Stefano Pace

Brand community of convenience products: new forms of customer empowerment – the case “my Nutella The Community”

Purpose – To analyse the power that a virtual brand community exerts over a brand of a mass‐marketed convenience product. To draw implications about the strategy that a company can employ facing this power shift. To track emerging trends in virtual brand communities applied to convenience product (as opposed to niche or luxury goods).Design/methodology/approach – Case study of the web community “my Nutella The Community” promoted by the firm Ferrero in Italy. The study applied multiple methods and was conducted through interviews with key informants, netnography and document analysis.Findings – The virtual community that gathers around a convenience product brand shows a new form of sociality and customer empowerment: it is not based on interaction between peers, but more on personal self‐exhibition in front of other consumers through the marks and rituals linked to the brand. The company should play the role of non‐intrusive enabler of these personal expressions, reducing its control over the brands mea...

Global brand communities across borders: the Warhammer case

Purpose – The “brand community” concept believes that the meaning of the brand transcends national boundaries. However, such an assumption presents challenges arising out of several reasons including co‐existence of sub‐tribes within a given brand community that allocate different meanings to a particular brand. This plurality of meanings seems exacerbated for global brands where meanings are shaped by tremendously varying cultures. Aims to address the issues.Design/methodology/approach – This text relies on a comparative study of the meanings attributed to one particular global brand, Warhammer, by the members of its brand community in France and the USA.Findings – Findings highlight the elements of homogeneity and heterogeneity that reside in the cross‐border meanings of the brand. The authors also discuss the marketplace relevance arising out of this plurality that should be taken into account by global marketers.Originality/value – The present text argues that community attached to a global brand cons...

YouTube: an opportunity for consumer narrative analysis?

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to discuss a possible extension of narrative analysis to a new medium of expression of consumer behaviour, specifically YouTube.Design/methodology/approach – Marketing and consumer behaviour studies often apply narrative analysis to understand consumption. The consumer is a source of introspective narratives that are studied by scholars. However, consumption has a narrative nature in itself and consumers are also storytellers. YouTube is a new context in which subjects tell stories to an audience through self‐made videos and re‐edited TV programs. After defining the pros and cons of different approaches to the study of YouTube, narrative analysis is presented as a possible means of understanding YouTube.Findings – Some preliminary evidence is presented by discussing several YouTube videos. These indicate that YouTube content can be better understood as stories, rather than example of other approaches, such as visual analysis, media studies, videography, and others.Researc...

Brand volunteering Value co-creation with unpaid consumers

Through collaborative marketing approaches, companies invite consumers to provide unpaid contributions. Companies commonly do this in the realm of brand communities. The key question this article addresses is how can a company lead consumers to offer unpaid contributions to brands as an act of free will? To answer this question, we develop a framework based on volunteer commitment research to study the actions a company takes to engage consumers in unpaid work for brands. We use this framework to analyse the online collaboration promoted by the carmaker Fiat with its brand community of Alfa Romeo enthusiasts (Alfisti). The research introduces the notion of brand volunteers, that is, brand enthusiasts who are committed to providing unpaid work for the exclusive benefit of the brand. With this notion, the article discusses the possibility of exploiting consumers in value co-creation and the existence of compromises, signifying an agreement between two collaborating parties in which one party (in our case, the consumer) temporarily puts aside possible sources of conflict.

Marketing with working consumers: The case of a carmaker and its brand community

Consumers have entered the world of contemporary organizations. They are even being reconsidered as workers. This article contributes to the body of literature on this theme by focusing on collaborative marketing, which is the organization of marketing work conducted jointly by marketing professionals and consumers. This article draws on the ethnographic study of a collaborative marketing programme organized by the carmaker Alfa Romeo that engaged Alfisti, the enthusiastic consumers of the Alfa Romeo brand. Previous research has analysed work carried out by consumers. This article instead analyses the organization of consumer work and what marketing professionals do to integrate consumer work into their marketing work. This article concludes that marketing professionals control working consumers as if they were wage labourers, which most consumers do not appreciate. Conversely, working consumers compel marketers to engage in social and emotional labour, which marketers are not accustomed to and try to limit.

