Online Brand Community

The research of community became broader with the trend of modernity, market capitalism, and consumer culture (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001). Mechanical advancement as well as scientific and technological progress driven by modernization make community more than a place. Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) emphasized that communities are not restricted by geography any more. It was described as a place at the first, just like rural. Nevertheless, the thought of community breakthrough those limitation and ran over into a much broader field of meaning. Thanks to new communication technologies’ ability, geographically dispersed individuals are brought together with a

Element Explanation

Membership To feel a sense of belonging or to share a sense of personal relatedness.

Influence One is mattering to make a difference to a group and the group is important for its members Integration and

Fulfillment of needs

Members can meet their needs by receiving resources through the membership in a group.

Shared Emotional Connection

Members have the commitment and belief to share the common places and time together, and much the same experiences.

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commonality of purpose and identity (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001).

In the consumer behavior area, a periodic community in a farmer’s market has been recorded by McGrath, Sherry, and Heisley (1993). They argued that the members in consumption communities considered some consumer experiences and behaviors as contents and issues in the community, and deemed it as a part of the traditions of the community. For instance, collective purchase (McGrath, Sherry, and Heisley, 1993).

Schouten and McAlexander (1995) proposed the concept of "subculture". The Harley Davidson riders share the connection between each other, it play an important role of making them understand more about the brand. Further, the understanding become a real life style they called subculture (Schouten and McAlexander, 1995).

Consumers have shared common interest, values and behaviors in sub groups where they engaged in. As a consequence, these groups bring about a high degree of commitment to a particular product or brand and we can find their subculture in the products they deal with. Their own social structure and core values involve to all facets of their lives. The members' commitment and the product or activities maintain their subculture and bring them together (Schouten and McAlexander, 1995).

Based on Schouten and McAlexander(1995), the concept of a community built specifically around brands has been introduced by Muniz and O’Guinn (2001). A brand community is a bound community that is specialized and non-geographically, consisted with admirers of a brand and based on a set of social relationships(Muniz and O’Guinn 2001). It's possible to form a community like this around any brand, especially a brand which has a strong image, a abounding and lengthy history. Furthermore, threatening competition. Because of the omnipresent essence of brands, this kind of communities

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may go beyond geography and may include numerous consumer members. The commitment to both the brand and the group make these social groups quite stable.

They would be commercial and provided with a mass-media sensibility (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001).

After observed the communities of computers and cars, three core components of brand community identified by Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) as following:

(1) Consciousness of Kind:

Members in brand communities feel that they have links with the brand.

However, they think that the connection among other members is more stronger.

Members think that they somehow know each other even though they have never met. As Cova's (1997) argument that “the link is more important than the thing.”

Consciousness of Kind is also represents the intrinsic link between members and drive them distinguish themselves from users of other brands. Below are two elements compose Consciousness of Kind:

Legitimacy: Legitimacy is a process to differentiate whether a person as a true member of the community and those who are not. Brand communities do not reject membership as a open social organizations, but they have status

hierarchies just like most communities. And that, distinguish between true believer and a passing-fad members is a common issue for the members in the brand community.

Oppositional Brand Loyalty: It's also a social process to sustain consciousness of kind. Members in brand community place importance on social experiences and gain understanding of the meaning of the brand through opposition to competing brands.

(2) Rituals and Traditions:

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Rituals and traditions indicate important social processes in brand community which go around the shared consumption experience with the brand. These brand community rituals and traditions created in order to maintain the culture of the community.

Celebrating the History of the Brand: It's important for brand community to transmit the history of brand to members, for the purpose of strengthening the value of community. It's also can encourage the similarity between members.

Sharing Brand Stories: Storytelling facilitate to maintain a community. An organization use legend to create different impressions and strengthen the consciousness of kind. Members in the community feel safety after they recognize that there are many like-minded others. Text and symbols are vital elements representing the culture of a group (Gusfield, 1978). The product and logo of the brand , not only contemporary and classic, but also images and text from advertisements, are text and symbols in brand community (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001).

