1. business and industrial
2. advertising and marketing
3. marketing

Department of Business Administration,
School of Business and Social Sciences
Aarhus University
The Governance of Brand Communities in the
Social Media
The impact of different governance models on brand community related constructs
Master Thesis
Master of Science in Innovation Management
Total number of characters: 105,973
Author: Spyridon Papamichail
Academic Supervisor: Dr. Sladjana Nørskov
March 2015
ABSTRACT
Brand communities are becoming more and more relevant in marketing and management research. The
advancement of the internet technologies along with the development of social media are supporting a
shift towards customer-customer interaction with marketing practitioners and researchers trying to
study the surfacing of a great number of new notions such as brand community engagement and brand
community commitment, constructs that have direct outcomes to their respective brands.
Communities formed under brands drive brands’ success (or failure for that matter) and thus, forming
or aiding at the formation and governance of a healthy brand community can have a variety of benefits.
In this spirit, this paper aims to study the governance of brand communities formed in the social media,
and its effect on already established constructs and relationships proven to have a direct impact on
brand related constructs, e.g. the relationship between brand community identification and brand
community engagement.
By studying brand community and related literature from other streams and forming an experimental
study consisting of a quantitative analysis of an online survey, research will aim to provide valuable
input regarding the ideal governance configurations in order to maximize the benefits that brand
communities can provide.
Keywords: Brand, community, governance, social media, organic, synthetic, engagement, commitment,
identification, behavioral intentions.
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Table of Contents
1.
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................ 5
2.
Literature Review ................................................................................................................................................................. 6
3.
4.
2.1.
Brand Community....................................................................................................................................................... 6
2.2.
Brand communities in the social media ......................................................................................................... 19
2.3.
Governance ................................................................................................................................................................. 23
2.4.
Governance in OSS projects ................................................................................................................................. 24
Conceptual Framework ................................................................................................................................................... 30
3.1.
Problem Statement.................................................................................................................................................. 31
3.2.
Brand Community Identification (BCI) ........................................................................................................... 31
3.3.
Brand Community Engagement (BCE)............................................................................................................ 32
3.4.
Brand Community Commitment (BCC) .......................................................................................................... 34
3.5.
Members’ behavioral intentions ........................................................................................................................ 34
3.6.
Brand outcomes........................................................................................................................................................ 35
Methodology ........................................................................................................................................................................ 35
4.1.
Ontology and epistemology ................................................................................................................................. 35
4.2.
Research Setting ....................................................................................................................................................... 36
4.2.1.
Facebook groups............................................................................................................................................. 36
4.2.2.
Group Descriptions ........................................................................................................................................ 37
4.2.3.
Describing the Open/Closed models ...................................................................................................... 38
4.2.4.
Describing the Organic/Synthetic models ........................................................................................... 40
4.3.
5.
Questionnaire items ................................................................................................................................................ 40
4.3.1.
Brand Community items ............................................................................................................................. 41
4.3.2.
Demographics .................................................................................................................................................. 41
Analysis .................................................................................................................................................................................. 42
5.1.
Sample characteristics ........................................................................................................................................... 42
5.2.
Descriptive statistics .............................................................................................................................................. 43
2
5.2.1.
6.
Distribution....................................................................................................................................................... 43
5.3.
Construct internal consistency........................................................................................................................... 44
5.4.
Model Estimation ..................................................................................................................................................... 45
Discussion ............................................................................................................................................................................. 47
6.1.
Theoretical and Managerial Implications ...................................................................................................... 47
6.2.
Limitations and future research ........................................................................................................................ 49
7.
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................ 50
8.
References ............................................................................................................................................................................ 53
9.
Appendices ........................................................................................................................................................................... 58
Appendix 1. ............................................................................................................................................................................... 58
Appendix 2. ............................................................................................................................................................................... 60
3
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 1. Direct, indirect and total effects of consumer-company and consumer-community identification
on attitudinal brand loyalty (Marzocchi et al. 2013).................................................................................................... 19
Table 2. Two types of ideal Governance configurations (Laat, 2007) ................................................................... 26
Table 3. Open Source Project Governance Configurations (Di Tullio and Staples, 2013) ............................. 28
Table 4. Privacy settings of Facebook groups (2014) .................................................................................................. 38
Table 5. Number of participants per group ...................................................................................................................... 42
Table 6. Sample demographics .............................................................................................................................................. 43
Table 7. Sample characteristics per group........................................................................................................................ 44
Table 8. Construct reliability .................................................................................................................................................. 44
Table 9. Construct means and standard deviations for each group ....................................................................... 46
Table 10. Paths and group comparisons............................................................................................................................ 48
Figure 1. Traditional model of Customer-Brand relationship ..................................................................................... 9
Figure 2. Brand Community triad (Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001) ................................................................................... 9
Figure 3. Customer-centric model of Brand Community (McAlexander et al., 2002) ....................................... 9
Figure 4. Brand Community Integration, Satisfaction and Loyalty (McAlexander et al., 2003) ................. 10
Figure 5. Ding et al. (2014) research model ..................................................................................................................... 22
Figure 6. Cognitive model of community governance.................................................................................................. 24
Figure 7. OS Governance matrix model (De Noni et al., 2013) ................................................................................. 27
Figure 8. Conceptual model .................................................................................................................................................... 30
4
1.
Introduction
Brands are literally everywhere; most of the products we use in our everyday life are branded. Brands
add meaning to products and services, additional to their use and performance. They function as a
distinguishing characteristic between similar products and services, adding a personal and at times
sentimental value to them.
In a similar way, communities are also everywhere; people form communities around many of their
everyday activities and in more than one way. We are members of geographic communities, and a
number of communities formed around our jobs, interests, consumption habits etc. This way,
communities serve as a means of creating a personal identity, a process which is interconnected with
other people that share a number of common characteristics.
Communities that are formed around brands are the main interest of this paper. Since Muniz and O'
Guinn (2001) gave the definition of a brand community as “a specialized, non-geographically bound
community, based on a structured set of social relationships among admirers of a brand”, literature has
gone a long way in exploring brand communities as a phenomenon. While they still represent a relatively
fresh and under-explored notion, research has provided with useful information and insights in what
seems to be a widespread and influential force in modern business.
Brand communities have been present much earlier than the definition appeared; it can be argued that
they have been around since the development of the first brands. Consumers of products, who developed
social relationships between other consumers due to the abovementioned products, have always been
forming brand communities. Admirers of brands, from mobile phones to fast-foods and from skin care
products to music bands, are forming brand communities in order to interact, provide and receive
technical support, express opinions and magnify their experiences with the brand as well as the
community itself.
Studying the way brand communities function is a highly relevant subject; brand managers are already
embracing brand communities and base their marketing strategies on feedback and support they receive
from community members. Relationships between brand community-relevant constructs are driving
brand management and justifiably enough; the evolution of the internet especially with the introduction
and advance of social media, has made community support more and more important. Moreover, user
generated content and innovations are becoming a trend; customers are modifying products and are
collaborating between them as well as with the companies in new product development. Community
5
members are becoming brand evangelists, product support is becoming customer-customer relevant
and a number of great stories are told.
But how should the brand communities be governed? While the use of the term “governance” brings in
mind notions far from the voluntary aspect of brand communities, the way in which rules and
regulations are formed and communicated is a vital aspect for the longevity and wellbeing of a
community. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the different governance configurations that can
take part in a brand community. Starting from one basic element, the initiation party of the community
(i.e. brand initiated vs. customer initiated) and proceeding with more detailed configurational items
such as leadership and modularization, the scope of this study is to provide relevant insights in a branch
of brand management that is probably less studied than its importance dictates.
This paper will be organized into seven chapters. After the introduction, a thorough literature review
will be presented to the reader, in order to accomplish a baseline point of reference regarding the state
of the art in the notions researched. The third chapter will present the conceptual framework, including
the constructs that will be studied and the relationships formed between them. The fourth chapter will
feature a detailed description of the methodology, followed by the fifth chapter in which the statistical
analysis of the data will take place. The sixth chapter of the paper will present the discussion on the
outcome of the research including the implications, limitations and proposals for future research,
followed by the conclusion on the seventh and final chapter of the paper.
2.
Literature Review
This section will present the existing literature in the subject of brand communities. The most relevant
literature will be presented in a timeline fashion; from Muniz and O’Guinn’s 2001 article, which has
become a landmark in the subject area for introducing the term of a brand community and its most
important characteristics, to the latest articles pointing to online brand communities and social media.
2.1.
Brand Community
Muniz and O’Guinn were the first to capture the meaning of a brand community. Their 2001 paper titled
“Brand community”, they present the notion of a brand community as a distinct entity in the context of
consumption. According to their definition, a brand community is a “specialized, non-geographically
bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand” (Muniz and
O’Guinn, 2001).
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What they manage to do with this article is of great importance. Except from introducing an area of study
that will prove to be a very relevant for a number of research areas, they introduce a new model to the
old customer-brand relationship, namely the customer-brand- customer triad. In this model, the
interactions between consumers are playing a vital part in marketing, overriding the traditional model
of brand-consumer which had been the traditional model of branding in the past. As they point out, “The
brand communities are social entities that reflect the situated embeddedness of brands in the day-today lives of consumers and the ways in which brands connect consumer to brand, and consumer to
consumer.”
To support their definition they go on examining a number of brand enthusiast groups, in order to
establish that the three markers of community are indeed present in what they refer to as brand
communities, adding that “Each of these qualities is, however, situated within a commercial and massmediated ethos, and has its own particular expression”. Thus, in order for brand communities to exist,
all three markers should be present to some extent:
a.
Consciousness of kind, which represents the perceived idea of similarity between community
members, under characteristics not commonly shared by non-members of the community; a shared
sense of mutual belonging, a “shared consciousness, a way of thinking about things that is more than
shared attitudes or perceived similarity. It is a shared knowing of belonging (Weber [1922] 1978).”
b.
Presence of shared rituals and traditions, which refers to the rules, regulations, procedures, jargon,
even myths and notions that are commonly shared by community members. According to Muniz and
O'Guinn, “Rituals and traditions perpetuate the community’s shared history, culture, and
consciousness. Rituals “serve to contain the drift of meanings; . . . [they] are conventions that set up
visible public definitions” (Douglas and Ishwerwood 1979, p. 65) and social solidarity (Durkheim
[1915] 1965). Traditions are sets of “social practices which seek to celebrate and inculcate certain
behavioral norms and values” (Marshall 1994, p. 537)”;
c.
Sense of moral responsibility, representing the motivation to co-operate, support, and offer services
to each other inside the community. “This sense of moral responsibility is what produces, in times of
threat to the community, collective action.” (Muniz and O'Guinn 2001).
Another very important element of their work is the distinction between brand communities and other
similar groups of brand enthusiasts, such as subcultures (Harley Davidson fans) and marginal
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subcultures (punk-rockers), as well as distinguishing their work to the literature that exists in neotribalism: “Brand communities can be relatively stable groupings, with relatively strong (but rarely
extreme) degrees of commitment. Their moral responsibility may be a limited and subtle one, but it is a
nontrivial one (Maffesoli 1996)” (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001)
Muniz and O’Guinn also point out that while brand communities can be formed around any brand “they
are probably most likely to form around brands with a strong image, a rich and lengthy history, and
threatening competition. Also, things that are publicly consumed may stand a better chance of producing
communities than those consumed in private”.
McAlexander at al. (2002) go on to develop the customer-brand-customer triad even more by expanding
it to “entities and relationships neglected by previous research”. As Ouwersloot and Odekerken (2007)
point out, McAlexander et al.'s (2002) study can be considered a milestone for approaching brand
communities under a clear marketing spectrum, with most of the previous work concentrated on the
sociological aspect of brand communities. In their paper they are investigating “brand community
integration” as a construct directly related to brand loyalty. As they write, “For decades, marketers have
sought the Holy Grail of brand loyalty. Just as the legendary grail of Arthurian quest held the promise of
extended life and renewal, marketers attribute to brand loyalty and its sister icon, customer retention,
the promise of long-term profitability and market share (Bhattacharya, Rao, and Glynn 1995; Reicheld
and Sasser 1990).”
By creating a more thorough model (Figure 3) to Muniz and O’Guinn’s triad model (Figure 2), they also
support the importance of creating a captivating customer experience through brand communities, and
giving great importance to the integration of new members. In their words “The benefits to a firm of
cultivating brand community are many and diverse. Community-integrated customers serve as brand
missionaries, carrying the marketing message into other communities. They are more forgiving than
others of product failures or lapses of service quality (Berry 1995). They are less apt to switch brands,
even when confronted with superior performance by competing products. They are motivated to
provide feedback to corporate ears. They constitute a strong market for licensed products and brand
extensions. In many cases, we even find loyal customers making long-term investments in a company’s
stock. Customers who are highly integrated in the brand community are emotionally invested in the
welfare of the company and desire to contribute to its success.”
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Figure 1. Traditional model of Customer-Brand relationship
Figure 2. Brand Community triad (Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001)
Figure 3. Customer-centric model of Brand Community (McAlexander et al., 2002)
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The stream of research on brand community-related constructs is continued with McAlexander et al. in
2003 with their paper empirically exploring the “relative impacts of satisfaction, brand community
integration, and consumer experience on customer loyalty as expressed by future purchase intentions
and behavior”.
In this paper, the researchers challenge the notion that overall satisfaction is an antecedent to brand
loyalty, especially for the more experienced users who “(with experience) have the opportunity to
develop the additional and meaningful connections of brand community that can provide a strong bond
that affects satisfaction and loyalty”. They find that brand community integration is a more powerful
force behind the formation of brand loyalty, and advice managers to focus their forces in creating “a
suitably supportive service-delivery environment” (their conceptual model is seen in Figure 4).
Figure 4. Brand Community Integration, Satisfaction and Loyalty (McAlexander et al., 2003)
The scope of research on brand community constructs is expanded with Algesheimer et al (2005), who
concentrate on notions such as brand community identification and brand community engagement.
Algesheimer et al. “develop and estimate a conceptual model of how different aspects of customers’
relationships with the brand community influence their intentions and behaviors. The authors describe
how identification with the brand community leads to positive consequences, such as greater
community engagement, and negative consequences, such as normative community pressure and
(ultimately) reactance.”
Through their work, they produce a very thorough conceptual framework in which the first hint to
governance mechanisms is appearing; namely they introduce the constructs of normative community
10
pressure leading to reactance, which refers to a pressure to conform with established rules and
regulations causing a sense of disapproval, with reverse correlation to brand loyalty intentions and,
finally, brand related purchase behavior. Moreover, their conceptual framework serves as an update to
the existing frameworks; specifically they test their model in relation to the already existing model in
literature, finding their own to be clearly superior.
Another important finding of their research is the very high significance of the brand community
identification-brand community engagement relationship, a finding that relates very closely to the scope
of this thesis paper. They conclude that “this example points to the importance of purposely selecting,
initiating, managing, and controlling interactions among customers when facilitating brand
communities.”
Muniz and Schau (2005) as well as Schouten et al. (2007) are two papers that shift attention to a different
side of brand communities: their ability to produce powerful feelings resembling religious and
transcendent experiences.
Muniz and Schau focus on the Apple Newton brand community, a product that at the time of the study
had been long discontinued, but a number of 20.000 people were still using it on a day-to-day basis
forming a very interesting kind of brand community. As they write, “Supernatural, religious, and magical
motifs are common in the narratives of the Newton community. There are strong elements of survival,
the miraculous, and the return of the creator. We propose that these themes are, first, a product of the
context in which this community operates and, second, indicative of the very clear and resilient need
humans have to believe in something or someone outside mundane reality”. They go on assorting the
elements of these narratives under 5 categories, namely:

