Abstract
This book delves deeply into the budding and thrilling area of online brand communities. First, the initial topics that define the backdrop of online communities are introduced. Specifically, question about the evolution of the web, the foundation and pillars of the so-called Social Web, the use of the Social Web for users and businesses and the evolution of the marketing mind-set to adapt to the Social web will be presented, among other themes.
Once its backdrop is presented, we move on to deal with specific online brand communities in detail. The evolution of the concept of virtual communities will be looked at with special emphasis given to brand-related virtual communities. To this end, the trends related to branding and brand management will be analyzed. Next, a classification system for online brand communities will be created, establishing the main factors that motivate a person to join one; we will also elucidate and analyze the factors that increase appeal, participation and user retention. Then, the application of the process of creating value in a community, both from the point of view of business interest and from the point of view of the user is studied, analyzing the user’s new role as “prosumer”. Finally, the necessary steps and stages of the successful development of an online brand community are presented.
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Notes
- 1.
Involvment and participation of the user or consumer in the creation or modification of the product and/or Brand (Weber, 2007).
- 2.
Prosumer is a concept resulting from the union of the words producer and consumer. It aims to capture the new role of the participant consumer in online communities, which in many cases lead to active collaboration in the modification and creation of new products.
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Martínez-López, F.J., Anaya-Sánchez, R., Aguilar-Illescas, R., Molinillo, S. (2016). Introduction. In: Online Brand Communities. Progress in IS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24826-4_1
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