Marie-Odile Richard

The effects of social media based brand communities on brand community markers, value creation practices, brand trust and brand loyalty

Social media based brand communities are communities initiated on the platform of social media. In this article, we explore whether brand communities based on social media (a special type of online brand communities) have positive effects on the main community elements and value creation practices in the communities as well as on brand trust and brand loyalty. A survey based empirical study with 441 respondents was conducted. The results of structural equation modeling show that brand communities established on social media have positive effects on community markers (i.e., shared consciousness, shared rituals and traditions, and obligations to society), which have positive effects on value creation practices (i.e., social networking, community engagement, impressions management, and brand use). Such communities could enhance brand loyalty through brand use and impression management practices. We show that brand trust has a full mediating role in converting value creation practices into brand loyalty. Implications for practice and future research opportunities are discussed.

To be or not to be in social media: How brand loyalty is affected by social media?

There is an ongoing debate over the activities of brands and companies in social media. Some researchers believe social media provide a unique opportunity for brands to foster their relationships with customers, while others believe the contrary. Taking the perspective of the brand community building plus the brand trust and loyalty literatures, our goal is to show how brand communities based on social media influence elements of the customer centric model (i.e., the relationships among focal customer and brand, product, company, and other customers) and brand loyalty. A survey-based empirical study with 441 respondents was conducted. The results of structural equation modeling show that brand communities established on social media have positive effects on customer/product, customer/brand, customer/company and customer/other customers relationships, which in turn have positive effects on brand trust, and trust has positive effects on brand loyalty. We find that brand trust has a fully mediating role in converting the effects of enhanced relationships in brand community to brand loyalty. The implications for marketing practice and future research are discussed.

Brand communities based in social media

The article articulates the existence of brand communities on social media.It delineates five unique dimensions of brand communities based in social media.They are: social context, structure, scale, content and storytelling, and affiliated brand communities.Managers must pay attention to the differences that exist between the new form of brand communities and the more traditional ones. Understanding how brands should operate on social media is very important for contemporary marketing researchers and managers. This paper argues that due to the social and networked nature of social media it is an ideal environment for brand communities. Taking a deep qualitative approach and with analysis of a vast array of data, the article articulates the existence of brand communities on social media. More importantly, it delineates five unique and relevant dimensions of brand communities based in social media. The authors advise researchers to consider these dimensions while conducting research on brand communities and social media. Further implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.

How do involvement and product knowledge affect the relationship between intangibility and perceived risk for brands and product categories

Purpose – Intangibility has long been studied in marketing, especially its physical aspect. This paper seeks to verify whether a branding strategy is efficient in reducing the risk perceived by customers.Design/methodology/approach – A sample of university students answered the measurements considering both perspectives (brands and product categories). The paper uses a three‐dimensional approach of intangibility and explores its relationships with evaluation difficulty (ED) and perceived risk (PR). These relationships were tested in two different perspectives: brands and product categories.Findings – Two analyses were made to test the hypotheses which were generally supported. Several relationships between the variables were found, but three should be highlighted. First, it was shown that brands are more mentally intangible than product categories, which may lead to a difficulty to evaluate. Second, it was found that evaluation difficulty increases the perceived risk in the product category perspective. T...

Relationship between intangibility and perceived risk: moderating effect of privacy, system security and general security concerns

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the association between intangibility and perceived risk using a sample of North American households. This relationship is explored within two purchase environments, namely online and offline. The authors also investigated the moderating effects of privacy, system security and general security concerns when purchasing in an online environment.Design/methodology/approach – The survey was delivered to 156 households in a small town in the Midwest and collected upon completion.Findings – The perception of risk is increased when two negatively loaded pieces of information are processed simultaneously (i.e. product intangibility and privacy concern). Furthermore, system security was identified as the most relevant concern in e‐commerce.Research limitations/implications – The representativeness of the sample is limited. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.Originality/value – The results provide interesting insights about the generalizability of previous fin...

The Role of Language in Ethnic Identity Measurement: A Multitrait-Multimethod Approach to Construct Validation

The authors focused on the role of language use in measuring ethnic identity. They demonstrated the construct validity of a 3-dimensional measure and examined potential biases introduced by alternative methods such as constant sum scale. Their findings support the distinction between the 3 subdimensions of language use (English use in family, in media consumption, and while shopping). The authors found evidence of discriminant validity. By using 3 approaches to construct validity, they found that the support for discriminant validity strengthens the discriminant and convergent properties of the instrument. Findings concerning method effects were less obvious. If the traditional multitrait-multimethod approach indicates no method effects, more stringent approaches (e.g., analysis of variance and correlated uniqueness approach) indicate the presence of limited method effects. The authors provide implications regarding measurement of ethnic identity.

