The Fostering of Online Brand Communities - An Integrated Framework for Strategic Implementation

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to create an integrative understanding of how OBCs are fostered by developing a framework for strategic implementation. Methodology: The chosen method is of an explorative nature with an abductive approach. The authors will develop an integrated OBC framework by synthesising relevant brand community literature. This OBC framework will then be scrutinized by empirical studies of practi-tioners and OBC consumers. The empirical data from the practi-tioners will be gathered through a qualitative research method and the empirical data from the OBC consumers will be gathered through a quantitative research method. Theoretical perspectives: The theoretical foundation of this study is based on literature concerning subcultures of consumption, brand communities, online brand communities, community engagement, consumer participation motives, co-creation and relationship marketing. This literature will be used in order to develop an integrated framework of the nature of OBCs. Empirical foundations: The empirical data is based on qualitative expert interviews with marketing practitioners that have experience from OBCs and so-cial media marketing. The OBC users’ views of OBCs have been covered by a quantitative survey of their online behaviour. Data were collected in order to complement and add to the developed framework of how to foster OBCs. Conclusions: This thesis’ empirical findings provided a number of preparatory aspects and strategic guidelines for OBC-fostering. These aspects and guidelines have been integrated in a framework for strategic implementation, The Online Brand Community Wheel. Further, the empirical findings suggest that the importance of firm-focused OBC engagement/involvement has been underestimated in pre-vious literature. It has also been found that the likeliness of suc-ceeding when fostering OBCs is increased if the community is based around consumption activities rather than brands