Tales of Persecution

Tales of Faith Being Rewarded

Survival Tales

Tales of Miraculous Recovery

Tales of Resurrection
Muniz and Schau argue that religiosity is more often found in “lowly underdog brands, those that are
marginalized, stigmatized, and left behind”, in which there is a constant need for the members to cluster
and argumentatively support the underdog status. They conclude that “these data suggest that a
11
common aspect of brand communities could be the potential for transcendent and magicoreligious
experiences. The capacity for magic and mysticism may be one factor that attracts people to form
communities around these brands, as well as the quality that facilitates the transformative, liberatory,
and emancipatory aspects of consumption sometimes enacted in them”.
Schouten et al. (2007) study transcendent customer experiences (TCEs) which “have aspects of flow
and/or peak experience, can generate lasting shifts in beliefs and attitudes, including subjective selftransformation”. Schouten et al. are investigating the connection between TCEs and brand community
integration which according to them should deliver a particularly strong kid of brand loyalty. Their work
builds on McAlexander et al. (2002), upgrading the findings by introducing TCE in the BC integrationBrand loyalty relationship.
The authors support that through brand community experiences sometimes a deeper experience can be
built, one which resembles experiences of a religious and sacred nature. They explain that “A person
experiencing transcendence in the context of a consumption event may develop strong emotional ties to
the individuals, products, and/or institutions that facilitate the experience. This “conversion” may be
especially strong to the extent that the marketing institution offers texts (e.g., marketing
communications), icons (e.g., branding, celebrity endorsers, and product designs), rituals (e.g., events or
product usage patterns), and community (e.g., interaction with other brand users and agents of the firm)
that may trigger future TCEs.”
Their work brings front a very interesting aspect of brand community: the notion that by enriching the
experience of customers by promoting certain aspects of a brand as well as supporting the well-being of
brand community members, marketers can generate strong brand loyalty. This paper becomes very
interesting once juxtaposed with Muniz and Schau’s paper presented before, where similar notions were
presented in a brand community which received minimal support from the company (a discontinued
product).
Schouten et al. conclude that “an emerging body of research indicates that the social, emotional, and
psychic connections inherent in brand community relationships are more resilient than traditional
loyalties developed by managing customer satisfaction”.
Cova et al. (2007) attempt to study the Warhammer community, a role playing board game community,
under geographical terms. Specifically the main interest of the authors is to challenge the “nongeographically bound” part of the brand community definition, by presenting the geographically
12
inspired differences that rise between members of a brand community that is formed simultaneously
from members of different cultures (Warhammer communities in the United States and France). In their
introduction they state clearly that “based on their domestic US study Muniz and O’Guinn (2001, p. 413)
affirm that brand communities are “liberated from geography.” On the other hand, the present text
argues that community attached to a global brand constitutes a complex phenomenon, one that both
integrates and ignores geographical considerations”. Cova et al. don’t attempt to produce results that
would provide a cross cultural template of brand community behavior. Instead they try “to understand
any links that may exist between global brand, brand community, subcultures and cultures”. With this
study they hope to show that there is great “marketplace relevance” deriving from the different
meanings assigned to global brands from sub-tribes which are geographically and sometimes culturally
distanced.
They find that communities of the same brand that are formed by members of different cultures can
have different meanings attributed to both the brand itself and the community. Thus, they believe that
“we should moderate Muniz and O’Guinn’s (2001) affirmation that ‘brand communities transcend
geography.’ This is only partially true. Different local brand tribes do give variable (and occasionally
opposing) meanings to a particular brand. However, such oppositions are less important than local tribe
members seem to believe, and the brand cult will help members fill whatever contradictory vacuum lies
between the local cultural model and their real lives (Holt, 2005).” Finally, they advise managers to
develop a global strategy that would rely on these different meanings, thus providing local cultures with
a possibility to enable some sort of ‘communal glocalization’”.
Carlson et al. (2008) introduce the term “psychological sense of brand community (PSBC)” in the
literature, the notion that a brand community can exist without the physical interactions, next to or
opposite to the “social” sense of brand community. They define a “psychological brand community” as
“an unbound group of brand admirers, who perceive a sense of community with other brand admirers,
in the absence of social interaction”.
The absence of membership and social interaction, two very important elements of brand communities
in the literature up to now, may resemble a one-sided interaction, but according to the authors such
brand communities do exist and share many characteristics of more traditional brand communities.
Differences lie on how constructs such as brand community mediate “important outcomes” as well as
the degrees in which brand community identification and brand identification influence PSBC depending
on the existence of social interactions. The authors conclude that “unlike previous research on brand
13
communities, this study has focused less on the characteristics of the community itself, and more on the
psychological relationships that exist between individuals who perceive a sense of community and the
brands around which the communities have been formed […] psychological brand communities may
require substantially less effort and financial resources to create and maintain than social brand
communities”.
Ouwersloot and Odekerken-Schroder (2008) focus on virtual brand communities, a term that was
introduced in 2005 to differentiate between traditional brand communities and the ones that are
exclusively formed and managed online. As they write, “brand communities are often supported by
internet-based technology, but the concept is broader and essentially encompasses everyone who feels
connected to the brand, online or offline. Virtual communities in contrast by definition are only defined
in the virtual world.”
The authors also differentiate between company-moderated and user-moderated communities, a
differentiation which is also relevant to the subject of this study. Their work concentrates exclusively on
company-moderated communities, trying to present the degree of heterogeneity between community
members and the different strategies that can be applied based on the different characteristics that these
groupings provide.
In their study, they approach two brand communities of well-known brands, specifically a board game
player community (Settlers of Catan) and the community of the watch manufacturing brand Swatch.
They study the different motives members had in order to join the brand communities and the
background relationships of these motives, dividing them into four categories, namely:

“Customer-company relationship”,

“Customer-product relationship”,

“Customer-customer relationship” and,

“Customer-brand relationship”
While their study has a great number of limitations, and, as they also put it themselves, does not provide
grounds for generalization, they do provide a number of important managerial implications. Ouwersloot
and Odekerken-Schroder write that “Brand community members constitute a specific group of
customers, but treating them as a single, homogenous group may be a serious mistake. Community
members share a reasonably strong commitment to the brand, but the brand concept is so complex
14
(Muhlbacher et al., 2006) that members can and do differ in many respects”. They promote a
differentiation in the communications with members according to the motives of membership, as well
as a differentiation in the communication strategy used for promoting the community according to the
purpose for which the community is built.
Bagozzi and Dholakia (2006) take on small group brand communities investigating “behavior and
determinants of the behavior” of their members, attempting to enrich both brand community and social
psychology theory by projecting the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) on their findings.
In their attempt to enrich the existing framework of TPB, they investigate both psychological and social
aspects of the theory and find that “small group brand communities were found to express their
decisions in social intentions, which in turn influenced group behavior. In addition to the effects of the
classic antecedents specified under the TPB (i.e., attitudes and subjective norms), we found that dynamic
appraisals in the form of anticipated emotions and group identification processes in the form of social
identity were key explanatory variables.” Bagozzi and Dholakia emphasize the great differences in the
effect of the above characteristics to be explainable under size differences; small, more personal
communities are affected differently and one should expect different outcomes depending on the size of
the community.
Another paper concentrating on brand community size is Scarpi (2010), who investigates size as a
characteristic and its outcomes on a number of brand community constructs, specifically brand
community identification, brand affect, community loyalty, brand loyalty, brand evangelism, and
community evangelism. Specifically he investigates “the causal relationship between community
identification, community loyalty, brand affect, brand loyalty and word of mouth, developing a structural
equation model. We collect data from small and large communities, and look at the differences in the
relationships based on community size”. He finds brand community size to be an important moderator
for the above constructs and encourages managers to consider this factor when applying marketing
strategies. He summarizes his findings in four points, specifically:

