Antecedents and purchase consequences of customer participation in small group brand communities

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Abstract

This paper investigates behavior and determinants of the behavior of small group brand community participants. A small group brand community is a friendship group of consumers with a shared enthusiasm for the brand and a well-developed social identity, whose members engage jointly in group actions to accomplish collective goals and/or to express mutual sentiments and commitments. Group activities centered on the brand intermingle with other social activities in these brand communities. A comprehensive model is proposed based on a broadening and deepening of the theory of planned behavior to incorporate social intentions, three aspects of social identity (cognitive self-awareness of membership in the brand community, affective commitment, and evaluative significance of membership), anticipated positive and negative emotions toward achieving or failing to achieve group participation goals, and desire as a transformative mechanism translating reasons for acting into social intentions to do so. The proposed theoretical framework is tested on a sample of 154 members of Harley-Davidson Motorcycle small group brand communities and another sample of 255 members of motorcycle riding groups not organized around specific brands.

Introduction

“The small group tends to restore, structurally, the symbolic power. Step by step, one can see a mystical network being built, carefully yet solidly connected, leading one to speak of a cultural resurgence in social life. This is the lesson taught by these eras of the masses—eras based mainly on the concatenation of groups with splintered but exacting intentionalities” (Maffesoli, 1996, p. 83, emphasis added).

Amidst the increasing media clutter and growing resistance of consumers to traditional marketing programs, marketers' interest in novel means of engaging consumers continues to grow. One approach that has received attention recently is that of organizing and nurturing brand communities of customers (Algesheimer et al., 2005, McAlexander et al., 2002, Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001). Brand communities are defined as “specialized, non-geographically bound communit(ies), based on a structured set of social relationships among admirers of a brand”. Examples of successful brand communities include the Harley-Davidson Motorcycles' Harley Owners Groups (HOGs), Apple Computer's MacIntosh user groups (e.g., Belk & Tumbat, 2002), Volkswagen drivers (Brown, Kozinets, & Sherry, 2003) and Sun Micosystems' Java center community (Williams & Cothrel, 2000).

To many marketers, brand community building appears as an effective marketing program for at least two reasons. First, brand communities are not subject to many of the problems increasingly associated with traditional marketing approaches such as fragmentation of media and the accompanying clutter faced by mass advertising campaigns, and the resistance of consumers to receiving marketing communications faced by direct marketing campaigns. In contrast, brand communities are venues where intense brand loyalty is expressed and fostered, and emotional connections with the brand forged in customers. Second, brand communities coincide with the increasingly popular movement of ‘consumer empowerment’ (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000) which encourages firms to treat their customers as partners, cede control over information gathering and decision making to them to a significant degree, and ‘co-opt’ their competence in ways that are mutually beneficial and profitable. Underlying the prevalent views of the effectiveness of brand communities is the assumption that forming relationships with other like-minded consumers who share one's interest in the brand will be credible and impactful in persuading and bonding customers to the brand, leading them to make more purchase behaviors and be more loyal.

While recent marketing studies of brand communities (Algesheimer et al., 2005, Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001, McAlexander et al., 2002) have provided some support for this assumption, what is missing from these extant analyses is a detailed understanding of the social and psychological variables that lead a firm's customers to participate in collective action within the brand communities. Furthermore, these studies have also not distinguished clearly between brand communities that are mainly comprised of small friendship groups and other types of community influences on consumers such as those from sub-cultures (e.g., Schouten & McAlexander, 1995) and networks (e.g., Muniz & O'Guinn, 2001).

Our goals in this research are to address these issues. In particular, we elaborate on the concept of small group brand communities using the example of Harley-Davidson's HOG members to do so. We then investigate the social and psychological antecedents of group- and brand-related behaviors of two consumer communities, small group brand communities organized around the Harley-Davidson brand and a comparison group of motorcycle riders not organized around any particular brand. Our analyses provide an in-depth conceptualization of the variables leading to collective customer behaviors in small group brand communities.

Section snippets

The concept of small group brand community

In the published research, Harley-Davidson's HOGs are advanced as the prototypical example of a brand community (e.g., Fournier et al., 2000, Schouten and McAlexander, 1995, Yates, 1999). It is worth noting that even though HOG chapters are organized by geography and often comprise hundreds of registered members, for most active members, a majority of the social interactions occur with a small group of friends. We call these, small group brand communities, which are comprised of clusters of

Theoretical framework and research hypotheses

In this research, we attempt to develop an in-depth understanding of the social and psychological processes that lead small group brand communities to influence consumers and encourage collective participation. To do so, we begin with a discussion of a well-known approach in social psychology: the theory of planned behavior (TPB, Ajzen, 1991). The TPB is frequently employed in contemporary research and has been used successfully in hundreds of applied studies (e.g., Armitage and Conner, 2001,

Participants and procedures (Harley group)

Extensive interviews were conducted with three members of a local HOG chapter, including one member active with leadership and administrative tasks, one highly involved as a participant, and one low to moderately involved. Notes taken from these interviews were used to adapt existing scales and to develop new items for the questionnaire. We re-contacted the first two members on a number of occasions to clarify issues and get feedback. The interviewees also gave feedback on an early draft of the

General discussion

The findings indicate that customer participation in collective activities within small group brand communities can be explained by a combination of social and psychological variables. One of these variables captures an aspect of shared volition of group members and was termed ‘social intentions’. We argued that social intentions have hitherto been accorded relatively little attention by marketers, but are important for a variety of consumer behaviors, being particularly useful for

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Ann Arbor HOG Chapter, John Lonskey, Janet Nightingale, and Bill “Jarhead” Strebel and Rick “Rickster” Perry of the Southern Cruisers Riding Club, and the many anonymous motorcycle enthusiasts who participated in this study. When this paper was written Richard P. Bagozzi was both part-time, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff, Wales, and full-time at the Jesse H. Jones School of Management, Rice University.

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