"Brand Community Formation: A Critical Review "

Abstract

Brand communities have the potential to increase the loyalty of those consumers whoare members, to generate oppositional loyalty towards the brands of competitors and also toinfluence new product adoption behaviour. Moreover, this concept contributes to a betterunderstanding of the relationships between consumers and a specific brand and thus presents aninterest not only for marketing researchers, but also for brand managers. Starting with the 21stcentury, brand communities have been conceptualized and studied many times in the marketingliterature, which has explored both the positive and negative consequences of these consumptioncommunities. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the most important findings related to thismarketing topic. Therefore, the article begins with the review of the most relevant definitions givento brand communities which are then analysed. Secondly, there is a section dedicated to thecharacteristics and particularities associated with these consumer communities, which wereidentified by previous research. Subsequently, another section focuses upon the emergence processof such communities, the way they are constructed by customers and also upon the factors andsteps that allow the formation and organization of brand communities. Finally, some implicationsfor brand management are offered, as well as some directions for future research.