Small and large communities work quite differently, and size is key to understanding the effects of
identification on loyalty and word of mouth;

Identification in small communities builds a stronger sense of loyalty to the community;

Brand affect is a very strong antecedent of brand loyalty in large communities, whereas in small
communities loyalty to the brand stems more from loyalty to the community;
15

Identification in small communities generates more word of mouth for the community than in large
ones (through community loyalty), but nonetheless generates word of mouth also for the brand
(through brand affect).
It is important to mention that community size has already been investigated as a mediator of
community influence in Algesheimer et al. (2005). Moreover, a number of papers in brand community
literature suggest size differentiation in their “further research” sections.
Fuller et al. (2008) take on brand community members’ willingness to participate in open innovation
and its relationship with a number of brand and brand community constructs. Their findings challenge
a variety of pre-assumed relationships. Specifically they find small significance on the effect of brand
community identification as well as brand knowledge on the members’ willingness to participate in open
innovation. On the other hand, consumer creativity components (consisting of personality traits) and
brand trust are found to have a significant relation with open innovation willingness. In their own words
“Although members of brand communities offer a wealth of experiences and knowledge, they do not
necessarily seem to be interested in sharing their insights with producers, even if it is their favored
brand. Rather, it is brand community member interest in innovation activities and their creative
personality that drive their interest in engaging in open innovation projects”.
Interestingly enough, the authors advice against the formation of brand communities with innovation as
a main interest; they believe that brand enthusiasts would be better attracted under other terms than
generating innovation.
Woisetschlager et al. (2008) combine social identity theory (SIT) and the concept of psychological sense
of community (PSOC) in investigating members’ participation in brand communities. With the support
of these theoretical foundations they argue that it is participation that leads to the establishment of a
successful brand community.
According to the authors, participation “is affected by identification with the brand community,
satisfaction with the brand community, and the perceived degree of influence opportunities” and
managers can influence these notions, thus generating participation through community management.
They provide three guidelines to managers, namely:
16

Supporting identification with the community by grouping homogeneous members together into
sub-communities;

Providing interaction elements to the members (in the way social media provide communication
platforms);

Demonstrating openness to user-generated content in order to stimulate member contributions.
They add that increasing the size of the community should ideally take place through members’
recommendations and engaging new members in order to ensure the community’s long term success.
Casalo et al. (2013) are investigating community integration by analyzing its antecedents and
consequences in online travel communities. Their work plans to analyze the integration process from
two perspectives, by investigating the ways in which perceived reciprocity in the community as well as
perceived group similarity affect the integration of new community members.
Their findings support their hypotheses, by proving that indeed community integration depends highly
both on perceived reciprocity and perceived group similarity. They also find that community integration
“affects a member's behaviour by enhancing the intention to participate in the online community
activities.” Interestingly their research concludes that while perceived reciprocity has a positive effect
on members’ satisfaction and intention to participate, perceived similarity has a weak influence on these
variables. One explanation they propose is that travel communities are formed under utilitarian
principles (members are mainly joining in order to find valid information, receive help and
recommendations etc.) and that in other communities, formed under principles of social interaction,
perceived similarity would present a higher degree of influence on the above variables. They conclude
that “the intention to participate in an online community might increase if managers enhance perceived
reciprocity in the community (e.g., promoting communication between the community members by
organizing virtual meetings, or contests), favouring the integration of new members (e.g., involving old
members in conversations with newcomers or fostering community transparency so members can
easily find similarities), and satisfying members' needs. These actions will help maintain a critical mass
of community members, supporting long-term community success.”
Marzocchi et al. (2013) provide some valuable insight in loyalty under brand community terms. In their
paper they are juxtaposing brand loyalty to brand community loyalty, trying to establish the connections
between brand community identification, brand identification, brand trust and brand affect. Their thesis
is that brand community identification and brand identification “exert independent and equivalent
17
impacts on relevant loyalty-related outcomes”, a notion that had not been investigated to that time. Their
main focus is the presence and extent of these differentiated effects and their sub-goal is to “clarify the
mechanisms that community members enact in the process of constructing loyalty. In particular, it aims
to determine whether this process is driven by affective reactions (that is, brand affect), by
trustworthiness connections with the brand (brand trust) or by both, and to what degree.”
Marzocchi et al. incorporate the three components of social identification (cognitive, evaluative and
emotional) which have been introduced in brand community literature by Algesheimer et al. (2005), and
analyze the concept further more in order to proceed with the abovementioned distinction. According
to the authors, and taking into account that people can identify with multiple targets, it is very useful to
understand “which is the main target of identification for community members and which exerts the
most influence on loyalty and other desirable outcomes”. Moreover, multiple social identities studied
simultaneously offer grounds for further research, as their state and quality is dependent to “a reference
group: the members of the next more inclusive self-category”.
Brand trust, defined as “the willingness of consumers to rely on the power of the brand to realise its
stated purpose” and brand affect, defined as “a brand’s ability to draw out a positive emotional arousal
in the consumers as a result of its use”, are presented as the most relevant of the desired effects of
identification and are hypothesized to lead to brand loyalty. Brand loyalty itself is categorized in
behavioral loyalty and attitudinal loyalty, with the latter being regarded as an antecedent to the former.
Other relevant constructs investigated are propensity to comment, resilience to negative information,
social promotion and physical promotion, all of them parts of the larger category of brand loyalty.
Their research validates the existence of two distinct types of identification, with both of them having
significant and positive influence on brand loyalty, interestingly in different terms. Specifically they find
that “identification with the two objects activates different psychological processes in brand community
members’ minds”, a finding that can be seen in the table below (Table 1).
18
Table 1. Direct, indirect and total effects of consumer-company and consumer-community
identification on attitudinal brand loyalty (Marzocchi et al. 2013)
They conclude that “the empirical results provide robust support for the hypothesis that a consumer’s
identification with a brand community leads to higher levels of both attitudinal and behavioural loyalty
to the company itself, as well as stronger propensity to comment favourably and constructively on the
company […] brand communities, besides contributing to the spread of curiosity and passion attaching
to a brand in the market, could be important sources of new ideas and product innovations, whose
origins are not so much traced back to commercial interests, per se, as to the desire to share experiences,
foster common values and improve user learning”.
2.2.
Brand communities in the social media
In the following section six articles that investigate the existence and behavior of brand communities in
the social media will be presented.
Social media have been acting as a catalyst in the transition from traditional brand communities to
virtual brand communities. According to Laroche et al. (2012), social media represent a phenomenon
deeply embedded in our everyday lives, where “people spend more than one third of their waking day
consuming social media”. With almost a billion people and more than 1.5 million businesses maintaining
a profile on Facebook (Zaglia 2013), this area of study has become of great importance for marketing
and management researchers. Studying brand communities alongside social media is a rather fresh
notion, with the majority of research taking place during the last decade.
Zaglia (2013), in her paper investigates the presence of brand communities in social media as well as
“how they exist, on what rationale they build on, and what forms with what functions they embody”. In
this paper it is proposed that social networks provide with an opportunity to examine the characteristics
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of BCs in depth. Zaglia writes that “However, to date, the existence, functionality and influences of brand
communities and social networks have mainly been investigated separately. […] Consequently, this paper
aims to contribute to research by investigating the existence of brand communities embedded in a social
network environment, and gaining further insights into the interplay of these related social concepts”.
Zaglia goes on to examine the similarities and connections between Facebook communities and brand
communities, arguing that while they do not represent uniform concepts, they do seem as overlapping.
As Zaglia puts it, “social networks and brand communities share the basic property of their members
interacting with each other. These ongoing interactions are critical for the survival and success of social
networks; similarly, social relationships are crucial in brand communities; the latter is built around a
brand, its core asset, but ultimately grows and persists due to the relationships among its members”.
The element of social interaction between the members, as well as a degree of brand affection, seem to
be a common characteristic that is highly relevant, functioning as a driver for Muniz and O'Guinn’s
community markers as well as social identity. In Zaglia’s words, “depending on the intensity and form
of interaction and brand affection of the members, brand community characteristics (e.g., community
markers and social identity) abound to different extents”.
Zaglia goes on comparing two distinct classifications of Facebook communities, the “group” and the “fan
page”, later named “Facebook page”, concluding that “Brand communities within social networks do
exist and they classify into different sub-groups based on dissimilarities. […] Based on this results, the
Facebook group, certainly states a clear brand community, showing strong value of all community
markers, social identity, brand emotions, and the commercial character. The fan page, on the other hand,
seems to embody a weaker form of a brand community; Consequently, Facebook pages and groups are
comparable to marketer-generated and consumer-generated brand communities”.
Habibi et al. (2014) follow a similar path in their research. By applying netnographic analysis on two
established social media based brand communities they explore the unique aspects of social media in
an attempt to recognize unique aspects in the brand communities “at the intersection of brands and
social media”, ultimately differentiating them to their offline or online counterparts.
The authors identify some major differences between social media brand communities and
online/offline brand communities. Firstly, there is a lack of cost for creating and maintaining a social
media brand community. Secondly, the fact that one does not have to own a product to join a community
like that, which differs for e.g. brand-fests or private club communities. Finally, users in a social media
brand community are commonly using their real names, unlike virtual brand communities where
20
pseudonyms are being used, resulting in a change in the pattern of personality of community and social
media users.
Examining the unique aspects that social media exhibit, the authors present the major differentiations
between social media platforms and other online/offline ones, stating that “most of this metamorphosis
comes from two underlying aspects of social media: the technological aspect of Web 2.0, and the
ideological aspect of User Generated Content (UGC)”. The combination of the two are having a significant
impact in the formation of social media brand communities, generating five major dimensions of
differentiation:

