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Brand Community

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Submitted By DrAlex
Words 1614
Pages 7
Analysis of the paper:

“When totems beget clans: The brand symbol as the defining marker of brand communities.”

Student: Babel Alexey
Course: MBA (internal)
Subject: Marketing Management. Code: LB5202:03
Subject coordinator and lecturer: Dr. Breda McCarthy

April, 2015.

Introduction.

In the last decade, there has been a vast increase in the number of different varieties of brand communities. There is no doubt, that this aspect has an extremely significant influence on a modern marketing process and the whole business properly. As a consequence, to create the successful business, contemporary managers should bear in mind and take more activities towards brand community. It is a vital necessity to determinate and interact with this communities, because the concept of implementation brand community into the marketing process has a huge positive effect for every firm.
What is the brand community? There are many different surveys which give an explanation of the emergence of this fascinating phenomena, but all findings have a similar opinion, that brand communities are formed around “symbol”. As Greg Stratton and Jeremy Northcote (2014) mentioned, the brand community can be seen as a social category consisting of consumers who feel united by a common affiliation to brands (symbols). At the same time, social relations are not the key importance for this community, but a sense of the collaboration and collective interest around the brand always exists. Moreover, brand communities have powerful and attractive trends, different rituals, traditions and moral responsibilities (Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001). To put in another way, the brand is a core for interaction and defines the community, which consists as a group of people who share common values, experiences and practices. Interestingly, brand

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