Choice of Online Community for Data Collection: A Case Study on Lego Group's Support Communities

Running head: MARKETING
Marketing
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

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MARKETING
Table of Contents
Choice of online community......................................................................................................2
Process of data collection...........................................................................................................3
Findings......................................................................................................................................4
Discussion of the findings..........................................................................................................5
Reflection...................................................................................................................................7
Reference....................................................................................................................................9

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MARKETING
Choice of online community
The recent world provides opportunities for interaction between online communities,
brand and the customers involved as stakeholders. According to Hill and Brierley (2017),
members associated with an online community usually take part in sites that provide
opportunities for interaction with different customers along with the focused brand. Hence, a
brand can be considered so that it can be used for identifying any impact it may have on the
choices of the customers. For the research, the brand that has been selected is the Lego
Group, which is a toy manufacturing company headquartered in Denmark.
Lego Group is one of the reputed private toy manufacturing company that is famous
for developing plastic bricks that can be interlocked. Ole Kirk Christiansen founded the
company on 10th August 1932. The headquarters of the company is in Billund, Denmark with
42 offices consisting of over 19,000 employees (Lego.com 2019). Hence, the online
community selected for gaining access to the mindset about the customers about Lego Group
so that an opportunity can be found for the improvement of the brand is that of the support
communities. Agnihotri et al. (2016) are of the opinion that support communities have been
chosen as it provides product tips so that an improvement of the brand can take place for the
improvement of a brand.
The classification of online community brands can be made into four types with
unique characteristics that help in the interaction with customers as well as companies.
Zablah et al. (2016) is of the opinion that online community brands are the
1. Social communities
2. Support communities
3. Advocate communities

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MARKETING
4. Insight communities
For the case associated with the Lego Group, the support communities can be
implemented as the reason for its appropriateness is that as a company Lego Group has been
in operation for more than 100 years. Hence, it is essential to formulate new ideas that can be
made for the development of the Lego Group in order to meet the expectations attested on the
company by the customers.
Blut et al. (2015) are of the opinion that members associated with the support
communities get an opportunity to provide an opinion to customers about the purchase of
products that is to be made. It concerns the brands or the loyalty of the customers about a
brand. For Lego Group, the implementation of the members that can be associated with the
support communities can provide assistance to the company with ideas related to innovation
and the manner in which improvement can be made while manufacturing the toys. Along
with this the support communities also help organisations and brands to continue
implementing a systematic source required for gaining information related to the product and
service. According to Saeidi et al. (2015), more than 81% of companies seek the services
offered by the support communities so that they can gather relevant details that are associated
with the products and services.
In this regard, criteria can be maintained so that individuals can be associated with the
supportive community. Hence, proper criteria need to be identified based on which people
can be selected for being a part of the supportive communities. Han and Hyun (2015) are of
the opinion that the criteria involve people that have kids as well as people that work in
manufacturing sectors. Individuals possessing these criteria can provide companies with an
idea based on the quality of ideas that can be provided to the companies. Hence, every