Social context

Structure

Scale

Content and storytelling

Number of affiliated brand communities
Goh et al. (2013) also take on the construct of User Generated Content (UGC) and compare its impact to
the impact of Marketer Generated Content (MGC) in a social media brand community on consumers’
repeat purchase behaviors, as well as the importance of communication modes in the process (direct vs.
indirect). This paper provides some useful input in the roles of marketers as well as community
members in brand communities active in the social media, while at the same time attempts to provide
an economic value to the members’ online WOM.
The authors are creating an interesting comparison between UGC and MGC, in terms of their impact in
the members’ purchase intentions. Specifically they are trying to answer the question of which has more
importance regarding the purchase intentions of the members: their lack of information, better fulfilled
with information offered through MGC, or their pursuit for other customers’ experiences and input,
favoring information offered through UGC.
Another subject investigated by the authors is the mode of communication that better suits in different
occasions, namely direct or indirect communication. They hypothesize that direct information favors
UGC in influencing members’ purchase behavior, while for MGC information they argue that both
communication modes can be seen as having both positives and negatives: while direct communication
does seem to represent a high level of customer service, it might lead to negative effects, such as
customer skepticism and annoyance.
They conclude that UGC and MGC are both important in terms of members’ purchase behavior. While
MGC can have a great effect, it is mainly through persuasive interactions, while UGC combines
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persuasive and informative interactions, having a much greater effect. Specifically for persuasive
interactions, UGC seems to have an even greater importance to MGC.
Regarding the mode of communications, they conclude that the effect of direct and indirect
communications differentiates between UGC and MGC. They write that “in driving purchases, undirected
contents are more effective than directed ones for both informative and persuasive consumer-toconsumer communication, whereas directed contents are more effective than undirected ones for
persuasive marketer-to-consumer communication”, stating that their hypothesis that UGC is better
communicated directly failed due to the manner that posts and comments on Facebook are structured
or displayed.
Finally, they advise managers to “transform their role from a passive and reactive one to a proactive and
influential one. By actively engaging consumers in brand communities, marketers can better reap
economic values from social media brand communities”.
Ding et al. (2014) are also investigating the role of UGC and MGC in the growth of social media based
brand communities. In the proceedings of the 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences,
they present their work, concentrated on the above notions.
Their first implication to theory is the categorization of UGC and MGC in two distinct types of content,
product related (for product promotion) and social-related (for relationship building). By using
Signaling theory and the word-of-mouth (WOM) communication framework they formulate a set of
hypotheses regarding the effect of social and product related MGC and UGC, on community growth as
well as in their own relationship.
Figure 5. Ding et al. (2014) research model
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They sum up their findings stating that “only social-related (but not product-related) MGC can promote
growth, while both types of UGC are effective in this regard. This seems to depict a more limited role of
MGC compared to UGC when considering growth promotion. […] Interpreting these results alone, one
may also conclude that firms should just focus on generating more social-related MGC and disregard
product-related MGC if their objective is to promote community growth. However, further examinations
reveal that both product- and social-related MGC could stimulate the respective type of growthpromoting UGC.” (Ding et al., 2014)
Laroche et al. (2012) are studying the effect of social media based brand communities, defined as
communities initiated in the social media, on a number of constructs such as brand community markers,
value creation practices, brand trust and brand loyalty. They find that communities initiated this way
are having a positive effect on value creation by enhancing community markers, which in its turn is
leading to brand trust and eventually brand loyalty, as seen in the figure. Note the non-significant path
between Community Engagement and Brand Trust, with both of these constructs being a part of this
thesis paper.
They conclude that “The vast reach, low cost and popularity of social media are prompting all brand
managers to take advantage of such characteristics, so that they, almost blindly, want to be on social
media […] if managers wish to enhance brand loyalty, they have to promote brand use and impressions
management practices in their brand communities […] however, it should be noted that brand
communities based on social media might not be easy to manage. In this environment, customers are
more powerful than before. They easily can interact, speak and broadcast their ideas to each other while
companies would have increasingly less ability to manage the information available about them in the
new space.”
2.3.
Governance
Due to the fact that governance of brand communities has not been assessed thoroughly in literature,
most of the literature will be drawn from theory established on another stream, mainly Open Source
Software project governance. This part will provide a presentation of the papers that inspired the
connections between brand communities and various governance models.
23
2.4.
Governance in OSS projects
As seen in the figure below (Figure 6), governance of OSS projects has acted as an inspiration regarding
the governance configurations implemented in this paper. The idea behind this connection is the
characteristics shared by these two types of communities. OSS and Brand Communities indeed share a
number of characteristics, on top of fulfilling the three markers of community presented above to a great
extent. OSS members gather voluntarily under software development projects which can be viewed as
brands, initiated either by other members or companies, sharing common goals and collaborating
towards the community’s wellbeing. While OSS communities are usually project and goal oriented,
community governance does appear to have many characteristics in common, thus OSS governance
literature can potentially provide numerous insights in the ways brand community governance is
implemented.
This section will present three inspirational papers in this area, providing insights in the ways
governance is applied in OSS projects as well as the links that exist between OSS governance and brand
community governance.
Figure 6. Cognitive model of community governance
Laat (2007) presents three types of governance in OSS projects: ‘spontaneous’ governance, internal
governance, and governance towards outside parties. He starts by presenting the basics behind the
formation of OSS projects by giving the main reasons and motivations behind the movement. According
to the writer, hackers, which have initiated the motion towards OSS, formed their ideology under two
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main currents: the radical camp, who “considers closed code software production as harmful, and
espouses the view that software should be a public good, both publicly available and modifiable”, and
the more moderate camp, for whom “the main defect of industrial software production is its closed
character, barring public inspection of the code”, aiming for optimum software quality. The first group
idealistically avoids any kind of private appropriation and uses a common license (GPL-General Public
Licence) to ensure it, while the second finds protection from private appropriation as being
unnecessary.
Spontaneous governance stems from the need of small numbered projects to be free of control. In these
cases, governance takes a more informal character, with high-contributors taking on a kind of unofficial
leadership status, while the communities “are self-directing without any kind of explicit and formal
coordination or control”.
With the advance of time and with communities getting larger and more professional, another type of
governance started to emerge, namely “internal governance”, characterized by a wide array of explicit
and formal tools. Six main categories emerged under these terms:
1. Modularization
Projects started being divided into modules, each one representing another area of interest. In large OSS
communities “literally dozens of modules may coexist together”.
2. Division of roles
Members are taking on one or more roles depending on the project, with a range of 3-8 roles being
usually in use. Example roles are these of the “user”, “contributor”, “owner”, “observer” etc.
3. Delegation of decision making
In this category the main distinction is this of a centralized versus a de-centralized decision making
paradigm. In a centralized design, decision making is a responsibility of the project leader and his
assistants, while in the de-centralized design, developers of modules are making the decisions.
4. Training and indoctrination
This category refers to the conditions of entry, which, as the author writes, have grown to be from none
in the early days of OSS development, to a wide set of entry requirements inspired by the growth of
larger projects and a greater division of roles to be assigned.
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5. Formalization
In the formalization category there is a presentation of a wide array of tools and formalized procedures
aiming to “knit globally distributed virtual contributors together”. These tools and procedures appear
to have been uniformly accepted for OSS projects worldwide, giving a standardized character to a
number of tasks.
6. Autocracy/Democracy
The sixth category answers the following question: “is leadership self-appointed and imposed from
above (autocracy), or are community members empowered to choose their leaders in some kind of
electoral process (representative democracy)?” Autocracy points out to a more traditional leadership
formation, while Democracy is more representing of a modern, autonomous OSS project leadership
model.
As seen in the table below (Table 2), Laat proceeds by pairing the above governance categories with
their organizational equivalents. Specifically he parallels “modularization” to “horizontal
differentiation”, “division of roles” to “vertical differentiation”, “delegation of decision-making” to
“vertical decentralization”, with the three remaining ones staying as they are for both streams.
Table 2. Two types of ideal Governance configurations (Laat, 2007)
Putting the above into context, Laat proposes two main configurations, stemming from the relationships
spotted between organizational analysis and analysis of OSS governance mechanisms, the Autocraticmechanistic structure and the Democratic-organic structure, seen in the figure. With the leadership style
being the primary factor, and taking into account a high degree of horizontal differentiation in both
cases, he finds autocratically initiated communities leaning towards a configuration of high vertical
26
differentiation, high vertical centralization, and low training and indoctrination mechanisms, with the
opposite values characterizing a more open-democratic community. He also finds that a high degree of
formalization is “indispensable” in order to “connect virtual members together” adding that “of course
this is just an idealtypische kind of exercise; actual configurations of OSS communities will show a lot
more variation”.
De Noni et al. (2013), provide with further valuable insights in OSS governance. In their paper “The
Governance of Open Source Software Communities : An Exploratory Analysis”, they argue that OSS
governance is indeed configurational, with four main configurations formed by applying and developing
Laat’s model, under the combinations provided by three dimensions: licensing agreement, decisionmaking rights and participation in the development process. By analyzing data from 40 OSS projects,
they introduce a matrix with two dimensions, leadership and decision making and reciprocity of the
appropriability regime, with the four configurational governance mechanisms and their respective
description being the ones seen in the figure below (Figure 7).
Figure 7. OS Governance matrix model (De Noni et al., 2013)
De Noni et al. clarify more the distinctions between the four configurations: “open source and
sponsored-based differ mainly in their degree of accessibility to leadership and decision making. In an
27
open source community, leadership and decision making are a highly distributed process. In a
sponsored community, on the contrary, sponsors retain control. […] Reciprocity and tolerant
dictatorship differ in the distribution of power in the community. In a reciprocity-based community,
community leadership and decision making are highly distributed, whereas in a tolerant dictatorship
community, they are concentrated in the hands of the copyright holder.”
Di Tullio and Staples (2013) investigated governance mechanisms in volunteer-based OSS communities,
which they define as organic and autonomous, an area that approaches the background of brand
communities to an even greater degree. As they put it “volunteer participation, lack of traditional chains
of command, geographical dispersion, and lack of face-to-face interaction” are distinguishing
characteristics of the projects studied. They applied control theory, configurational theory and cluster
analysis on a number of on-going OSS projects and identified three configurations: Defined Community,
Open Community, and Authoritarian Community.
Adding to the work of De Noni et al. and their two-dimensional (license agreement and leadership
structure) governance configurations, they combine four dimensions of formal and informal control
stemming out of control theory (Outcome controls, Behavior controls, Clan control and Self-control)
and, after performing cluster analysis, they identify three major governance configurations which can
be seen in the table below (Table 3).
Table 3. Open Source Project Governance Configurations (Di Tullio and Staples, 2013)
28
The authors conclude that “the Defined Community configuration had the most positive climate and
most effective coordination, and the Authoritarian Community was the lowest on these variables. […] In
the majority of cases, the configuration with the lowest scores was the Authoritarian Community
configuration, except for self-control. The Open Community configuration was typically between the
other two. These patterns suggest a positive relationship between outcome, behavior, and clan control
and governance outcomes.”
The final paper to be presented is from Shah (2006). In this paper the author attempts a differentiation
between two OSS communities with contrasting governance models, a separation between gated and
open governance. While both of these communities are functioning under the principles of OSS
development and aim to attract volunteer developers, Shah explains their difference: “in the open source
community, anyone can download, use, modify, and distribute the code. The code is owned by the
collective and a special subset of developers, called committers, settle contested project decisions. In
the gated source community, only those who have agreed to a license with the corporate sponsor can
download, use, or modify the code. The license stipulates that the code may only be shared with other
licensees. The corporate sponsor owns the code and retains the right to make project decisions. Finally,
licensees who use the code for commercial purposes must pay a royalty to the corporate sponsor”. It is
clear that while the background of the form of participation remains the same between these two types
of software development, gated communities are aiming to integrate private ownership and control of
the code produced.
The most relevant finding of Shah is the relationship between the governance model and volunteer
participation. Shah distinguishes between two sets of volunteers, namely hobbyists and need-driven
participants, and while their motives for participation vary to a great extent, the governance structure
of the community affects the participation choices of the volunteers in a dramatic fashion. Participants
in the gated community seemed to be affected negatively by “the level of code control held by the
sponsor (the sponsor is the only actor able to make changes to the source code) and ownership by the
corporate sponsor” (Shah, 2006).
Ownership from sponsors seem to raise a number of issues, with restrictions on code use, fairness on
decisions on code use and distribution, issues stemming out of ownership status and problems on the
commercial use clause of licenses being the main reason behind participants choosing not to contribute
to the communities. Thus Shah claims that these restrictions limit “cumulative development activity and
overall value creation” concluding that “firms seeking to construct hybrid arrangements that balance
community-based value creation with private value appropriation may encounter difficulties: the very
mechanisms that allow them to appropriate private benefits may deter participation” (Shah, 2006).
29
This concludes the literature review part of this paper. The following two chapters will present the
conceptual framework of research as well as the methodology followed, highlighting the connections
between existing literature presented in this chapter and the constructs and relationships that this
paper aims to study.
3.
Conceptual Framework
This part will introduce the conceptual model with the relationships that research seeks to examine. In
the figure below (Figure 8), the red dotted shape represents the main focus of this paper, namely the
effect of the governance configurations on the constructs included as well as the relationships between
brand community identification and brand community engagement, brand community identification
