Brand Community.
This concept comes from “consumption community”,which was first proposed by historian Daniel Boorstin(1974), ‘in the modern era of high mobility, people look not only to communality of consumption behavior but also to neighborhood as a basis for feelings of community.’ The same as consumption community, brand community is also initiative and drive of individuals’ co –operating at the beginning, after that, enterprise start to take advantage of the power of brand community to build brand loyalty and brand equity, therefore, brand community is becoming a new weapon of marketing.
In this essay, I make literature review surveys on scholarly articles, books relevant to brand community, providing a description, summary and critical evaluation of brand community. Firstly, discuss the origin and definition of brand community. Secondly, summary the research status and the dynamic natures of brand community which are different from consumption community, briefly introduce three main features of brand community. Thirdly, illustrate evolution of brand community model. Fourthly, case study, use case of Starbucks to explain the implications of brand community. Finally, conclusion and the prospect of research.
1 Demarcation of Brand community
1.1 Origin of Brand community
During the last few years, there is a trend that academic research on consumption activities moved away from considerations of individual to
Introduction
During the last fifteen years, there are many popular subjects: relationship marketing and brand building,etc.These hot subjects encourage interaction and speed up the incubation of new sources of disciplinary growth: Brand Relationship(the relationship between consumer and brand).In Brand Relationship theory sysytem,more scholars focus on the relationship between consumer and brand, but Muniz and O’Guinn(2001) did more research on the relationship among consumers, and put forward a new brand concept - Brand Community.
This concept comes from “consumption community”,which was first proposed by historian Daniel Boorstin(1974), ‘in the modern era of high mobility, people look not only to communality of consumption behavior but also to neighborhood as a basis for feelings of community.’ The same as consumption community, brand community is also initiative and drive of individuals’ co –operating at the beginning, after that, enterprise start to take advantage of the power of brand community to build brand loyalty and brand equity, therefore, brand community is becoming a new weapon of marketing.
In this essay, I make literature review surveys on scholarly articles, books relevant to brand community, providing a description, summary and critical evaluation of brand community. Firstly, discuss the origin and definition of brand community. Secondly, summary the research status and the dynamic natures of brand community which are different from consumption community, briefly introduce three main features of brand community. Thirdly, illustrate evolution of brand community model. Fourthly, case study, use case of Starbucks to explain the implications of brand community. Finally, conclusion and the prospect of research.
1 Demarcation of Brand community
1.1 Origin of Brand community
During the last few years, there is a trend that academic research on consumption activities moved away from considerations of individual to