Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

strategy due to its impact brand trust and loyalty (Matzler, et al., 2011). Many terms have been used to define brandcommunities (Belk & Tumbat, 2005) for instance Schouten and McAlexander (1995) with reference to Harley-Davidson motorcycle owners called such groups as ―subcultures of consumption‖ that shared commitment to aproduct class, brand or a consumption activity..With the evolution of internet, there been an emergence of the concept of groups (or virtual communities) revolvingaround a particular brand or consumption activity. Many studies are related to Harley-Davidson‘s Harley OwnersGroup (HOG) (Fournier et al., 2000; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995), and HOG is cited as a prototypical exampleof a brand community. Like many other brand communities, HOG is actively nurtured by the company. Muniz andO‘Guinn (2001) used three constructs to identify the features that distinguished brand communities.1. A sense of belonging to the brand community or a consciousness of kind. Members feel a connection with thebrand and they feel that ―sort of know each other‖ (p.418). There is also a distinction between the users of theirbrand and other brands. Due to this distinction they feel special about being users of the brand.2. The evidence of rituals and traditions. These traditions centre on the shared consumption experience of theconsumers with the brand. Such rituals at first appear insignificant, but then they function perpetuate consciousnessof kind (p.422). These experiences involve celebrating the history of the brand and sharing stories that involve thebrand. Its helps in reproducing the culture of the communities and the brand.3. Moral responsibilities. A sense of obligation to the community and its members that is often (but not always)shared by the community members. These systems are highly contextualized and can be very subtle.Muniz and O‘Guinn, further state that the most important element of a community i.e. consciousness of kind is the―we-ness‖ shared by members as defined by Bender (1978). Bagozzi (2000) conceptualizes it as ―we-intentions‖where he builds on the work on shared intentions, which is the idea that members in a group can individually havean intention that ―we will do something together‖ (Bagozzi, 2000 p. 392).3.0 Research IssuesIn the 21st century the notion of brand communities occupies a very important space, which is real, democratic andprovides the evidence of community in consumer culture (Muniz and O‘Guinn, 2001). There is growing evidence ofthe increasing participation of consumers in digital environments (Bagozzi & Dholakia, 2002). Virtual communitiesthat have evolved with USENET groups in the early eighties provide digital platforms that facilitate this onlinesocial action. Literature on this subject has mainly focussed on developed economies that were the centre of digitalrevolution. The social side of consumption has been a neglected aspect of consumer behavior (Bagozzi, 2000).Among various streams of research, scholars have focussed on character of these communities (e.g. Muniz andO‘Guinn, 2001, Balasubraminian & Mahajan 2001), uses and gratifications perspective (e.g. Dholakia et al., 2004;Muntinga, et al. 2011), impact of brand communities on loyalty (e.g. Matzler et al., 2011; Casaló et al., 2008),motivations to participate in eWOM (e.g. Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004) and the consequences of identifications withthese communities (Algesheimer et al., 2005).While there have been numerous studies on specific brands conducted in developed markets such as Coca-Cola(Sicilia & Plazon, 2008), Harley Davidson (Bagozzi & Dholakia, 2006), Volkswagen (Matzler et al., 2011), Nutella(Cova & Pace, 2006) and Apple (Belk & Tumbat, 2005), there is little know about the brand communities inemerging markets. Moreover there is little known about brand community brand communities formed onentertainment related brands. MTV India features in the top 1000 Facebook pages with a member base of over 3.1million (as on 27th February 2012). This study intends to understand value creation practices of entertainmentrelated brand communities on social networking sites using the process of Netnography.4.0 Research Design and methodologySince the purpose of this study is to investigate value creation practices of brand communities for entertainmentrelated brands with a special reference to emerging markets we chose to analyse MTV India‘s online brandcommunity. We use Netnography to analyse and classify the nature of content of MTV India‘s brand community bypassively joining the community and collecting archival data on the community for three weeks. The nature of the