and brand community commitment and finally, brand community engagement and the members’
behavioral intentions. The constructs outside of the model represent relationships already examined by
existing literature, all of which exhibit a proven positive correlation. They are included in the model to
show the extent of managerial implications that can be extracted from this research. The following subchapters will introduce the problem statement of this paper, followed by a thorough presentation of the
constructs and their relationships as seen in existing literature.
Figure 8. Conceptual model: the effect of governance configurations
in the area inside the dotted lines
30
3.1.
Problem Statement
The main objective of this paper is to examine the effect of different governance models on the
abovementioned constructs and their relationships. Specifically the questions that research aims to
answer are:
1. How do different governance models affect brand community identification, brand community
engagement, brand community commitment and the members’ behavioral intentions in brand
communities formed in the social media?
2. How do different governance models affect the relationships formed between these constructs?
3.2.
Brand Community Identification (BCI)
Brand Community Identification (BCI) is a relatively studied term in the brand community literature. It
refers to a sense of belonging in the community, translating into a tendency to use the term “we” instead
of “they” when referring to other members, what Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) refer to as “consciousnessof-kind”.
According to Chang et al., 2013, “Brand community identification (BCI) marks the strength of the social
relationship within the community”. Algesheimer et al., 2005 point out that BCI represents the strength
of the consumer’s relationship with the brand community “whereby the person construes himself or
herself to be a member— that is, as “belonging” to the brand community. In contrast to other identities,
which may render a person unique and separate, this is a shared or collective identity (Bhattacharya,
Rao, and Glynn 1995; Tajfel and Turner 1985).”
Zhou et al. clarify the notion even more by stating that “Brand community identification stems from
group identification, a specific social identification form in which people define themselves by their
group membership (Mael & Ashforth, 1992). […] Brand community identification results in commitment
to the brand community, a psychological bond describing a member's relationship with the group
(Meyer & Allen, 1991).” (Zhou et al. 2012).
Social identity formation is a moving force behind BCI. Wirtz et al. (2013) mention that “People
generally strive for positive self-esteem, and such esteem can be derived from social group membership.
Social identity is maintained and strengthened in social group members through in-group, out-group
comparisons (Hughes and Ahearne, 2010).”
31
In line with existing social identity as well as brand community literature, BCI should be approached
taking into consideration three components: cognitive, evaluative and affective identification.(Zaglia
2013; Dholakia et al. 2004; Algesheimer et al. 2005; Marzocchi et al. 2013).
Cognitive identification refers to the degree to which members find similarities between them and other
members, and differences when it comes to “outsiders”. Evaluative identification refers to “the positive
evaluation of self-worth that stems from a relationship with the brand” (Algesheimer et al. 2005), in
other words, the group’s “self esteem”. Finally, affective identification represents the “positive emotions
experienced by individuals on the basis of their perceived belonging to the group, and positive emotions
towards other group members (Bergami & Bagozzi, 2000)” (Zaglia 2013), which translates to a sense of
emotional involvement with the group.
It is thus important to understand the impact of BCI regarding the functions of a BC. According to
Algesheimer et al (2005) “identification means that the consumer agrees (or strives to agree) with the
community’s norms, traditions, rituals, and objectives (Bhattacharya, Rao, and Glynn 1995) and
promotes its well-being (Wiswede 1998)”. Moreover, members that do identify with the community,
tend “to adopt social creativity or social competition and tend not to use individual mobility” as well as
support a “greater resistance to brand switching […] high brand community-identifiers tend to perceive
negative social identity severely, thereby eliciting brand-defensive actions”.
The major importance of BCI lies in the fact that it is a moving force behind members’ actions and
intentions. Literature has established well structured dependency links between BCI and a number of
community as well as brand-related characteristics. As Fuller et al. (2008) put it, “The identification with
the brand community is one of the central determinants of the community member behavior” leading
to a positive correlation with notions such as Community Commitment, Community Engagement, WOM,
Brand Identification, Brand Loyalty etc. As Scarpi (2010) points out “It should come as no surprise that
identification is key to the understanding of brand communities and has an impact on relevant
consequences: establishing strong ties with the customers is at the heart of (relationship) marketing.”
3.3.
Brand Community Engagement (BCE)
Brand Community Engagement (BCE) is a highly relevant and meaningful area in BC research. Brodie
(2013), in his attempt to thoroughly investigate the term of engagement mentions that “the MSI
identifies “customer engagement” as a key research area contributing to enhanced academic insight into
consumer behavior in complex, interactive and/or co-creative environments.”
32
The relevance of BCE can be understood when taking into consideration the outcomes towards the
brand itself. According to Wirtz (2013), “Active engagement in the form of membership continuance,
participation, and giving and receiving recommendations from other OBC members translate into brand
loyalty and customer advocacy (Algesheimer et al., 2005). Consumers who join and actively participate
in such BCs tend to increase in their willingness to adopt a firm’s new products and are less likely to
embrace competing products (Thompson and Sinha, 2008).”
Community engagement is interrelated with community identification; high degrees of identification
with a BC serves as an introduction to participation intention and finally behavior. According to Wirtz
(2013), “OBC engagement refers to the positive influence of consumers identifying with an OBC. This is
defined as the consumer’s intrinsic motivation to interact and cooperate with community members. OBC
engagement suggests that members are interested in helping other members, keen to participate in joint
activities, to act volitionally in ways that the community endorses, and in ways that enhance the OBC’s
value for themselves and others (Algesheimer et al., 2005).” Algesheimer’s paper cited in Wirtz’s work
adds that “Community engagement suggests that members are interested in helping other members,
participating in joint activities, and otherwise acting volitionally in ways that the community endorses
and that enhance its value for themselves.”
Community engagement which functions in a similar way to consumer engagement (when instead of a
community it refers to brand/product/service engagement), has been approached through a number of
perspectives. Brodie (2013) argues that BCE is “an interactive, experiential process, based on
individuals' engagement with specific objects (e.g. brands, organizations), and/or other brand
community members”. In the same paper, engagement is seen as a configurational term, comprising of
5 themes:
a. Interactive experiences between consumers and/or other actors: consumer-to-consumer (C2C)
interactions in brand-related chat rooms or blogs, firm/consumer interactions through online
feedback forms
b. Context-dependent, motivational state: specific intensity level at a given point in time, e.g. perceived
utility value and interest outweigh the level of perceived risk.
c. Transient engagement states, within broader, dynamic, iterative engagement processes, aggregation
of focal engagement states, broader processes describing individuals' engagement with particular
brands over time.
d. Cognitive, affective and behavioral dimensions, cognitive “absorption” and emotional “dedication
e. Central role in the process of relational exchange: other relational concepts act as engagement
antecedents and/or consequences in dynamic engagement processes occurring within the BC,
33
relational consequences of engagement may act as antecedents in subsequent engagement (sub)
processes and/or cycles
Brodie goes on to describe BCE as involving “specific interactive experiences between consumers and
the brand, and/or other members of the community […] a context-dependent, psychological state
characterized by fluctuating intensity levels that occur within dynamic, iterative engagement processes.
Consumer engagement is a multidimensional concept comprising cognitive, emotional, and/ or
behavioral dimensions, and plays a central role in the process of relational exchange where other
relational concepts are engagement antecedents and/or consequences in iterative engagement
processes within the brand community” and finally concluding that it is “an interactive, experiential
process, based on individuals' engagement with specific objects (e.g. brands, organizations), and/or
other brand community members.” (Brodie, 2013)
Therefore BCE can be defined as the intention and finally behavior of interactive participation in the BC,
stemming from a high degree of BCI.
3.4.
Brand Community Commitment (BCC)
Brand Community Commitment (BCC) indicates the “members’ desire to maintain their relationships
with the brand community” (Zhou et al. 2012). It is a term that is separate from BCE in the sense that it
is concentrated on the intentions to have an ongoing relationship with the community, regardless of
specific behaviors.
Community commitment is an important driver for the well-being of a community, with even bigger
importance regarding online brand communities. It translates in a sense of loyalty and inspires a
number of brand related perceptions, such as brand commitment and brand attachment (Zhou et al.
2012). Furthermore, according to Wirtz (2013), “The long-term survival of an OBC depends greatly on
its members’ commitment and continued participation in the community relationships. Such
commitment and participation are particularly important in the online context, as members can switch
to an alternative OBC with just a few easy clicks. To ensure vitality and longevity, members need to be
cohesive and have a strong sense of belonging (Wellman and Gulia, 1999)”.
3.5.
Members’ behavioral intentions
The intentions studied in this paper come from the work of Algesheimer et al. (2005) with the addition
of an intention construct created in order to assess the intention of members to share their ideas.
Specifically the constructs studied are:
34
1. Membership Continuation Intentions (MCI)
2. Community Recommendation Intentions (CRI)
3. Community Participation Intentions (CPI)
4. Intention to Share (ITS)
Algesheimer et al. (2005) establish a positive relationship between brand community engagement and
the behavioral intentions of the members which, as they mention, are “crucial to perpetuate the brand
community, to attain goals, and to create an effective marketing program”. These behavioral intentions
are theorized as leading to their perspective behaviors, meaning that the members who express an
intention to continue their membership, recommend the community and participate in the community,
are very likely to proceed with behaving accordingly.
3.6.
Brand outcomes
Algesheimer et al (2005) provide with a significant link between brand loyalty and membership
continuance intentions. Thus, the higher the intentions for continuing membership in a brand
community, the higher brand loyalty will be.
Zhou et al (2012) also found a positive relationship between brand community commitment and brand
attachment as well as between brand community identification and brand identification.
The above make clear that the present framework can be projected into a wider model, including
relationships with brand related constructs, providing with a number of managerial implications.
4.
Methodology
This part will present the methodology followed in this paper. It constitutes of seven sub-chapters. The
first will present the research philosophy through the ontological and epistemological background of
the researcher. The following will concentrate on the more specific methodological approach of the
research, from the research setting to specific questionnaire items and sample characteristics.
4.1.
Ontology and epistemology
Ontology refers to the researcher’s view of reality, their positions on how the world around them
operates. Ontologically, this paper follows a positivistic paradigm, under which the studying of social
sciences follows the principles of natural sciences. Positivistic studies aim to “discover and document
universal causal laws of human behavior”, and while “social reality is not random; it is patterned and
35
has order”, the aim is not to predict the actions of a specific person in a given situation, but to document
that “under conditions X, Y, and Z, there is a 95 percent probability that one-half of the people will engage
in a specified behavior” (Neuman, 2006).
The use of an experiments and surveys as the main instrument of research, supplemented by a statistical
analysis of the data are some of the main characteristics of positivistic research (Neuman, 2006).
Moreover, in this study and in comparison to other research paradigms (e.g. social constructivism),
brand communities are not seen as social creations that are given “life” through human interactions, but
as objectively true and existing entities that follow a set of rules similar to the natural laws of the world.
In this research, the steps followed will be problem statement formation and testing, and argumentation
will be presented regarding the validity, reliability and generalizability of the results.
4.2.
Research Setting
This study uses a questionnaire consisting of four community descriptions (one of each is randomly
presented in every participant) followed by a number of items common for all participants.
The following parts will describe the setting of the research. Starting with the more general setting (the
choice of Facebook groups representing communities and the main elements that form the community
descriptions) the chapter will narrow down to the presentation of the specific configurations to be
studied as well as the final descriptions offered to the participants.
4.2.1.
Facebook groups
Due to the fact that this study is concentrating on the outcomes of different governance mechanisms,
finding a number of “offline” brand communities that embody these governing models was very
challenging and possibly not accomplishable in a master thesis context.
Social media provide with a convenient setting for research. The fact that participants can enter the
study being already familiar with the terms stated in a questionnaire, as well as the fact that the
questionnaire itself is offered to a great extent through social media, makes Facebook an ideal platform
for conducting this kind of research.
Zaglia’s 2013 paper, titled “Brand communities embedded in social networks”, presented earlier in the
literature review, has served as an inspiration in order to examine the different brand community
characteristics under the prism of Facebook groups.
36
This paper is very helpful in providing a distinction between a Facebook group and a Facebook page,
what she refers to a sub-groups in the setting of social media brand communities. Zaglia writes that
“Specifically, the perceived membership due to consciousness of kind and social identity is more distinct
in the group than on the fan page; in addition group members feel a higher moral responsibility and find
better fulfillment of their need for information.”
With the above into consideration, a Facebook group provides with a clearer image of a brand
community. Moreover, using only the characteristics of one of the two sub-groups in the BC descriptions
of the questionnaire, would provide a greater degree of validity: participants will not have to distinguish
between a group and a page and be aware of the differences they exhibit.
While Zaglia mentions that “Consequently, Facebook pages and groups are comparable to marketergenerated and consumer-generated brand communities (Sung et al., 2010)” it was of great importance
to this study to distinguish between a brand-generated and a customer-generated Facebook group, in
order to include the ownership-governance characteristic. Further research proved that the above does
not serve as a rule but more as a tendency: user and brand generated Facebook groups do exist and can
be easily distinguished.
Zaglia reinforces the choice of a Facebook group as a research setting by providing more connections.
She writes “the Facebook group, certainly states a clear brand community, showing strong value of all
community markers, social identity, brand emotions, and the commercial character. The fan page, on
the other hand, seems to embody a weaker form of a brand community” (Zaglia, 2013). With the above
into consideration, the Facebook group became the sub-group of choice for this research.
4.2.2.
Group Descriptions
The following part of the description was common for all four groups:
“Please read the following description carefully and try to remember it while completing this
questionnaire. Imagine yourself as a member of an online brand community, a group that consists of
admirers and fans of a particular brand.
The community members feel an important connection with
this brand. The community is a place where each member shares experiences, opinions and interests
about the brand.”
The four different descriptions that were formed by combining the open/closed governance models
with the organic/synthetic models can be found in the appendix (Appendix 2). The differentiations
between the models are presented below.
37
4.2.3.
Describing the Open/Closed models
One can easily find the privacy settings for groups by visiting the “help” section of Facebook.com. In
