Exploring Social Network Sites and Brand Communities in Marketing

This case study examines the evolving role of marketing through social network sites and brand communities, highlighting the shift from traditional advertising to digital engagement. It emphasizes the importance of brand communities in fostering long-term customer relationships and discusses the integration of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter in brand promotion, using Nike as a key example. The study reviews literature on brand communities, focusing on shared rituals, traditions, and moral responsibilities, while addressing challenges such as brand control. It also analyzes how brands like Apple and Harley-Davidson manage their communities, underscoring the need for strategies like pre-approval and customized templates to maintain brand integrity. The study concludes that social media significantly enhances brand community engagement and stresses the importance of brand control in managing communications and customer perceptions.

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Social Network Sites and Brand Communities

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Introduction
The criteria of marketing has expanded widely which helps sellers to reach their potential
customers by adopting the various techniques of marketing such as advertisements, banner,
posters etc. new media such as M-commerce, internet advertising, social networking sites has
replaced the traditional media as every marketer adopt this strategy to do promotion of their
products and services. The importance of brand community will be defined in the essay. A brand
community is formed according to a product or brand. There can be some issues in the
development of the marketing and the research in customer behaviour. It gives outcome in the
form of stressing to make the link between brand individual identity and culture. Brand
community helps to maintain the relationship between customers and company for the long
period. The issue will be selected for the brand and brand communities and a short literature
review will be accompanied with real world examples.
Brand communities
There are various brands available which attract people by providing efficient features, the
strength of brand communities around them became a major component in business research as
well as marketing. An interaction has developed with the development of the social media and
the internet technologies. Marketers are endeavouring to manage the customers’ engagement
and drivers for online brand community participation which may impact the intended goals of the
brand. Brand communities are aided to increase the customer engagement such as apple; coca-
cola, Nike, star bucks; BBC, Dell and many more that participate in group based collaborative
efforts. Brand communities are featured by sharing rituals, traditions and consciousness along
with the sense of moral responsibility. The members of the brand community can be

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distinguished into a collective identification to which they can recognize. Thus, brand
community work together as rituals and help one other at the time of need.
Brand communities embedded in social networks
It has been analyzed that brand communities are embedded with social media to spread the
attractiveness of the products and services about the brand to the customers so that they can
connect with it and but number of products and services from it. It will be helpful to enhance the
product promotion and generate the more revenues. Nike has provided platform to those who
want to play. From the beginning, the community of Nike has been the depth of who it is and
what it does. The unifying force of this community is connecting the power of sport. This brand
community is committed to provide the training to the kids who are good in sports.
Furthermore, the high value of brand communities is connected with the social networks. The
actual numbers of selected online social networks are inspiring. For instance, Facebook has more
than 500 million active users around the world in 2011(Facebook.com, 2011a), twitter has more
than 106 million users in 2010 with growing rate of members by 30,000 a day. The ratio of
active users in LinkedIn is more than 100 million members in over 200 countries (LinkedIn.com,
2011). There are other forms of computer reconciled communication. The role of social media is
huge in promoting the brand which leads the company in the higher position by increasing the
sales of the company. Nike uses Facebook pages to connect sports player with each other and
provide them the latest news about the news. The aim of the company of a Facebook page is “to
transmit huge information in an official and public manner to people who want to connect with
them”. It has been found that the group of Facebook is the space for people in whom they can

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share their views, opinions and ideas in that subject. Groups can be closed or opened; however,
users can create and participate in groups as per their desires.
Literature review
Brand communities are having specialization in customer communities and they are different
from traditional communities because of their different interest and enthusiasm of commercial
character and members (Albert, Merunka, & Valette-Florence, 2008). It has been evaluated that
there are three common markers that is consciousness of kind, shared rituals and tradition, and
moral responsibility. Consciousness of kind refers the observed membership of participants with
social identity theory (Zaglia, 2013). Shared rituals and traditions is the second Community
Market which helps to build their own meaning of the community experience. Along with that it
communicates the meaning of it to the broader range of member of community get to know
about the perspective of the brand. The role of moral responsibility in brand community is wide
as it completes the three community markers by providing the comfort ability to the users of
community to connect with each other morally (Jang, Olfman, Ko, Koh & Kim, 2008).
Consumers’ perception is the most important component of brand community as it helps to know
about the perception of them towards the products.
It has been analyzed that people join with brand community to get more knowledge about the
brand and discount on the products. Brand gets instant feedback about the brand from the
customer due to brand community. Marketers are facing various issues in selling their products
and services to the customers (De Valck, Van Bruggen & Wierenga, 2009). The major issue is
brand control which reduces the sales of the particular brand. It would be hard to organize a
communications campaign across all the sites of media in case of controlling the messages by

