Brand community

A brand community is a community on the basis of attachment to a product or marque. Recent developments in marketing and in research in consumer behavior result in stressing the connection between product identity and culture. Among the concepts built to harness the behavior of consumers, the concept of a brand community focuses marketers on closely connecting consumers. A brand community can be defined as an enduring self-selected group of actors sharing a system of values, standards and representations (a culture) and recognizing bonds of membership with each other and with the whole.

The term "brand community" was firstly presented by Albert Muniz Jr. and Thomas C. O'Guinn in 2001. In a scholarstic essay titled " Brand Community" published on Journal of Marketing (SSCI), they defined the concept as " a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand". Brand communities are characterized in shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of moral responsibility.