order to provide with four different types of brand communities, distinguished by governance
configurations in terms of ownership and openness, it was important to pick the two extremes in terms
of privacy.
For this reason, the two settings finally chosen were “Public” and “Secret”, due to the fact that “Closed”
privacy options constitute more of a slightly modified “Open” privacy setting, as can be easily seen in
the following table (Table 4).
Table 4. Privacy settings of Facebook groups (2014)
Using the above settings to represent governance in terms of openness had positive but also negative
effects. While the settings provide a good representation of an open versus a closed governance model,
as well as a sense of familiarity for Facebook users, the settings do have limitations in expressing aspects
38
of governance, making it harder to project the results to real-life brand communities as well as missing
certain elements of governance. In order to address these issues some settings were depicted in a more
descriptive way, covering as much characteristics as possible but trying to avoid possible bias.
Additionally, a number of characteristics stemming from the open/closed classifications presented in
the OSS project part of the literature review were implemented.
The characteristics needed to be relevant to the research setting. Drawing inspiration from Laat and De
Noni, and the democratic-organic versus autocratic-mechanistic classification, as well as the distinction
between open and gated communities presented by Shah, the descriptions included modified sentences
aiming to provide the image of two distinct governance models: an open, more democratic model against
a closed, more autocratic model.
The main differentiations were implemented on the leadership and decision making mechanisms.
Voting is an integral part of the open model both in the appointment of the administrators and the
decisions made, while leadership in the closed model is appointed from the outside (the company or the
people who created the group) and the administrators have all decision power. The open group is free
of content control as well as barriers of entry, while the closed group has a detailed set of rules in these
functions.
The following is the final descriptions regarding of the open and closed models. The two items in
brackets in the closed model description are interchangeable depending on the organic/synthetic
distinction which will be presented in the next part of the paper:
OPEN: The group is open for everyone to join; no invitation is required. The group and its content
are visible to everyone, both members and non-members. Members choose the administrators of the
group through voting. Members are free to post anything they like in the group, and no administrator
approval is required. The content does not have to be on a particular subject to be posted. There are no
established rules in relation to entering the group, posting and commenting. Decisions are made
through voting by the members.
CLOSED: The group is secret and can only be joined by invitation. The group and its content are hidden,
only members can see the name of the group, its members, the group's description and posts. [The
administrators are company employees and are appointed by the company (synthetic). The creators of
the group are self-appointed as administrators (organic)]1. Administrators take all decisions regarding
the group, so you will not be consulted about any decision-making. All content requires administrator
39
approval. Content needs to be on subject and relevant, otherwise it will not get published. The
administrators have developed a detailed set of rules regarding entering the group, posting and
commenting.
4.2.4.
Describing the Organic/Synthetic models
As mentioned above, Groups can be initiated by fans and customers, as well as the brand itself. As seen
in the literature review part, both brand communities and OSS communities exhibit this particular
characteristic, namely the distinction between a company-initiated and a customer-initiated
community. Lack of research in this specific area led to the use of this characteristic, thus forming four
groups. In order to provide a clear distinction between the two, and in an attempt to identify the
different outcomes depending on “group ownership”, the Facebook groups were clearly distinguished
under this term.
Specifically, the descriptions of Open/Organic and Closed/Organic groups included these sentences:
“This community has been established by a couple of fans of the brand who act as administrators.”
“Members choose the administrators of the group through voting” (open)
OR
“The creators of the group are self-appointed as administrators” (closed)
Similarly, the descriptions of Open/Synthetic and Closed/Synthetic groups included these sentences:
“This community has been established by the company that produces the brand.”
“The administrators are company employees and are appointed by the company”
4.3.
Questionnaire items
This part will present the questionnaire items used in order to approach the constructs relevant to the
study. The items will be presented in turn of appearance in the questionnaire: first the items used in
association with Brand Community related constructs, followed by the items referring to the
demographics.
40
4.3.1.
Brand Community items
The Brand Community related items in the questionnaire were mainly taken from Algesheimer et al.
2005 and Zhou et al. 2012, with the exception of two newly created items regarding
sharing/participation intentions. The items were formulated as Likert-type agreement statements
anchored by 1= “strongly disagree” to 7= “strongly agree”.
Small modifications were made to the original items, taking care not to alter the original content of the
questions. Specifically the verbs were transformed to conditional using “would” instead of present tense
given the experimental character of the questionnaire, and “brand community” and its variations were
substituted by “group” to make the items more specific to the Facebook group setting (see appendix).
Specifically:
The Community Identification construct was estimated using 5 items from Algesheimer et al. 2005 (e.g.
“I would be very attached to the group”).
Community Engagement was estimated using 4 items from Algesheimer et al. 2005 (e.g. “I would benefit
from following the group’s rules”).
Community Commitment was estimated using 5 items from Zhou et al. 2012 (e.g. “I would feel a loss if
that group was no longer available”).
Intentions were estimated using 6 items from Algesheimer et al. 2005 (e.g. “It would be very difficult
from me to leave this group”) as well as 2 new items regarding sharing/participation intentions with
the expected relationships also tested for significance (e.g. “I would be willing to share my ideas with
the members of the group”), used in order to identify and assess the intention of members to participate
in new product development.
A more thorough presentation of the items as well as the modifications on some of them in order to be
applicable in the study can be found in the appendix (Appendix 1).
4.3.2.
Demographics
Items regarding demographics were included in the questionnaire. Specifically the items were three:
gender, age and level of education.
The gender item comprised of two possible responses, i.e. Male/Female.
The Age item was an open text response item.
41
Level of education had three possible responses of an obtained level of education, High school degree,
University or College degree and Master or PhD degree.
5.
Analysis
This part will describe the process followed in the analysis. The first chapter will briefly present the
sample characteristics, followed by the descriptive analysis, the construct analysis and finally, the group
comparison.
5.1.
Sample characteristics
The questionnaire was available from the 17th of September 2014 until the 15th of October 2014. Total
participants in the questionnaire were 413, out of which 223 (approximately 53.7%) reached the end
answering all available questions. The tool used for questionnaire creation was Qualtrics (found at
http://www.qualtrics.com), a very practical and easy to use software with license provided by Aarhus
University.
Out of these 223, a number of 56 received the Open-Synthetic description, 60 received the Open-Organic,
55 received the Closed-Synthetic and 52 the Closed-Organic. After removing the 18 participants who
responded negatively in the question “Have you read the above description carefully?” the remaining
205 respondents represent the sample of this paper and are distributed as seen below (Table 5):
Table 5. Number of participants per group
Number of
Description
respondents
Open-Synthetic
50
Open-Organic
54
Closed-Synthetic
51
Closed-Organic
50
42
5.2.
Descriptive statistics
This section applies descriptive statistics in order to describe the sample characteristics.
Age of the group ranged from 18 to 58 (M=27.26 +4.61). Specifically the mean age of males was 27.75
(+4.9) and of females 26.83 (+4.27).
As can be seen in the table below (Table 6) from the sample of 205, males were represented by 101
(49.3%) and females by 104 (50.7%). Moreover, 26 participants (12.7%) have obtained a high-school
degree, 107 (52.2%) have a University or College degree and 72 people (35.1%) have obtained a
Master’s degree or a PhD.
Table 6. Sample demographics
Gender:
Male
101
49.3%
Female
104
50.7%
High school
26
12.7%
University degree
107
52.2%
Master’s degree or Phd
72
35.1%
Level of Education:
5.2.1.
Distribution
Due to the relatively small number of participants in each of the four groups, and because of the
configurational character of the governance mechanisms, the models were divided in a 2x2 matrix, the
Open-Closed and the Organic-Synthetic categories. Sample characteristics as well as the group
comparison to follow, will be performed under this classification.
One way ANOVA showed a normal distribution of gender (Open-Closed ρ=.489, Organic-Synthetic
ρ=.901) and education level (Open-Closed ρ=.947, Organic-Synthetic ρ=.365) within the two groupings.
Chi square test exhibited similar results on the distribution of age (Open-Closed: χ2(2)=1.457 ρ=0.483,
Organic-Synthetic: χ2(2)=4.744 ρ=0.093). The results can be seen in Table 7.
43
5.3.
Construct internal consistency
Reliability was approached by calculating Cronbach’s alpha for each of the constructs’ items (Table 8).
Cronbach’s alpha estimates the reliability of a scale by providing input on how closely related the items
used to form a construct are. Items that are internally consistent are expected to produce similar scores
between them.
Table 7. Sample characteristics per group
Education level
Age
Governance
Group
Gender
(% within group)
N
(=205)
Mean
SD
Male
Female
High
school
Master’s/
University
Phd
Open
104
27.3
5.02
51
53
9 (18.0%)
22 (44.0%) 19 (38.0%)
Closed
101
27.2
4.16
50
51
4 (9.0%)
33 (66.0%) 13 (26.0%)
Organic
104
27
3.99
48
56
5 (9.3%)
28 (51.9%) 21 (38.9%)
Synthetic
101
27.5
5.18
53
48
8 (15.7%)
24 (47.1%) 19 (37.3%)
Note: SD=standard deviation
Table 8. Construct reliability
Number of
Construct
items
Cronbach’s α
Brand community engagement
4 items
0.783
Brand community identification
5 items
0.844
Brand community commitment
5 items
0.875
Membership continuance intention
2 items
0.765
Community recommendation intention
2 items
0.791
Intention to share
2 items
0.782
community participation intention
1 item
N/A
Note: N/A= not applicable
44
With a Cronbach’s alpha value higher than 0.7 (Pallant, 2005), all constructs exhibit an acceptable
degree of internal consistency. Notably, the newly introduced construct of Intention to share (ITS)
exhibited similar internal consistency to the other already established constructs. Community
participation intention (CPI) comprises of one item and thus no further testing has been performed.
Further analysis revealed one item that if excluded would potentially raise the internal consistency of
the BCC scale (item “The relationship I would have with that group would be one I intend to maintain
indefinitely”), but with the effect of its exclusion on Cronbach’s α being relatively low and a somewhat
high total correlation (r=.521) with the scale, the item was finally maintained.
5.4.
Model Estimation
Means and standard deviations were calculated for each of the constructs in order to compare the
differences between the four groups, as seen in the table below (Table 9).
An independent samples t-test was performed in the group pairings in order to compare means. The ttest was chosen over the one-way ANOVA due to the test being performed in pairs of groups, thus the
two tests would give identical results, with the t-test being an easier test to perform (Pallant, 2002).
The analysis was significant for the Community recommendation intention (CRI) construct
(F(1,203)=.061, p=.003). This result signifies that participants in the groups governed by an Open model
established a higher degree of intention to recommend the group to non-members. No other results
were of significance in the first level of group comparison.
The newly introduced construct Intention to share (ITS) performed poorly in the mean comparison
analysis, establishing close to identical means between the governance models (participants were
equally willing to share their ideas in all governance models). This result contradicts the author’s belief
that an open governance model would generate a higher degree of willingness to share from group
members.
The second step of group comparison is the use of partial least square (PLS) analysis. In PLS the two
main interests of analysis relevant to the study lay in the estimation of path coefficients and the
determination coefficients (R2) of endogenous latent variables.
45
Table 9. Construct means and standard deviations for each group
OPEN
CLOSED
ORGANIC
SYNTHETIC
(N=104)
(N=101)
(N=104)
(N=101)
Constructs
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
t-value
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
t-value
BCE
4.45
.97
4.24
1.33
1.257
4.44
1.15
4.25
1.16
1.226
BCI
4.31
1.04
4.37
1.30
-.369
4.32
1.16
4.37
1.19
-.322
BCC
3.83
1.15
3.74
1.34
.525
3.85
1.17
3.73
1.32
.704
MCI
4.04
1.25
3.88
1.37
.854
4.00
1.27
3.92
1.36
.482
CRI
4.46
1.18
3.92
1.36
2.995*
4.25
1.32
4.13
1.28
.691
ITS
4.87
1.28
4.92
1.38
-.246
4.86
1.30
4.94
1.35
-.456
CPI
4.45
1.35
4.21
1.44
1.250
4.37
1.37
4.30
1.43
.349
Note: SD=standard deviation; t-values were obtained by performing the independent samples ttest; *significant at the <0.05 level, BCE=brand community engagement, BCI=brand community
identification, BCC=brand community commitment, MCI= membership continuance intention,
CRI=community
recommendation
intention,
ITS=intention
to
share,
CPI=community
participation intention.
The t-values and the significance of the structural coefficients were computed for each path by means
of a bootstrapping procedure using 500 subsamples (Chin, 1998). Inspection of the paths revealed that
all the relationships turn out statistically significant in all governance models examined. The t-values of
the relationships exceeded the t > 3.29, p < 0.001 threshold for each model separately.
The R2 value was calculated in order to determine the explanatory power of the underlying models.
Literature supports that an R2 value of 0.67 is considered substantial, of 0.33 moderate and of 0.19 weak
(Chin, 1998). For all governance models, most of the R2 values were relatively high, suggesting a
substantial explanatory power of all the underlying models. The lowest R2 values were recorded for the
46
BCE->MCI, the BCE->CRI and the BCE->ITS relationships with the Synthetic and Closed models
explaining the relationships substantially better than the Organic and Open models accordingly.
The differences in the path coefficients between the two groups were further inspected, following
Henseler’s (2009) approach on multigroup analysis. While the path differences between the OpenClosed models were expected to be higher than the ones observed in the Organic-Synthetic distinction,
this was not the case. Furthermore, analysis found no significant difference on the effect of governance
mechanisms on the construct relationships (no value in the group comparison exceeded the t>1.96,
p<0.05 threshold). Thus it can be concluded that the governance differentiation in terms of openness
and initiation party do not seem to alter the relationships studied.
The results of the second part of group comparison can be seen on Table 10.
6.
6.1.
Discussion
Theoretical and Managerial Implications
One important implication has been identified after analyzing the results: an open governance model
proved to generate a higher degree of community recommendation intention, meaning that members
were more likely to recommend a Facebook group functioning under an open governance model to nonmembers, than the members of a Facebook group adopting a closed governance model.
Intention to recommend and its perspective behavior are very relevant concepts in marketing, as
positive word-of-mouth has been proven to attract customers and facilitate growth. Online word-ofmouth has been a matter of research, with De Valck et al. (2009) and Chatterjee (2001) supporting that
word-of-mouth exhibits the same characteristics in both its online and offline presentations. Thus, an
open governance model favoring the creation of positive word-of-mouth represents a finding with
possibly numerous implications, both theoretical and managerial; applying an open governance model
and thus getting members to recommend a brand community to non-members could be regarded as a
strategy towards membership growth.
47
Table 10. Paths and group comparisons
Group Comparison
Group Comparison
Synthetic
Organic
Open
Relationship
Path
t-value
R2
Path
t-value
R2
|diff|
BCE->MCI
0.37
3.38*
0.133
0.53
6.56*
0.277
0.16
1.18
BCE->CPI
0.64
9.55*
0.405
0.70
13.58*
0.484
0.06
BCE->CRI
0.43
3.94*
0.179
0.62
11.09*
0.387
BCE->ITS
0.45
4.79*
0.197
0.51
6.22*
BCI->BCC
0.56
5.38*
0.303
0.72
BCI->BCE
0.64
11.19*
0.418
0.66
Closed
p-value
p-value
(2-
(2-
t-value tailed)
|diff| t-value tailed)
Path
t-value
R2
Path
t-value
R2
0.241
0.43
5.42*
0.180
0.45
4.34*
0.203
0.02
0.15
0,874
0.71
0.476
0.62
10.08* 0.383
0.71
12.31* 0.513
0.09
1.07
0,283
0.19
1.55
0.123
0.47
6.86*
0.212
0.56
5.84*
0.316
0.09
0.79
0,428
0.255
0.06
0.50
0,616
0.46
5.59*
0.211
0.50
5.41*
0.256
0.04
0.29
0,766
14.50*
0.523
0.16
1.43
0,153
0.60
9.49*
0.350
0.70
