Brand Fans | springerprofessional.de

Springer Professional

nach oben

2017 | Buch

Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

Brand Fans

Lessons from the World's Greatest Sporting Brands

verfasst von: Aaron C.T. Smith, Constantino Stavros, Kate Westberg

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Einloggen, um Zugang zu erhalten

Über dieses Buch

Combining the latest branding research with a diverse range of powerful case examples, this book reveals the cutting edge techniques of value co-creation, personalisation and customer engagement employed by sport’s leading brands. Based on the transferable lessons that emanate from these practices, Brand Fans explores and illuminates how firms can cultivate connected fans and lifelong advocates, while building brand equity exponentially in the process. This is a book that will appeal to scholars and practitioners alike, as well as anyone fascinated by modern marketing, consumer relationships and branding.

Anzeige

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

1. Introduction: Crowdsourcing Brand Equity

Abstract

This chapter introduces how Brand Fans addresses the agile and novel methods that the world’s greatest sporting brands have used to cultivate unprecedented brand value. The chapter presents how the best sporting enterprises have co-created staggering economic, social, and symbolic value through intense partnerships with their consumers that go far beyond what brands can develop through traditional approaches to marketing and communication. It specifies how the insights from these brands will be presented through three themes in the forthcoming chapters, the first focussing on the co-creation of value, the second on approaching brands as clubs of exclusive belonging, and the third on the powerful channels through which connections and identification can be canalised.

Aaron C. T. Smith, Constantino Stavros, Kate Westberg

2. Pitch Partners: Customers as Players and Collaborators

Abstract

This chapter delivers the first lesson—that consumer attachment, passion, commitment, and loyalty are synergistic with interaction, engagement, connectivity, and collaboration. The chapter focuses on how great sport brands construct dynamic, agile offerings that have the effect of transforming consumers into lifelong fans. It explains that this impact emerges from a commitment to interactivity, where fans and brands co-create consumption experiences. Value co-creation occurs because consumers feel sufficiently connected with their team or sport that they strive to interact with the brand as well as with like-minded fans. Attachment and passion grows commensurate with the contributions made. As a result, consumers convert themselves volitionally from sideline supporters to engaged co-creators of the brand’s identity and, therefore, its offerings.

Aaron C. T. Smith, Constantino Stavros, Kate Westberg

3. Unlimited Users: The Rise of Consumer-Generated Content

Abstract

This chapter delivers the second lesson, that consumers and brands co-create valuable consumption experiences, effectively crowdsourcing brand equity. The chapter begins with a revised perspective of both brand manager and consumer. In respect to the former, brands need “hosts”, not custodians. In respect to the latter, the new consumer is empowered, defined not just by his or her transaction, but also by a market effect. Brand fans seek interaction, involvement, and engagement with the brand, its products, and other fans. This chapter reveals how sport has managed the tensions between control and collaboration, in the process, providing a template for value co-creation in a world where user content shapes brand composition. It shows how sport brands became the first to successfully crowdsource brand equity.

Aaron C. T. Smith, Constantino Stavros, Kate Westberg

4. Connected Communities: Icons and Tribalism

Abstract

This chapter delivers the third lesson that consumers and brands become identity-entangled through communities built upon ritualistic, tribal practices. The chapter takes the engaged, co-creating brand fan a step further. It explains how individuals and brands become intertwined through communities built upon ritualistic, tribal practices. Fan communities endure because they merge the iconic identities of sport brands with the vicarious appetites of sport followers. Solidified in tribal symbolism and psychological meaning, fan communities reveal how value co-creation can assume an existential significance that goes far beyond a linear brand proposition. We show how the mature communication networks that have evolved around intersecting communities hold valuable lessons for all kinds of brands seeking improved identification.

Aaron C. T. Smith, Constantino Stavros, Kate Westberg

5. Passionate Partisans: Lifelong Loyalty

Abstract

This chapter delivers the fourth lesson that at the intersection of brands and consumption, and between social acceptance and exclusivity, sport brands create consumption experiences with brand fans that linger as immortal moments of immense value. The chapter examines how sport brands have nurtured new levels of consumer loyalty. It exposes sport’s unique methods for crafting a lifelong link between product and consumption. At the intersection, we find an unprecedented intensity of passion that extends further than conventional product loyalty, holds resilient in the face of product failure, and engenders uncompromising personal commitment. Somewhere between social acceptance and exclusivity, sport brands create consumption experiences with brand fans that linger as immortal moments.

Aaron C. T. Smith, Constantino Stavros, Kate Westberg

6. Dynamic Data: Branding the Digital Drive

Abstract

This chapter delivers the fifth lesson that brand power accumulates when it is given away, with consumer-generated content as a central mediator of brand intensity, carefully mediated through data analytics designed to craft bespoke consumer experiences. The chapter ventures into the vast world of dynamic data, and its potential for enhancing the consumer experience. Through the use of “superdata”, sport brands address their consumers’ preferences with an unprecedented degree of surgical precision. In removing the data noise, sport enterprises have discovered an ability to make real-time branding decisions, often including those enabling consumers to fluidly control their own content. Sport recognises that the best brands incorporate digital destinations as part of their value propositions.

Aaron C. T. Smith, Constantino Stavros, Kate Westberg

7. Enhanced Experiences: Enlisting the Fanatic

Abstract

This chapter delivers the sixth lesson, where sporting brands have relentlessly augmented consumers’ experiences by treating its products as a whole entity in a process of social “curation”, a trail of brand fans follows. The chapter delves deeper into the potential for augmenting consumers’ experiences in order to create more meaningful connections. A central lesson revolves around modularised branding, which employs the fluid mobility digital delivery affords, in order to meet the specialised nuances of consumer preferences. Mobile channels also bolster consumers’ experiences through personalised content. The chapter emphasises that a brand must manage its social hub, as a whole entity, in a process of social “curation”, keeping in mind the consumer “conscience”.

Aaron C. T. Smith, Constantino Stavros, Kate Westberg

8. Conclusion: Future Brand Fans

Abstract

This chapter concludes that in the presence of an imminent and exponential technological convergence, passive consumption will become dynamic engagement, and brands will face the prospect that there will be no single way of structuring value. With the arrival of the “postmobile consumer”, every ‘thing’ has a sensor connection, and everything is online. One outcome is the emergence of a new category of consumer, the “brand epicurean”, characterised by neither functional requirements nor the need for identity. Brands will face the prospect that there will be no single way of structuring value as it will shift sinuously, matching an individual’s temporal and contextual needs. As consumers become further overburdened with options, marketers will have to invent new ways to become central to consumers’ purchasing habits.

Aaron C. T. Smith, Constantino Stavros, Kate Westberg

Backmatter

Titel: Brand Fans
verfasst von: Aaron C.T. Smith
Constantino Stavros
Kate Westberg
Copyright-Jahr: 2017
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-48854-7
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48853-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48854-7