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

impact on the engagement levels of brand community members. These content categories can be classified on thebasis of scope of content and relatedness to brand. Greater scope while gives greater engagement, higher relatednessof content to brand also positively influences brand community member engagement. While between five categorieswe find that content of national or global relevance produces highest engagement as compared to allied content. Wesee that greater scope of content leads to higher engagement with the brand community content. The contentcategories which are relatively lower in scope such as life or fundamental content lead to a form of autotelicconsumption with greater interpersonal actions among consumers, which is dominated by consumption as play. Wesee that lower scope of content makes users engage in greater interpersonal actions while the object of consumptionis an end in itself (non-instrumental). The content categories with greater scope such as national or global content orallied content lead to consumption as an experience, with consumption activities being focused on the object ofconsumption produced by the brand community.The content classification and its impact on levels and type of engagement gives insights on content strategies thatcan be adopted by brand community managers to facilitate engagement. Content which has a greater scope willengage with greater amount of brand community members and will offer consumption as an experience rather thanplay. Brands can affiliate their content with information of national or global importance. While society is animportant stakeholder for brands, this study clearly empirically validates that it engages more amount brandcommunity members. Thus brands in their communication strategies on their communities can talk about sociallyrelevant issues. Affiliate strategies capture this engagement in a good way, where the presence of brand relatedcontent is high and the scope of the content is broader. We see that promotions about other brands or productsproduce little engagement with brand community members as compared to other forms of content. Although ourstudy does not offer insights about the reasons for promotion of such content, owing to the amount of response andconsidering it as an object of consumption, it will not be as engaging as other forms. But, if combined with contentoffering greater scope, the engagement and the reach of such content can be increased.Theoretically, following a social-constructivist epistemology, this study contributes to knowledge in brandcommunities through social construction considering brands as social systems that produce social and economicdistinctions through unceasing communications (Giesler, 2003). The survival of communities depends on quality andquantity of communications rather than attitudes on membership (Luedicke, 2006). This study focuses on the contentof communication within brand communities on social networking of an entertainment brand (MTV India) tounderstand its effects on consumptions patterns on members. It also opens new research questions such as anexploration into the differences of consumption patterns within various types brand communities. In summary thisstudyvalidates the importance of scope of content and it‘s relatedness to brand in a brand community in influencingconsumption patterns.7.0 ReferencesAlgesheimer, R., Dholakia, U. M, & Herrmann, A. (2005). The social influence of brand community: Evidence fromEuropean car clubs. Journal of Marketing, 69(3), 19–34.Bagozzi, R. P. (2000). On the concept of intentional social action in consumer behavior. Journal of ConsumerResearch, 388–396.Bagozzi, Richard P., & Dholakia, Utpal M. (2002). Intentional social action in virtual communities. Journal ofInteractive Marketing, 16(2), 2-21.Balasubramanian, S., & Mahajan, V. (2001). The Economic Leverage of the Virtual Community. InternationalJournal of Electronic Commerce, 5(3), 103-138.Belk, R. W., & Tumbat, G. (2005). The Cult of Macintosh. Consumption, Markets & Culture, 8(3), 205-217.