8.34*
0.485
0.1
0.93
0,351
11.83*
0.446
0.02
0.22
0,821
0.60
10.23* 0.357
0.69
12.79* 0.482
0.09
1.07
0,285
Note: t-values were obtained by performing the independent samples t-test; *significant at the <0.001 level, BCE=brand community engagement,
BCI=brand community identification, BCC=brand community commitment, MCI= membership continuance intention, CRI=community
recommendation intention, ITS=intention to share, CPI=community participation intention.
48
While, as will be further discussed later on, the results might not be generalizable to a great extent, the
above result validates a notion that seems to have a cognitive basis. An open governance model, free of
complicated rules and restrictions, does appear to be create more ground for recommendation than a
closed and restricted model of governance. Managers can draw from this relationship and favor the
formation of more open oriented groups when organizing brand communities in the social media,
maximizing the extent of community recommendation.
A further theoretical implication of this paper has been an empirical validation of the pre-existing
conceptual models containing the relationships between brand community related constructs. The
implications are two-fold: the conceptual model was formed after combining constructs which were
previously studied independently [Algesheimer et al. (2005) and Zhou et al. (2012)], thus a validation
of the relationships provides theoretical support for two previously proposed models, and the
applicability on the social media provides with further proof that indeed, brand communities in the
social media share a variety of characteristics with what we call real-life brand communities. With all
paths between constructs proving to be significant, the conceptual model exhibited a high degree of
consistency for all the governance models, thus the results were of similar significance for all four
groups.
The analysis has not being able to successfully identify further significant relationships between the
governance models in terms of the constructs studied, which can be interpreted in a number of ways.
The next part will provide discussion on this subject, offering a basis for argumentation on the reasons
that led to these results. The line of argumentation is that the above results do not undoubtedly prove a
lack of relationship between governance configurations and social media brand communities
constructs, but it is possible that a combination of limitations led to the results of the research.
6.2.
Limitations and future research
The main flaw which may have had a direct outcome in the results of the analysis has been the
limitations of the ways governance can manifest in the Facebook group setting. This raised a number of
issues, mainly in the way that the governance models needed to be presented to the participants of the
survey. While literature supported the existence of brand communities in social media, and groups in
Facebook indeed provide with a representative image of online brand communities, the pre-existing
privacy settings produce a wide array of limitations. The descriptions generated needed to provide a
baseline representation of governance configurations which, under the existing privacy settings which
could not be altered, can be seen as being limited and possibly not able to create a meaningful
differentiation in terms of the constructs studied. Furthermore, there is a possibility that while these
49
governance models may indeed have a significant effect on the relationships between the constructs
studied in real-life brand communities, the same may not be the case in communities formed in the social
media where governance might have a less significant presence.
A second limitation has been the means of research followed, as previously discussed in the
methodology part of the paper. The use of an experimental questionnaire was the selected means of
research due to two main reasons: avoiding biased results and resource management. Applying the
same items on existing brand communities in the social media would carry a number of uncontrollable
and inestimable factors such as personal relation with the brand, social relationships between the
members and so on. Moreover, the possibility of finding brand communities in the social media
following the exact governance mechanisms studied would have ranged from low to non-existent; the
aim of this paper was to study the extremes in terms of the open-close classification when most groups
are established and functioning with a combination of mechanisms.
While these factors have been avoided, it came in the expense of having to ask participants to imagine a
variety of characteristics, which in turn resulted in unfavorable results, possibly explained by a lack of
relating to the descriptions. The lack of reportable results, especially when focusing in the organicsynthetic distinction, point more to the above problem, than to a lack of effect of the formation of
ownership to the model: providing adequate and distinctive characteristics for this specific
differentiation has been very demanding in this research setting.
Drawing from the limitations presented above, future research could concentrate in the elimination of
such effects and study the effects of governance on real life brand communities, or aim at a larger sample
and alternative methodology for social media brand communities. Moreover, drawing from other
streams of theory in order to categorize governance mechanisms would be an interesting concept.
Community governance can be seen from a multitude of perspectives and combining a variety of
theoretical streams could lead to more specific and generalizable results.
7.
Conclusion
Brand communities represent a newly identified and researched entity in marketing and social studies
and, as such, a still underexplored notion. With customers actively taking part in innovation and new
product development processes, it is expected that numerous characteristics will be identified and that
the customer-centric model of brand community proposed by McAlexander et al. (2002) will be in the
center of attention for the foreseeable future. With this in mind, this study had the ambition of
identifying the characteristics of the connection between governance and brand communities, and fill
50
in a gap by identifying an aspect of brand communities that literature had not addressed thoroughly up
to now.
A freshly introduced idea explored in this paper has been the application of OSS governance principles
in brand communities formed in the social media. While it is possible that other governance mechanisms
could potentially provide with stronger links and produce additional implications, the process of
projecting these principles across theoretical streams was both exciting and demanding. It is the
author’s view that brand communities can prove a welcoming ground for further interdisciplinary
theoretical applications, given the variety of social and cultural grounds they cover.
It is highly possible that there is a wide array of unidentified interactions between governance
mechanisms and brand communities. While brand communities are indeed formed by fans and
followers of brands, and thus the character of membership is almost purely volunteer based and without
a clear goal-oriented process, brand communities do exhibit signs of hierarchical decision making,
modularization and division of roles, as seen in the literature review. Similarly, training and
indoctrination of members does seem to take place, if not in the traditional skill-establishing way, surely
in the process of familiarization with the rituals and traditions that a brand community holds. With
literature proving that brand communities are formed online in a similar manner as they do offline, an
idea that has been also validated in this paper, the above connections might be more blurry to recognize
and operationalize in the social media but they are still existent.
This study employed quantitative analysis in order to identify the effect of different governance
configurations in the perceptions and intentions of the members of brand communities. In the process,
a comprehensive literature review was presented to the reader in order to establish a valid point of
departure. It was the authors aim to access and present as much information as possible, thus presenting
the state-of-the-art in literature in a thorough manner, hoping to reflect the importance of the studied
phenomenon. In depth research in the part of the literature review allowed the gathering of essential
information for the following parts of the thesis and allowed the author to choose the most relevant
constructs to be studied.
An experimental questionnaire was the method that was chosen in order to gather data for the
quantitative analysis. This method came with a number of challenges that were addressed thoroughly
throughout the paper, with the most important of them being the attempt to produce a vivid and detailed
presentation of four hypothetical brand communities formed in the social media. This was indeed a very
demanding process, which was equally interesting and difficult to go through. Questionnaire creation
follows a great number of detailed and at times unwritten rules, with the smallest of modifications being
able to cause a wide range of issues. These characteristics made the process of choosing the right length,
51
phrasing and questionnaire format one of the most interesting procedures while authoring this master
thesis.
While the final results were not as favorable as it was initially hoped, the study did manage to produce
a fair amount of theoretical and managerial implications through a very interesting and highly educative
process for the author. Refining the steps taken in the methodology part of the paper along with applying
the chosen principles on real-life brand communities can be the object of further studies, which could
bring up additional valuable information for managers and researchers and provide with useful
reflections on brand community governance mechanisms.
52
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57
9.
Appendices
Appendix 1. Constructs and items
CONSTRUCTS
ITEMS
MODIFICATIONS
REFERENCES
Community
1. I would be very attached to the
group.
2. Other group members and I would
share the same objectives.
3. The friendships I would have had
with other group members would
mean a lot to me.
4. If group members planned
something, I’d think of it as something
“we” would do rather than something
“they” would do.
5. I would see myself as a part of the
group.
1. I would benefit from following the
group’s rules.
2. I would be motivated to participate
in the group’s activities because I
would feel better afterwards.
3. I would be motivated to participate
in the group’s activities because I
would be able to support other
members.
4. I would be motivated to participate
in the group’s activities because I
would be able to reach personal goals.
1. I would feel a loss if that group was
no longer available.
2. I would really care about the fate of
that group.
3. I would feel a great deal of loyalty to
that group.
4. The relationship I have with that
group is one I intend to maintain
indefinitely.
5. The relationship I have with that
group is important to me
“Would” is used in
order to create
conditional verbs.
Algesheimer
identification
Community
engagement
Community
commitment
58
et al. 2005
”Brand
community” is
substituted by
“group”
Same as above
Algesheimer
et al. 2005
Same as above
Zhou
2012
et
al.
Membership
continuance
intentions
Community
recommendat
ion intentions
Community
participation
1. It would be very difficult for me to
leave this group.
2. I would be willing to pay more
money to be a member of this group
than I would for membership in other
groups.
3. I would intend to stay on as a group
member.
1. I would never miss an opportunity
to recommend this group to others.
2. If friends or relatives were
interested in joining a facebook group
of a brand community, I would
definitely recommend this one.
1. I would intend to actively
participate in the group’s activities.
intentions
Sharing/Inno
vation
intentions
1. I would be willing to share my ideas
with the members of the group.
2. I would be willing to share my ideas
with the company that produces the
brand
59
Same as above
plus item 2 has
been removed due
to irrelevance
with the Facebook
group setting.
Algesheimer
“Would” is used in
order to create
conditional verbs.
Algesheimer
et al. 2005
et al. 2005
“Automobile
brand community”
has been
substituted by
“group”
“Would” is used in Algesheimer
order to create
et al. 2005
conditional verbs.
“Brand
community” is
substituted by
“group”
New items
Appendix 2. Questionnaire
1. INTRODUCTION (common for all participants)
Dear participant,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to this questionnaire. My name is Spyros Papamichail and I am
a student at the Department of Business Administration at Aarhus University. This questionnaire is a
part of my master thesis and I would be very grateful if you could spend approximately 7 minutes to
respond to the following questions.
2. DESCRIPTIONS (one of four randomly assigned to each participant)
Open-Synthetic description
Please read the following description carefully and try to remember it while completing this
questionnaire. Imagine yourself as a member of an online brand community, a group that consists of
admirers and fans of a particular brand. The community members feel an important connection with
this brand. The community is a place where each member shares experiences, opinions and interests
about the brand. This community has been established by the company that produces the brand. The
community is organized as a Facebook Group that operates under the following principles:
-The group is open for everyone to join; no invitation is required.
- The group and its content are visible to everyone, both members and non-members.
-Members choose the administrators of the group through voting.
-Members are free to post anything they like in the group, and no administrator approval is required.
-The content does not have to be on a particular subject to be posted.
-There are no established rules in relation to entering the group, posting and commenting.
-Decisions are made through voting by the members.
Have you read the description carefully?
 Yes
 No
60
Closed-Organic description
Please read the following description carefully and try to remember it while completing this
questionnaire. Imagine yourself as a member of an online brand community, a group that consists of
admirers and fans of a particular brand. The community members feel an important connection with
this brand. The community is a place where each member shares experiences, opinions and interests
about the brand. This community has been established by a couple of fans of the brand, who act as the
administrators. The community is organized as a Facebook Group that operates under the following
principles:
-The group is secret and can only be joined by invitation.
-The group and its content are hidden, only members can see the name of the group, its members, the
group's description and posts.
-The creators of the group are self-appointed as administrators.
-Administrators take all decisions regarding the group, so you will not be consulted about any decisionmaking.
-All content requires administrator approval.
-Content needs to be on subject and relevant, otherwise it will not get published.
-The administrators have developed a detailed set of rules regarding entering the group, posting and
commenting.
Have you read the description carefully?
 Yes
 No
61
Open-Organic description
Please read the following description carefully and try to remember it while completing this
questionnaire. Imagine yourself as a member of an online brand community, a group that consists of
admirers and fans of a particular brand. The community members feel an important connection with
this brand. The community is a place where each member shares experiences, opinions and interests
about the brand. This community has been established by a couple of fans of the brand, who act as the
administrators. The community is organized as a Facebook Group that operates under the following
principles:
-The group is open for everyone to join; no invitation is required.
-The group and its content are visible to everyone, both members and non-members.
-Members choose the administrators of the group through voting.
-Members are free to post anything they like in the group, and no administrator approval is required.
-The content does not have to be on a particular subject to be posted.
-There are no established rules in relation to entering the group, posting and commenting.
-Decisions are made through voting by the members.
Have you read the description carefully?
 Yes
 No
62
Closed-Synthetic description
Please read the following description carefully and try to remember it while completing this
questionnaire. Imagine yourself as a member of an online brand community, a group that consists of
admirers and fans of a particular brand. The community members feel an important connection with
this brand. The community is a place where each member shares experiences, opinions and interests
about the brand. This community has been established by the company that produces the brand. The
community is organized as a Facebook Group that operates under the following principles:
-The group is secret and can only be joined by invitation.
-The group and its content are hidden, only members can see the name of the group, its members, the
group's description and posts.
-The administrators are company employees and are appointed by the company.
-Administrators take all decisions regarding the group, so you will not be consulted about any
decision-making.
-All content requires administrator approval.
-Content needs to be on subject and relevant, otherwise it will not get published.
-The administrators have developed a detailed set of rules regarding entering the group, posting and
commenting.
Have you read the description carefully?
 Yes
 No
63
3. ITEMS (common for all participants)
Brand Community Engagement
Having in mind the description of the Facebook Group, to what extent do you agree with the
statements below?
Strongly
Disagree
Agree
Somewh
at
Disagree
Neither
Agree
nor
Disagree
Somewh
at Agree
Agree
Strongly
Agree
1. I would benefit
from following the
group’s rules.