Identifying Brand Sentiment Through Analytics: An Abstract

Right now, hundreds of thousands of data are generated and added to the accumulated data. This immense amount of real-time and retrospective data has helped change the previous paradigms and led to a new one: big data analytics. Social networks, blogs, social bookmarking, and review sites are considered very important in the big data era. Nowadays, there is strong interest among academics and practitioners in studying branding issues through analytics. In this article, given the necessity of monitoring the perceived value of brand authenticity, “to protect a popular brand against the heartbreak of genericide” (Walsh, 2013), we examine the sentiments toward a brand, via brand authenticity, to identify the reasons for positive or negative sentiments on social media. Moreover, to increase sentiment precision, we investigate sentiments polarity on a five-point scale. From a database containing 2,988,560 tweets with the keyword “Starbucks,” we use a set of 1857 coded tweets both for brand authenticity and sentiment polarity. We analyze the data to establish a framework in which we predict both the brand authenticity dimension and its sentiment polarity. Results from support vector machine (SVM) analyses illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed procedure of brand sentiment analysis. It shows high accuracy for both the brand authenticity dimensions’ prediction and its sentiment polarity. In summary, this research contributed both theoretically and managerially to the brand sentiment literature. The proposed procedure and the research findings on brand authenticity sentiment analysis could facilitate further inquiries into sentiment analysis for all other brand constructs and in several related domains, such as e-word-of-mouth studies. Practically speaking, this research could provide marketing practitioners with a reliable and valid instrument to evaluate the level of sentiments toward a brand more specifically and more accurately, which could lead to proposing appropriate strategies to strengthen their brand authenticity. This study has some limitations that offer opportunities for further research. First, we studied brand authenticity sentiments with 2Q cross-sectional data, while we acknowledge that customer sentiments could even change over a short period of time. Second, we did not consider the brand’s following-up interventions about the shared tweet, which could change upcoming sentiments. Third, as we collected the data in a real-time manner, we did not have the data about the amount of likes and retweets a post received, which could show the effectiveness of the tweet.

Book Review: Neuromarketing: Exploring the Brain of the ConsumerNeuromarketing: Exploring the Brain of the ConsumerZurawickiLéon Springer, 2010 273 pp, hard cover £90 ISBN 978-3-540-77828-8

New. interest. in. neuroscience. prompted. marketers. to. wonder. how. they. should. apply. it. to. the. theory. and. practice. of. consumer.behaviour ..This.book.by.Léon. Zurawicki,. a. marketing. professor. with. 30.years.of.experience,.is.most.useful.as. it. provides. a. wide. panorama. of. neuromarketing ..This.timely.book.concentrates. on. biometric. and. neurological. research. methods. like. functional. magnetic. resonance. imaging. (FMRI),. electroencephalography.(EEG).and.facial.coding ..These. allow.understanding.of.changes.in.brain. activity. and,. consequently,. of. human. decision-making.processes . This. is. the. first. book. to. document. how.neuroscience.adds.to.understanding.consumer.behaviour ..It.is.supported. by. numerous. publications. –. over. 700. bibliographic.entries.–.from.marketing,. cognitive.psychology,.decision.sciences,. neuropsychology.and.neurophysiology .. This.broader.base.is.fruitful.as.it.incorporates. general. discoveries. from.brain. studies .. The. book. shows. that. while. neuroscience.confirms.established.marketing. concepts. and. theories,. it. brings. new.explanations.of.risk.taking,.impulsivity,. conformity. or. regret .. There. is. evidence. that. rational. cognitive. information. processing. is. affected. by. emotions.and.these.emotions.represent. useful. heuristics. for. consumers .. Thus,. neuroscience. teaches. that. cognitions. and.emotions.represent.complementing. facets.of.mental.accounting . The. first. part. of. the. book. describes. the.major.systems.in.the.brain.responsible.for.sensory.perception.and.reactions. to. cognitive. and. emotional. information .. Zurawicki. details. mental. processes.related.to.information.processing,. learning. and. memory,. and. their. brain. architecture ..These.are.challenging.topics,.yet.Zurawicki.focuses.on.issues.with. implications. for. consumer. behaviour .. Chapter.1. includes.an.account.of.techniques. of. neuroimaging. and. biometric. research,. as. well. as. evaluations. of. their. suitability. for. marketing. studies. and. their. relative. costs .. The. next. two. chapters. discuss. experiments. in. neuroscience. related. to. consumer. behaviour .. Zurawicki’s. treatment. helps. contrast. textbook. interpretations. of. consumer. behaviour.with.findings.from.lab.experiments.with.brain. scanning.and.related. methodology ..Chapter.2.addresses. sensory. reactions. and. emotions. related. to. external.stimuli ..It.opens.with.a.discussion.of.pleasure.as.viewed.by.neuroscientists ..This.helps.the.reader.understand. why. the. reward. concept. is. critical. to. human. behaviour .. Next,. attention. is. turned. to. brain. reactions. to. food. and. beverage.consumption ..This.is.followed. by. an. examination. of. beauty. (visual,. acoustic. or. aromatic),. which. proves. very. compelling. in. view. of. marketers’. efforts. to. differentiate. their. products. through. design .. This. becomes. more. pertinent. when. Zurawicki. describes. International Journal of Market Research Vol. 53 Issue 2