The Impacts of The Brand Community on Consumer Attitudes and Behavior

Brand community creates an impact by improving brand loyalty. Consumer retention is increased through regular communication between business and its consumers through brand community. This makes consumers to become loyal to the brand hence increasing sales of an organization. According to Pei-Ling and Shang-Ling (2017), brand community changes consumers’ attitudes and behaviour, which can be measured in terms of purchase intention. This can also be measured through how consumers spread the brand by word of mouth. This results in getting customers to crossover from rival industries and competitors. Additionally, customer satisfaction index is improved tremendously through brand communities. The loyal customers are then recruited to become brand ambassadors since they feel they are part of the brand. They therefore help an organization to recruit many potential customers through positive referrals. This eventually increases the visibility of brand in the market hence giving it a competitive advantage. This is mostly common with social media, which crosses geographical boundaries within a short period.

Brand community generates efficiency on the part of consumers. The community is composed of several members who empower one another through information sharing. This lowers the cost on the part of members by making access of information easy and timely. Subsequently, the use of online brand communities lowers the cost of advertising to an organization. Once a loyal brand community has been established, a firm will leverage on it in order to reduce the cost of other ways of product promotion. A firm must however ensure that other marketing and communication channels adopted compliment the strategy of brand community in order to ensure synergy.

Brand community affects consumer attitude by promoting customer retention. This generates a positive impact for an organization. The regular back and forth communication between the business and consumers through the platform makes them to feel part of the business. This increases their retention and reduces business lost to the competition.

According to Freitas and de Almeida (2017), the integration of group members drives retention and loyalty to a brand. This is achieved as members advocate for proper usage of the brand. All members also strive to conform to the norms of a group hence propagating product retention and usage. This makes a firm to remain afloat and focus on ways of widening its customer base. It also improves the intent to purchase hence improving the sales of an organization. Through brand community many consumers get to know about the brand. This increases brand visibility by even reaching and influencing non-customers. The impact that is generated out of brand communities is promotion of brand identification. Through reviews, exchange of information and interaction, many customers begin identifying with the brand. This influences their behaviour since they begin reaching out to potential consumers through word of mouth and other brand promotion methods.