2. I would be
motivated to
participate in the
group’s activities
because I would feel
better afterwards.







3. I would be
motivated to
participate in the
group’s activities
because I would be
able to support
other members.







4. I would be
motivated to
participate in the
group’s activities
because I would be
able to reach
personal goals.







64
Brand Community Identification
Having in mind the description of the Facebook Group, to what extent do you agree with the
statements below?
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree
Somewh
at
Disagree
Neither
Agree
nor
Disagree
Somewh
at Agree
Agree
Strongly
Agree
1. I would be very
attached to the group.







2. Other group
members and I would
share the same
objectives.














4. If group members
planned something,
I’d think of it as
something “we”
would do rather than
something “they”
would do.







5. I would see myself as
a part of the group.







3. The friendships I
would have had with
other group members
would mean a lot to
me.
65
Brand Community Commitment
Having in mind the description of the Facebook Group, to what extent do you agree with the
statements below?
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree
Somewh
at
Disagree
Neither
Agree
nor
Disagree
Somewh
at Agree
Agree
Strongly
Agree
1. I would feel a loss if
that group was no
longer available.







2. I would really care
about the fate of that
group.







3. I would feel a great
deal of loyalty to that
group.







4. The relationship I
would have with that
group would be the
one I intend to
maintain indefinitely.














5. The relationship I
would have with that
group would be
important to me.
66
Members’ Behavioral Intentions
Having in mind the description of the Facebook Group, to what extent do you agree with the
statements below?
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree
Somewh
at
Disagree
Neither
Agree
nor
Disagree
Somewh
at Agree
Agree
Strongly
Agree
1. It would be very
difficult for me to
leave this group.







2. I would intend to stay
on as a group
member.







3. I would never miss
an opportunity to
recommend this
group to others.







4. If friends or relatives
were interested in
joining a facebook
group of a brand
community, I would
definitely recommend
this one.














6. I would be willing to
share my ideas with
the members of the
group.







7. I would be willing to
share my ideas with
the company that
produces the brand.







5. I would intend to
actively participate in
the group’s activities.
67
 DEMOGRAPHICS
Genre
Are you a:
 Male
 Female
Education
What is the highest level of education you have completed?
 High School
 University or College Degree
 Master’s Degree or Phd
Age
What is your age?
68