Brand communities and anti-brand communities: similarities, differences and implications for practitioners

Dessart, L., Veloutsou, C. and Morgan-Thomas, A. (2012) Brand communities and anti-brand communities: similarities, differences and implications for practitioners. Atiner Conference Paper Series, BUS2012-0337.

Abstract

Brands are increasingly perceived as social entities that affect the ways in which consumers relate to each other, and there is a growing interest in consumer groups that support or oppose a given brand, referred to in marketing literature as brand or anti-brand communities. Although the concept of communities has been examined in the sociology literature for some time, there is very little integration of the sociology and the marketing literature when brand and anti-brand communities are examined. Furthermore, brand and antibrand communities have largely been approached as different phenomena in the marketing literature. This paper is trying to re-define brand communities and to identify antecedents, internal functioning and consequences of these communities. Using knowledge from the sociology and marketing literature, it argues that brand and anti-brand communities are intrinsically more similar than different. Therefore, they can both be described with the term brandrelated communities and they should be approached by researchers and practitioners as similar rather than different phenomena.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Veloutsou, Professor Cleopatra and Morgan-Thomas, Professor Anna
• Authors: Dessart, L., Veloutsou, C., and Morgan-Thomas, A.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Management
• Journal Name: Atiner Conference Paper Series
• Publisher: Athens Institute for Education and Research
• ISSN: 2241-2891