The effects of social media on brand attitude and WOM during a brand crisis: Evidences from the Barilla case

Brand crises endanger companies. Social media are a key platform where stakeholders elaborate and react to crises. This research explores whether social media audience and traditional mass media audience react differently to a brand crisis in terms of their (1) attitude towards the brand and (2) word-of-mouth (WOM). As to the brand attitude, we argue that stakeholders mainly exposed to the brand crisis via social media have a more negative reaction towards the brand compared to those who are principally exposed via traditional media. As to the behaviour, we posit that social media exposure intensifies WOM. By analysing the Barilla crisis, the findings suggest that the social media act as ‘multipliers’ of the reaction of stakeholders to a brand crisis.

Business-to-business marketing and globalization: two of a kind

Purpose – The aim of the “viewpoint” part of this paper is to enhance discussion on the challenges global business‐to‐business (B2B) marketing is facing. More specifically, academics are stimulated to study the impact of these trends on the internationalization of B2B companies. Managers are urged to engage in open strategy conversations on the consequent opportunities and threats for their global market strategy. Further, this paper acts as a “Guest editorial” for a special issue on B2B and international business.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a literature screening of key contributions highlighting B2B marketing trends on the one hand and theoretical underpinnings of IB on the other. Starting from a practitioner perspective, the paper gradually introduces a discussion on the potential theoretical implications and on cross‐fertilization possibilities when merging recent developments in B2B with theory and concepts from international business.Findings – B2B and IB go hand in hand and ...

Combining qualitative methods in practice: A contextualized account of the evolution of consumer studies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss within a corporate context the advantages and limitations of combining different qualitative methods (namely consumers’ introspection and observation) to grasp consumer experiences. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reflexively examines the evolution of a research process through which a team of researchers and a company tried to understand how the online consumer experience unfolds. The paper discusses the research process, the problems addressed and the way results were shared and acted upon within the company. Findings – The findings show how the search for and implementation of the combination of observation and introspection is rooted in the kinds of organizational change processes that allow companies to appropriate new methodological approaches and modify the conduct of their service innovation processes. Research limitations/implications – The paper is based on a single research project, analysed only retrospectively and reflexively. As to it...

CONTROL AND POWER IN ONLINE CONSUMER TRIBES: THE ROLE OF CONFESSIONS

Purpose Confessions are said to be important for members’ tribal experiences and they are usually ascribed religious meanings in existing research on consumer tribes. This suggests that confessions have a regulative role for tribal life. By employing the Foucauldian notion of pastoral power, the present study explores confession practices and examines how control is manifested. Methodology The study is based on a netnographic study and analysis of tribal members’ confessions across three online consumer tribes devoted to opera (Loggionisti, who are opera aficionados of the La Scala theatre in Milan, Italy), sports (football and hockey fans of Djurgaurden, Sweden), and cars (Alfa Romeo owners). Findings We demonstrate how confessions align consumers with the common tribe ethos and how this constitutes members into various subject positions, which are fundamental social processes for reinforcing

The interaction effect between brand identification and personal crisis relevance on consumers’ emotional reactions to a fashion brand crisis

ABSTRACT An organizational crisis is an event perceived by managers and stakeholders as highly salient, unexpected, and potentially disruptive; it can also threaten an organization’s goals and have profound implications for its relationships with stakeholders. In this article, we consider an actual crisis that recently struck an important brand in the fashion sector – Moncler. The crisis endured by Moncler was complex, involving several aspects of its activity. Notably, our study was conducted at the beginning of November 2014, in the 2 weeks after the crisis event. In particular, to collect data on consumers’ reactions to Moncler crisis, we created a questionnaire and ran a web survey through Survey Monkey. Then, through a moderated mediation model, we show that the impact of brand identification on the attitude toward the company and purchase intention is significantly mediated by anger for high levels of personal crisis relevance (PCR) and by sympathy for average and low PCR levels. These results are in accordance with some research concerning the role of emotions, which can perform different functions; the function of emotions such as anger and sympathy is to support the individual’s commitment and relate to moral decisions and judgements.