(3) Moral Responsibility:

Members have a sense of duty to the entire community, and to every single members of the community. Sense of moral responsibility push ahead the community cohesive and bring collective actions. Two important errands to execute in brand community:

Integrating and Retaining Members: To ensure the sustainable operation and development of the community, keep old members stay and arrange for making new members fit in to the community is very important. Through integrating and retaining Members, loyalty to the community and the brand will be perpetuating.

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Assisting in the Use of the Brand: Members call for or help other members in the consumption of the brand. They do this without consideration and originate in the sense of responsibility.

The components above-mentioned are proposed by Muniz and O'Guinn(2001), and they defined brand community as a community established at the base of "product" or

"service" of a brand. It has not only the three core component that possessed by other general community, but also a social structure of relationship formed by a group of people who advocate the brand, which is specific and non-geographic restriction.

Therefore, the members in brand community can persistently and widely effect the ideas and acts of the brand community (Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001). Moreover, spreading knowledge (Brown et al, 2003), knowing other customers' evaluation of products, increasing opportunities for customers to participate in activities and cooperating with highly loyal customers (Franke and Shah, 2003).

2.1.3 Brand Community Identification

The process that individuals categorize themselves into a particular social group is called identification, and it helps themselves recognize that they are special and distinct from others (Bhattacharya and Sen, 2003).

Relate to intergroup relations, group processes, and the social self, social identity theory is a social psychological theory (Hogg et al. 1995). An individual is psychologically aware of a linkage between himself or herself and the group, and sharing the experience of the group through the formation of a social identity. Social identification helps people to answer the question, “Who am I?” (Ashforth and Mael

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1989).

Organizational identification, a specific form of social identification that defined as an individual's perception of belongingness to an organization (Mael and Ashforth 1992). It's also referred to as a critical component that binding individuals to an organization. Mael and Ashforth (1992) have demonstrated that a persons' identification to an organization can not only cause increased support of the organization, but participation in it. Organizational identification lead to increased intention of purchasing products or brands (Aaker 1999) and raise the receptivity and effectiveness of advertising (Wheeler et al. 2005); and further, it reduce the turnover rate of employee (O’Reilly and Chatman 1986), increase customer citizenship behaviors and market share (Ahearne et al. 2005). Seeing that organizational identification leads to positive firm outcomes, constituents' strong identification with the organization become a marketer's goal (Fombelle, Paul W.; Jarvis, Cheryl Burke; Ward, James, 2012). In other words, Due to much benefit come from organizational identification, the researchers figured out factors that can increase an individual’s organizational identification, such like organizational distinctiveness, organizational prestige, tenure and satisfaction in the organization, and the visibility of the membership (Algesheimer et al. 2005; Bhattacharya et al. 1995). Marketers want to encourage constituents to strongly identify with their organizations, because organizational identification contributes to positive firm outcomes.

Algesheimer, Dholakia and Herrmann (2005) describe "brand community identification" as the strength of the relationship between consumers and the community. This relationship between consumers and the community affects the identification which can bring about engagement and perceptions of normative pressure

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and resistance. Finally, lead to various community- and brand-related behaviors.

Consumers consider himself or herself to be a member who "belonging" to the brand community, which is characterized as "brand community identification". This kind of identification is a shared or collective identity and make an individual unique and separate. Algesheimer et al. (2005) defined social identity as the cognitive and affective component (Bagozzi and Bergami, 2000) involved in a valued group such like brand community. With regard to the cognitive component, the brand community identification is related to categorization processes which is a self-awareness of membership formulated and maintains by consumers in the community. Such like "I see myself as part of the community", presents the similarities with other members and the dissimilarities with nonmembers more clearly. The concept is just like the consciousness-of-kind aspect of brand communities (Muniz and O'Guinn 2001). The identification regarding the affective component implies a sense of emotional involvement with the group, which is described as an "affective commitment" to the group (Ellemers, Kortekaas, and Ouwerkerk 1999). The researchers of brand community characterized it as "kinship between members" (McAlexander, Schouten, and Koenig 2002). In short, identification indicates that the consumer agrees with the community's norms, traditions, rituals, and objectives (Bhattacharya, Rao, and Glynn 1995).