Towards A Formative Framework for the Utilisation of Brand Communities by Marketing and Public Relations Practitioners in Emerging Markets: Insights from Ghana

Abstract

Globally, businesses are constantly re-evaluating and restructuring their customer interactions in an effort to cultivate and maintain consumer loyalty in both virtual and in-person environments. To acquire the trust and loyalty of their consumers, businesses implement various schemes, including mileage programmes, discounts, coupons, and co-creation activities, among others. These schemes are introduced to discourage customers from migrating to their competitors. However, these programmes seem to be quite ephemeral and transient; thus, while they might be effective to some degree, they might not be enough to develop and maintain consumer loyalty to the apex. As such, the concept of Brand Community has been touted as a response to businesses attaining sustained and unremitting consumer loyalty. Even though the brand community literature has received enormous scholarly attention, with scholarship mainly concentrating on themes like trust transfer, consumer loyalty, value co creation, and consumer engagement, there is a dearth of studies on the formative frameworks of brand communities. Based on the aforementioned arguments, this study has been undertaken to resolve these deficits by exploring the formative frameworks of brand communities with insights from Ghana to guide marketing and public relations professionals in their strategic brand relationship-building efforts. Through the qualitative research approach, which is predicated on participant observations, focus group discussions, and semi-structured interviews, this study discovered nine different motivating factors that push Ghanaian consumers to join and participate in the activities of brand communities. Similarly, the study uncovered nine ritualistic practices that are performed in Ghanaian brand communities. What is more, the study uncovered several benefits that the affiliate brands derive from the brand communities’ activities. Based on the findings above, this study makes several practical and theoretical recommendations, leading to the development of a post-study framework named “F-E-B Framework of Brand Communities” to guide the Formation, Engagement, and Benefits of brand communities in Ghana and other emerging markets with similar socio cultural peculiarities. Beyond these achievements, this study also makes substantially novel contributions to the literature by exploring this phenomenon from a multi-disciplinary (marketing and public relations) perspective.