How virtual brand community traces may increase fan engagement in brand pages

doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2017.01.009

Business Horizons

Volume 60, Issue 3, May–June 2017, Pages 375-384

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2017.01.009 Get rights and content

Abstract

Brand pages in social media are a great way to foster consumer gathering around a brand, but it can be challenging to keep fans engaged and coming back to see updated content. Brands with millions of fans on Facebook have seen organic reach fall below 2% of their base. In this article, we describe how the creation of virtual brand communities can help brand managers increase fan engagement. We suggest the steps, conditions, advantages, and limitations involved in nurturing a brand page as an online social gathering that assumes some of the characteristics of a virtual brand community. The results of our study show that a brand page can have some of the characteristics of a virtual brand community—topical information exchange, identity communication, and establishment and internalization of cultural norms. We also show the importance of having celebrities among fans in order to foster social interactions and legitimate social practices on brand pages.

Section snippets

What are the benefits of communal brand pages?

In 2007, the first Facebook pages for brands, companies, movies, artists, and sports teams were created to give these institutions a new tool to create a two-way relationship with their consumers. In 2017, brand pages remain one of the tools that Facebook offers for companies to reach current and potential customers and to promote their products and services. Originally named fan pages, brand pages are a platform that allow the brand to be present, to create a community around its users, and to

Engagement on virtual brand communities

The study of engagement in virtual environments is contextually, theoretically, and pragmatically relevant because the relationship/contact of individuals with brands is more and more located in virtual environments such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Amazon, or Netflix (van Doorn et al., 2010) and because the longtime benefits of customer engagement with companies, online or offline, have been amply discussed (e.g., Kumar, Petersen, & Leone, 2010).

Engagement in virtual brand

Influencers in virtual brand communities

Fans do not participate equally in virtual communities (Kozinets, 2002). Kozinets (1999) suggested categorizing individuals in online communities into four groups based on levels of attachment to the community and to the topic of the community. These four levels are:

1.
Tourists: those who do not have strong ties to the community or the topic;
2.
Minglers: those who develop strong ties to the community but not the topic;
3.
Insiders: those who have strong ties both to the community and to the topic; and
4.

Brand page study: Budweiser, Jack Daniel’s, and Nike Run

To investigate the extent to which there can be a process for building more communal brand pages and if more communal brand pages contribute to fans engagement, we considered the characteristics for an online environment to become an online community proposed by Kozinets (1999) as the main focus of analysis. We searched for processes underlying community building and for the advantages the brands had from the communal traces. We studied brand pages in Brazil for Jack Daniel’s, Nike Run, and

Effective practices to transform your brand page

As we see, the main challenge for a brand page to increase fan engagement is, first, to reach them and, second, to increase participation of fans in the environment and personalize its impersonal nature. Fans, even those who frequently use the brand page to express their identities and to obtain information on topics of interest, stay in the brand page virtual space for only a few moments amid the multiple tasks that they perform online or offline. Considering that in an online community, “the

Final thoughts and future research

The key benefits of communal brand pages go beyond an increased level of fan engagement and the relevance of the brand page content for the fan. As fans engage with brand content amid interactions with other fans and celebrities, they validate brand messages and co-create brand meanings in these interactions. This reinforces brand positioning. Fans who use the content of the page for self-expressive practices may actively or passively (i.e., through the Facebook algorithm) interact with brand

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How virtual brand community traces may increase fan engagement in brand pages

Abstract

Section snippets

What are the benefits of communal brand pages?

Engagement on virtual brand communities

Influencers in virtual brand communities

Brand page study: Budweiser, Jack Daniel’s, and Nike Run

Effective practices to transform your brand page

Final thoughts and future research

Journal of Business Research

Journal of Interactive Marketing

Business Horizons

Journal of Interactive Marketing

Journal of Interactive Marketing

European Management Journal

Journal of Business Research

Business Horizons

Journal of Interactive Marketing

Journal of Interactive Marketing

The potential of consumer publics

Ephemera

Brand public

Journal of Consumer Research

Promoting consumers’ participation in virtual brand communities: A new paradigm in branding strategy

Journal of Marketing Communications

Community and consumption: Towards a definition of the linking value of products and services

European Journal of Marketing

We do not live to buy: Why subcultures are different from brand communities and the meaning for marketing discourse

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy