Community As Brand: An Exploratory Investigation

Abstract

This research investigates how community affects consumer marketing and brand equity management. Community is a ubiquitous concept with many definitions in social sciences, ranging from urban neighborhoods and small towns to brand communities. Firms utilize the power of brands to support premium prices, sustain product value in difficult circumstances, and persuade consumers to purchase a brand repeatedly and loyally. Brand scholarship has also ranged widely, from tangible product or service characteristics to the intangible influence of its symbols and meanings on consumers. This study describes how the complicated sets of meanings embedded in the terms community and brand lead to a phenomenon called naturally occurring brands (NOBs). The paper combines the anthropology, sociology and marketing perspectives to describe the NOB phenomenon and explores its validity using survey research.