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marketer (Winer, 2009). The main concern is lacking of ability to control all the messages by
marketing manager (Albert, Merunka & Valette-Florence, 2008). It is necessary for the
marketing manager of Nike to control all kind of messages on the page of it. It has been analyzed
that one-way communication can be controlled because it is not possible for any brand to control
the entire communication of the customers. It has been found that more than 57000 coaches are
available through brand community of it to coach number of kids who has interest in sports
(Nike, n.d.).
There are different examples of brand community that facing the issue of brand control. The
brand community of Apple is effective as it makes the huge relationship with the customers.
New media do not allow the level of control. It has been analyzed that blogs and social
networking sites are entirely outside of the control of the marketing manager. Emphasizing social
and environmental connections brings Apple closer to the community. Harley owners group are
the second example of brand community which is operated by Harley Davidson that has more
than 1,000,000 members worldwide. It is symbolized by unique lifestyle and provides number of
benefits to its users. Brand control is necessary for this brand as it is considered as the grand
daddy of all community building efforts (Kapferer, 2017). It has been found that in the review
sections of this brand community, there are number of complaints of customer regarding bike
which decrease the impact of it on the viewers (Customer affairs, 2018).
As per Casaló, Flavián & Guinalíu, (2008), members of brand communities share the common
goals and set of values with each other, for instance, a specific type of language or sign within
the community. Sicilia & Palazón, (2008), stated that the members of brand community does not
each other and never see each other but they are connected with each other that is why it is
necessary to have the brand control. Brand control can be done by Pre-Approval over Post-

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Customization Approval, customized templates and brand asset organization. Fision, (n.d.).
defined that the library stores, manages, stores and organizes brand assets as per the business
rules, user permission, brand standards and expiration dates and make them sure that the current
assets which is presentable on brand community is available and users can only access those that
are most up to date.
It can be concluded that brand community is encouraged with the help of social media. There are
various brand communities that operates its communities to connect with customers so that they
can aware about the support activities of the company. It has been analyzed that people join the
brand community for getting discounts on their purchase of same brand and get aware about the
latest activities regarding the brand. Nike has the great potential to encourage the sports. It would
be hard to organize a communications campaign across all the sites of media in case of
controlling the messages by marketer. The issue of brand control has been discussed by taking of
various brand communities which shows that the importance of brand controls in various brands.

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References
1. Albert,Merunka, & Valette-Florence, (2008). When consumers love their brands:
Exploring the concept and its dimensions. Journal of Business Research, 61 (10) (2008),
pp. 1062-1075.
2. Albert, N., Merunka, D., & Valette-Florence, P. (2008). When consumers love their
brands: Exploring the concept and its dimensions. Journal of Business research, 61(10),
1062-1075.
3. Casaló, L. V., Flavián, C., & Guinalíu, M. (2008). Promoting consumer's participation in
virtual brand communities: A new paradigm in branding strategy. Journal of marketing
Communications, 14(1), 19-36.
4. Customeraffairs,(2018).Harly-Davidson. Retreived from:
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/harley_davidson.html.
5. De Valck, K., Van Bruggen, G. H., & Wierenga, B. (2009). Virtual communities: A
marketing perspective. Decision support systems, 47(3), 185-203.
6. Facebook.com, (2011). Statistics. Retrieved from: URL:
https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics.
7. Jang, H., Olfman, L., Ko, I., Koh, J., & Kim, K. (2008). The influence of on-line brand
community characteristics on community commitment and brand loyalty. International
Journal of Electronic Commerce, 12(3), 57-80.
8. Kapferer, J. N. (2017). Managing luxury brands. In Advances in Luxury Brand
Management (pp. 235-249). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
9. LinkedIn.com, (2011). Press Center, Retrieved from: http://press.linkedin.com.

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10. Nike, (n.d.). Community impact. Retrieved on 31st march, 2018, from,
https://communityimpact.nike.com/.
11. Winer, R. S. (2009). New Communications Approaches in Marketing: Issues and
12. Research Directions. Journal of Interactive Marketing 23 (2009) 108–117.
13. Zaglia, M. E. (2013). Brand communities embedded in social networks. Journal of
business research, 66(2), 216-223.

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Appendix
Figure 1: Nike’s brand community uses Facebook.
Figure 2: Apple Community

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