The impact of brand communities based on social media on purchase brand intention: conceptual framework

Abstract

Relationship marketing, which emphasizes the creation and maintenance of long-term relationships with customers instead of individual transactions, has been presented as a competitive advantage and a strategic resource for companies (Webster, 1992).Digital marketing is becoming more efficient to attract customers which are more and more connected. The creation of brand communities on social networks has a greater impact than traditional advertising. The digital technology has created the new interactive media. This new reality of the business environment has led a number to develop new practices to focus more on customers which are more powerful and can easily change their choices, for that, companies should develop their community marketing practices through the development. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the impact of the creation and development of brand communities-based on social media-on business performances, this virtual relationship between the consumer and the product, the brand, the company, and the different consumers, can lead to a strong commitment of the customers towards these brand communities, this commitment is eventually translated by brand purchase intentions. This research project is based on a theoretical research to extract the most important theories and constructs that explain brand community behavior on social media, and an exploratory study among Moroccan Internet users in order to test the conformity of the theoretical model with Moroccan Internet users. Through this research process, we prove that social media constitute a platform to engage more customers and consequently create purchase intentions for companies. As a result of this project, we highlight the practices to develop the companies’ brand communities on social media to drive business performance.